U.S. astronaut Karen Nyberg, left, Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, center, and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano pose for the media before their final preflight practical examination in a mock-up of a Soyuz TMA space craft at the Russian Space Training Center in Star City outside Moscow, Russia on Tuesday, April 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA is paying $424 million more to Russia to get U.S. astronauts into space, and the agency's leader is blaming...

A high-tech NASA telescope in orbit escaped a potentially disastrous collision with a Soviet-era Russian spy satellite last year in a close call that highlights the growing threat of orbital debris around Earth. NASA's $690 million — which studies the most powerful explosions in the universe — narrowly avoided a direct hit with the defunct 1.5-ton Russian reconnaissance satellite Cosmos 1805 on April 3, 2012, space agency officials announced Tuesday, April 30. NASA's 0 million Fermi space telescope was nearly...

The sun celebrated the start of May with some incredible fireworks. NASA reports a coronal mass ejection (CME), which is basically a massive solar explosion, leapt from the edge of the sun on May 1. (MORE: 10 Stellar Solar Moments) NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured the CME on video. It looks like a big rolling wave. Wednesday's CME is the latest in the sun's recent impressive displays. SDO captured the sun's strongest solar flare of 2013 on Thursday, April...

Unmanned spacecraft from NASA, Europe and other space agencies are exploring the moon, Mars and other destinations across the solar system. (NASA) The solar system that humans call home may be a strange oddity when compared with the incredible diversity of planetary systems researchers are discovering in the Milky Way, astronomers say. Scientists now estimate the Milky Way galaxy contains at least as many planets as it does stars. So far, researchers have detected nearly 900 of these so-called already,...

This image shows the most powerful gamma-ray burst ever seen. Released on May 3, 2013. (NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration) Two NASA space telescopes have captured what appears to be the most powerful star explosion ever detected, a cosmic event so luminous that scientists dubbed it "eye-wateringly bright" despite being 3.6 billion light-years from Earth. On April 27, NASA's Swift Space Telescope and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope spotted the highest-energy gamma-ray burst (GRB) — an explosion of a massive star in...

WASHINGTON — If NASA is to land humans on Mars by the 2030s, as President Barack Obama has directed, there's not much time to settle on a plan and develop the technologies required, agency officials said Monday (May 6). In the 1960s, America seized an opportunity to go to the moon, and succeeded. A second opportunity for a leap forward in space is upon us now, said NASA chief Charles Bolden at the here at George Washington University. "Interest in...

Skywatcher Charles Medendorp took this photo of the annular eclipse at the Very Large Array outside Socorro, New Mexico, on May 20, 2012. (Charles Medendorp) The moon will block the sun in a potentially spectacular solar eclipse this week — a celestial event that will transform the sun into a cosmic "ring of fire" in the daytime sky. The ring-shaped solar eclipse, known as an annular eclipse, will occur Thursday and Friday (May 9 and 10). Weather permitting, the eclipse...

The gas near the central part of the Milky Way's center is warmer than the rest of the mass of gas and dust circling the galaxy's black hole. (ESA–C. Carreau ) The huge, hot mess of cosmic gas that feeds the colossal black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy may be getting "cooked" before being devoured, a scientists say. Before its retirement earlier this year, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory found that clouds of...

SYDNEY -- The moon glided between the Earth and sun, blocking everything but a dazzling ring of light, for the few skygazers lucky enough to see Friday's "ring of fire" eclipse in northern Australia and the South Pacific. The celestial spectacle is the second solar eclipse visible from northern Australia in six months. In November, a total solar eclipse plunged the country's northeast into darkness, delighting astronomers and tourists who flocked to the region from across the globe to witness...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Astronauts making a rare, hastily planned spacewalk replaced a pump outside the International Space Station on Saturday in hopes of plugging a serious ammonia leak. (LISTEN: ) The prospects of success grew as the minutes passed and no frozen flecks of ammonia appeared. Mission Control said it appeared as though the leak may have been plugged, although more monitoring was needed before declaring a victory. "No evidence of any ammonia leakage whatsoever. We have an airtight...

This image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a colossal X1.7-class solar flare erupting from the sun at 10:17 p.m. EDT on May 12, 2013 (Mother's Day). It is the strongest solar flare of 2013 so far. (NASA/SDO ) The sun unleashed a colossal Mother's Day solar flare on Sunday (May 12) in what has become the most powerful solar eruption of the year. The giant solar flare, which registered as one of the largest eruptions the sun can unleash,...

Chris Hadfield's video features shots of a floating guitar. (NASA) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In a high-flying, perfectly pitched first, an astronaut on the International Space Station is bowing out of orbit with a musical video: his own custom version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity." It's believed to be the first music video made in space, according to NASA. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's personalized rendition of "Space Oddity" was posted on YouTube on Sunday, one day before his departure from...