MOSCOW -- A Soyuz capsule carrying three astronauts successfully docked with the International Space Station early Thursday, bringing the size of the crew at the orbiting outpost to six. The new crew's six-month mission will include a spacewalk with the Olympic torch. American Michael Hopkins and Russians Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky traveled six hours in the capsule from the Russian-leased launch pad in Kazakhstan before linking up with the space station's Russian Poisk research module at 6.45 a.m. Moscow...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's newest delivery service made its first-ever shipment to the International Space Station on Sunday, another triumph for the booming commercial space arena that has its sights set on launching astronauts. Orbital Sciences Corp.'s unmanned cargo ship, the Cygnus, pulled up at the orbiting lab with a half-ton of meals and special treats for the station astronauts who assisted in the high-flying feat. With the smooth linkup, Orbital Sciences of Virginia became only the second company...

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., Sunday, Sept. 29, 2013. The rocket carried a satellite which has instruments to study space storms in the upper atmosphere and their potential effects on GPS navigation and radio communications. (AP Photo/Vandenberg Air Force Base, Michael Peterson) (AP Photo/Vandenberg Air Force Base, Michael Peterson) VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- A SpaceX rocket carrying a Canadian satellite intended to track space weather launched from the California coast Sunday...

This concept image shows an astronaut preparing to take samples from the captured asteroid after it has been relocated to a stable orbit in the Earth-moon system. Hundreds of rings are affixed to the asteroid capture bag, helping the astronaut carefully navigate the surface. Image released Aug. 22, 2013. (NASA) Decades from now, people on Earth may be gearing up for an unprecedented celestial spectacle — the intentional smashing of an asteroid into the moon. NASA is currently planning out...

This undated image provided by NASA shows Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has detected the presence of a plastic ingredient in Titan’s atmosphere, the first time the chemical has been found in a world other than Earth. (AP Photo/NASA) PASADENA, Calif. -- You expect to find plastics in your lunch box, not on a moon of Saturn. But that's exactly where NASA found an ingredient of plastic - the first time the chemical has been detected on another...

LOS ANGELES – Scientists have discovered ancient supervolcanoes on Mars similar to the caldera that sits under Yellowstone National Park.Volcanoes previously have been spotted on Mars, which is known to have been volcanically active billions of years ago.What's different about this supervolcano network is that it was found in the Martian northern highlands, a place not known to be active in the past. Studying images from several spacecraft orbiting Mars, researchers at London's Natural History Museum and NASA found at...

The U.S. government shutdown has broken the links to many federal websites, but a vital source of information about sun storms and their potential effects on Earth remains available. The website of the Space Weather Prediction Center, an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will continue to be maintained despite the shutdown, which began at midnight Tuesday (Oct. 1) when the Senate and House failed to agree on an emergency spending bill. The space weather center is...

This artist's conception shows the NASA's MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars. The mission will launch in late 2013. (LASP) NASA's next Mars probe should get off the ground on time, no matter how long the government shutdown lasts. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter, or Maven, got back on track for a Nov. 18 launch on Thursday (Oct. 3), just two days after the froze liftoff preparations and put a scare into planetary scientists around the world. "We have already...

The moon will meet up with three different planets in the evening sky during two upcoming celestial encounters, one on Sunday (Oct. 6) and the other on Tuesday (Oct. 8). The ringed planet , sinking into the west-southwest twilight, is close to Mercury in early October. About 40 minutes after sunset on Sunday, try catching a glimpse of Saturn hovering about 5 degrees above a razor-thin sliver of a crescent moon that's just two days past new phase and a...

The massive planet was found usiing the gravitational microlensing technique at the Mount John Observatory in New Zealand. (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) Deep inside the Milky Way’s galactic bulge, a world is orbiting a star — a world that is one-third the size of our own sun and 25,000 light-years away from us. Astronomers working in three locations — New Zealand, Poland and Israel — all sighted it using using a quirk of Einstein’s general relativity theory to detect it:...

Naiad is the encircled point of light just to the left of Neptune. (SETI Institute) A tiny, mysterious moon orbiting Neptune has been spotted for the first time in more than 20 years. By analyzing photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., have caught sight of Naiad, the innermost of . The 62-mile-wide (100 kilometers) moon has remained unseen since the cameras on NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft discovered it in 1989....

Comet ISON barreled past Mars last week on its way toward a close encounter with the sun that has had scientists and skywatchers buzzing for a year. on Oct. 1, then geared up for a close solar approach that will bring the icy wanderer within 724,000 miles (1.16 million kilometers) of the sun's surface on Nov. 28. If ISON manages to stay in one piece, it could put on a memorable sky show around that time, experts say. Here's the...