NASA's newest weather satellite soared into space Thursday, kicking off a mission to observe rainfall and snowfall around the globe in unprecedented detail. The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint effort between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), blasted off aboard an H-2A rocket from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center today at 1:37 p.m. EST (1837 GMT; 3:37 a.m. Feb. 28 local Japan time). GPM will deliver near real-time observations of precipitation every three hours all over...

NASA hopes to launch a mission to the Jupiter moon Europa, perhaps the solar system's best bet to host alien life, a decade or so from now, officials announced Tuesday. The White House's 2015 federal budget request, which was released Tuesday, allocates $15 million to help develop a mission to Europa, which harbors a potentially life-supporting ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell. "Europa is a very challenging mission operating in a really high radiation environment, and there's lots...

An asteroid at least the size of a 60-story building will make a distant flyby of Earth this week, and you can watch astronomers track the space rock in a live webcast, weather-permitting. The asteroid poses no threat to Earth. The online Slooh community observatory will host the free webcast at 10 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT) to track asteroid 2014 CU13, a space rock about 623 feet (190 meters) wide discovered on Feb. 11 that will pass Earth at a...

Expedition 38 crewmembers, from left, Mike Hopkins, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy gather inside the International Space Station's Kibo laboratory for a crew portrait before their return to Earth. (NASA) An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts made a snowy but safe landing on Earth late Monday, bringing their 5 1/2-month mission aboard the International Space Station to a successful close. A Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy touched down on...

Something never before seen is going on in space right now. A super massive black hole could swallow a gas cloud. ...

Researchers studying the Big Bang have found remarkable evidence that the newly-formed universe expanded rapidly, a discovery that, if confirmed, would be a major advance in the understanding of the early universe. A new study reveals that a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the newly formed universe ballooned out at a pace so astonishing that it left behind ripples in the fabric of the cosmos. Although many scientists already believed that an initial, extremely rapid growth spurt...

The first direct evidence of cosmic inflation — a period of rapid expansion that occurred a fraction of a second after the Big Bang — also supports the idea that our universe is just one of many out there, some researchers say. On Monday, scientists announced new findings that mark the first-ever direct evidence of primordial gravitational waves — ripples in space-time created just after the universe began. If the results are confirmed, they would provide smoking-gun evidence that space-time...

Russian Soyuz rocket launches a Soyuz TMA-12M capsule carrying NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev toward the International Space Station on March 25 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. (NASA/Bill Ingalls) A Russian Soyuz spacecraft skipped a planned engine maneuver in orbit late Tuesday, forcing the its three-man crew to circle the Earth two extra days before reaching the International Space Station as planned, NASA officials say. The Soyuz TMA-12M space capsule launched into space Tuesday carrying...

Astrophotographer Mike Taylor sent Space.com this image of the Milky Way galaxy, planet Venus and a meteor burning up in the atmosphere over the Marshall Point Lighthouse in Port Clyde, Maine on March 4, 2014. The photo is one frame taken from a 2 ½-hour time lapse. (Mike Taylor/Taylor Photography ) A blazing meteor disintegrates across a glittering night sky with planet Venus and the Milky Way galaxy beaming brightly over a lighthouse in Maine in this stunning image recently...

April 12 has a special place in any calendar dedicated to the study of space. On April 12, 1981, a new era of space exploration took to the sky, as space shuttle Columbia lifted off on its inaugural flight, kicking off NASA’s space shuttle program. Columbia’s liftoff marked the 20th anniversary of the first-ever human spaceflight, the 1961 launch of the trip that made Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin the first human to enter outer space. (MORE: The Blood Moon Is...

A SpaceX supply ship delivered two tons of food, gear, experiments and care packages to the six men aboard the International Space Station on Sunday. Dragon, the name of the SpaceX company’s space capsule, chased the space station for two days following its Friday launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. before astronauts captured it with a robotic arm. Neither NASA nor SpaceX packed any Easter goodies, but the families of the six astronauts sent private care packages. “Gentlemen, the Easter Dragon...

Photographer CJ Armitage of Brisbane, Australia captured this stunning view of the sunset solar eclipse on April 29, 2014 during the first solar eclipse of the year. (CJ Armitage) The moon took a bite out of the sun in the first solar eclipse of the year on Tuesday (April 29), a celestial ballet visible from Australia that captivated stargazers despite cloudy weather. Tuesday's solar eclipse was a "ring of fire" annular eclipse, but only for an uninhabited swath of Antarctica....