This artist's impression shows the Deep Impact spacecraft as it fired an impactor into comet Tempel 1 in 2005. (NASA/Pat Rawlings via Getty Images) NASA's veteran Deep Impact probe may have chased its last comet.The spacecraft's handlers lost contact with — which slammed an impactor probe into Comet Tempel 1 in 2005, made a close flyby of Comet Hartley 2 in 2010 and recently observed ISON, a "comet of the century" candidate — sometime between Aug. 11 and Aug. 14,...

Expedition 36 Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) is carried to the medical tent shortly after he and, Commander Pavel Vinogradov of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA landed in their Soyuz capsule. (AP Photo/NASA, Bill Ingalls) MOSCOW -- Three astronauts, one American and two Russian, came home on a Soyuz capsule early Wednesday morning after166 days on the International Space Station. American Chris Cassidy and Russians Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin emerged...

LOS ANGELES — NASA's Voyager 1 probe is drifting, and NASA couldn't be happier. Thirty-six years after it rocketed away from Earth, the plutonium-powered spacecraft has escaped the sun's influence and is now cruising 11 1/2 billion miles away in interstellar space, or the vast, cold emptiness between the stars, NASA said Thursday. And just in case it encounters intelligent life out there, it is carrying a gold-plated, 1970s-era phonograph record with multicultural greetings from Earth, photos and songs, including...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A Virginia company makes its debut this week as a space station delivery service, and the lone American aboard the orbiting lab is counting on a fresh stash of chocolate. In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg said she can't wait for this weekend's arrival of a new cargo ship named Cygnus. It will be the first shipment by Orbital Sciences Corp. to the International Space Station. "You know that there's...

The supermoon sets near the Statue of Liberty, Sunday, June 23, 2013, in New York. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) Space enthusiasts looked up to the largest moon of the year over the weekend, enthralled by a "supermoon" that was miles closer to the Earth than usual. To the naked eye, the moon wasn't noticeably larger than normal, but several major cities enjoyed clear nights on Saturday and Sunday, giving millions the opportunity to break out their telescopes turn their eyes toward...

The unmanned Antares rocket is scheduled to blast off this morning, carrying 1,300 pounds of food, clothes and other items as part of the test flight. The Orbital Sciences Corp. rocket is being readied on the launchpad at the NASA Wallops Island test flight facility in Wallops Island, Va. (Steve Helber/Associated Press) A commercial cargo ship made its successful debut Wednesday, rocketing toward the International Space Station and doubling the number of NASA's private suppliers for the high-flying lab. Orbital...

(NASA) LOS ANGELES -- NASA has given up on the Deep Impact spacecraft, which suddenly went silent after nine years of exploration. The space agency said Friday the mission is over for Deep Impact, which in 2005 smashed a comet with a projectile to give scientists a peek of the interior. The spacecraft went on to rendezvous with two more comets. (MORE: ) Last month, engineers lost contact with Deep Impact. After trying for a month to regain communications, NASA...

In this image released by the Department of Homeland Security, researchers tested the FINDER prototype technology at the Virginia Task Force 1 Training Facility in Lorton, Va. (Department of Homeland Security) NASA and the Department of Homeland Security have joined forces to create a radar detection device that searches out the most precious of treasures: the human heartbeat. FINDER (Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response) is a lightweight, portable radio wave detector that acts as surrogate ears for emergency...

Artist's concept of DARPA's Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1), a proposed unmanned, hypersonic vehicle that the agency hopes will lower satellite launch costs substantially. Officials are targeting Mach 10 for the suborbital vehicle. (DARPA) SAN DIEGO — The United States military is kick-starting a suborbital hypersonic vehicle program that also aims to launch payloads into orbit on the cheap. The new program, run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is called Experimental Spaceplane, or XS-1. It follows in the footsteps of...

In this photo provided by NASA, the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket lifts off the launchpad at the NASA Wallops Island test flight facility in Wallops Island, Va., Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013. (AP Photo/NASA, Bill Ingalls) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A new commercial spaceship will wait all week before aiming again for the International Space Station. Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Cygnus capsule was supposed to arrive Sunday, four days after its launch. But the rendezvous was aborted because of a discrepancy...

The moon is quite a bit younger than scientists had previously believed, new research suggests. The leading theory of holds that it was created when a mysterious planet — one the size of Mars or larger — slammed into Earth about 4.56 billion years ago, just after the solar system came together. But new analyses of lunar rocks suggest that the moon, which likely by this monster impact, is actually between 4.4 billion and 4.45 billion years old. The finding,...

LONDON — Water, water everywhere, and some of it fit to drink. That’s the picture of ancient Mars that has emerged during the past few months thanks to discoveries by NASA's which has been exploring the Red Planet since touching down inside Gale Crater in August 2012. The announcements have come in dribs and drabs, but presented together recently here at the European Planetary Science Congress, they provide compelling evidence that Mars was quite wet in the distant past. []...