One of the newest volcanic vents discovered in Southeast Alaska is an underwater volcanic cone in Behm Canal near New Eddystone rock. (James Baichtal, U.S. Forest Service) In Alaska, scores of volcanoes and strange lava flows have escaped scrutiny for decades, shrouded by lush forests and hidden under bobbing coastlines. In the past three years, 12 new have been discovered in Southeast Alaska, and 25 known volcanic vents and lava flows re-evaluated, thanks to dogged work by geologists with the...

Rings View From Washington, D.C. At 38 degrees north latitude, the rings would be beautifully displayed. Here we see them at sunrise. (Courtesy Ron Miller) The rings around Saturn have been a subject of fascination ever since they were discovered back in 1610, when Galileo Galilei peered through a telescope and found them circling the sixth planet from the Sun. Made up mostly of ice and estimated to measure as little as 30 feet in thickness and span hundreds of...

NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft is shown here in the clean room, with its solar panels extended. (Lockheed Martin Photo) A new NASA spacecraft is weeks away from launching into orbit to study a region of the sun that will help scientists better understand how the solar atmosphere works, scientists said today (June 4). The (IRIS) probe is slated to launch on June 26 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The satellite will be carried aboard an...

Double-star system T Pyxidis seen on Sept. 19, 2011. (NASA/ESA) NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers a rare look at an enormous stellar eruption, allowing them to map out the aftermath of such blasts in unprecedented detail. (MORE: What if Earth had Rings Like Saturn?) Hubble photographed an April 2011 explosion in the double-star system T Pyxidis (T Pyx for short), which goes off every 12 to 50 years. The new images reveal that material ejected by previous T...

This image provided by NASA shows a rock outcrop in Gale Crater on Mars. The NASA rover Curiosity plans to study the outcrop before heading off to its ultimate science destination, a mountain rising from the middle of the crater, in the next several weeks. (NASA) LOS ANGELES -- Ten months after Curiosity's daring Mars landing, the NASA rover is finally about to pack up and head toward the base of a mountain. Discoveries and longer-than-expected scientific studies delayed the...

The damage scar left by the EF5 tornado that struck Moore, Okla., on May 20, 2013, as seen by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite on June 2, 2013. (ROBERT SIMMON/NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and the U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team) The numerous photos and videos taken on the ground after a massive EF5 tornado tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on May 20 showed the individual scale of the destruction. A new satellite image...

A huge X1.2-class solar flare erupted from the sun late Tuesday (May 14, 2013), the fourth major flare in two days from a busy sunspot on the surface of the sun. NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory captured this view of the event. (NASA/SDO) Severe space weather could be as devastating to the planet as serious tornadoes and other natural disasters, NASA chief Charles Bolden said in a public address Tuesday (June 4). Bolden spoke before scientists and industry members at the...

The contest invites LEGO fans to design and build future NASA air- and spacecraft. (LEGO/collectSPACE.com) NASA is challenging the next generation of aerospace engineers to toy with ideas for the future by using LEGO bricks to launch their concepts for advanced aircraft and spacecraft. The U.S. space agency and Danish toy company, which recently ended a partnership to fly the iconic plastic construction , are now jointly presenting the "NASA's Missions: Imagine and Build" competition. The contest, which is open...

After the sun sets on a summer evening and the sky fades to black, you may be lucky enough to see thin, wavy clouds illuminating the night, such as these seen over Billund, Denmark, on July 15, 2010. (Jan Erik Paulsen/NASA Earth Observatory) Night-shining clouds, an ethereal type of cloudknown to ripple across the edge of space, were expected to be rare this year, but a new study finds these specters are actually quite common and thicker than predicted. "This...

Ever wonder what a black hole looks like? This artist's illustration gives some insight. (April Hobart, NASA, Chandra X-Ray Observatory) Black holes may have been abundant among the first stars in the universe, helping explain the origin of the supermassive monsters that lurk at the heart of galaxies today, researchers say. An international team of astronomers has found that black holes likely contributed at least 20 percent of the infrared cosmic background, light emitted 400 million to 800 million years...

NASA's largest rocket yet, a vehicle under development called the Space Launch System (SLS), is on track for its first test flight in 2017, according to experts who spoke at the Space Tech Expo in Long Beach last month. The rocket is designed to carry astronauts farther into the solar system than ever before. Meanwhile, NASA plans to leave travel to low-Earth orbit to commercial space companies, which are developing private space taxis to take over the job vacated by...

An artist's illustration of a comet storm around a nearby star. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) The impact of comets crashing into Earth's surface may have provided the energy to create simple molecules that formed the precursors to life, a new study suggests. That conclusion, published in the June 20 issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry A, was based on a computer model of such an impact's effect on a comet crystal initially made up of water, carbon dioxide and other simple molecules....