This evenly layered rock photographed by the Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover in August 2014, shows a pattern typical of a lake-floor sedimentary deposit not far from where flowing water entered a lake. (NASA) Water on Mars may have been more prevalent than originally thought, according to new data from NASA’s Curiosity. The rover recently observed that Mount Sharp in Gale Crater — the three-mile high peak NASA’s been studying — was “built by sediments deposited in a...

Black holes are among the most mysterious objects in the universe, making them the subject of much research, discussion and science fiction. Recent theories have posited that every black hole contains a universe — and that we’re inside a black hole right now — and that the universe itself started when a four-dimensional star collapsed into a black hole. There are some things we do know about these cosmic oddities. Taking advantage of the Black Friday spirit, NASA and other...

Tomorrow night and Sunday, you’ll want to brave the cold to witness the best meteor shower of the year, the Geminids. You don’t even need to be a night owl to see these shooting stars: Best views happen sometime between 10 p.m. and midnight — plenty of time for some star-gazing and a good night’s sleep. The Geminids have a pretty cool backstory. They’re said to come from an extinct comet called 3200 Phaethon, or as NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office...

NASA has a long and grand history — the agency turns 100 in 2015 — making amazing strides in space exploration and discovery, and pushing the United States farther beyond Earth’s boundaries every year. It’s celebrating a big milestone on Dec. 20, 2014, the 75th anniversary of Ames Research Center. At the time it was built, in 1939, Ames was created as the second lab for what was then the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics or NACA. (It became NASA...

Earth is very unique. It’s the only planet in our solar system that supports life. But all living things must die. It’s something we all know is coming, but how exactly will this blue marble we call home cease to exist? (MORE: Earth in Northern California Still Moving Months After Earthquake) There are many theories, but the most likely scenario is pretty awful. At about four and a half billion years old, our Sun is considered middle-aged, and as it...

This was a big year for space exploration. For the first time in history, a spacecraft landed on a comet. With its Orion test flight, the U.S. took steps to get back into the manned space-travel game — and toward putting a man on Mars. And we found organic chemicals on Mars. Here, we highlight 14 important space stories from 2014. 1. We landed a spacecraft on a comet The surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as seen from Philae, which landed...

We won't have to wait long into 2015 to catch the first big space event of the new year, but you're going to need a little bit of luck to seeing anything. The Quadrantid meteor shower will be visible over the next few days in the north-northeastern sky after dark, according to EarthSky. At its peak Saturday night in North America, the shower will produce as many as 100 meteors an hour, but the peak won't last long– maybe only...

It's green, makes children cry and could soon become galactic. No, it's not a bloodthirsty martian preparing to invade Earth. It's lettuce. Mars One, a controversial, to send humans to Mars by 2025, is holding a on what to send to Mars on its proposed unmanned mission in 2018. (MORE: ) One team is aggressively lobbying to grow lettuce on the red planet. Marketing their plan as #LettuceOnMars, a group of seven students from the University of Southampton Spaceflight Society...

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory snapped this picture of the Sun on Jan. 1, 2015. (NASA/SDO) Okay, it's not a literal hole. And the sky isn't falling either. On Jan. 1, NASA noticed that its Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite had snapped a surprising image of the sun. (MORE: ) In the picture above, what looks like a massive chunk of Sun missing is actually a coronal hole. As NASA explains in a blog post, , its distinctive aura, where the star's...

On the first morning of the New Year, NASA captured one of the first images of Earth in 2015. The photograph, which is focused on the Americas, was part of NASA's celebratory New Year’s message on Twitter: GOES-East, a weather satellite , captured the image from its position above the Western Hemisphere. With four current operational satellites, the GOES system provides vital environmental data that informs weather forecasts and storm tracking. (MORE:) Images of Earth’s disc may seem mundane today,...

Comet Lovejoy, first spotted in August 2014, will make its closest pass to Earth on January 7. In this photo, gas from the comet provides a green tint. (Damian Peach/SEN) A celestial surprise is coming at the end of the New Year's first week, and the man behind its discovery has an interesting background. Australian Terry Lovejoy has a prolific record among amateur astronomers. To date, the Queensland native , all using relatively simple equipment compared to what you'd find...

April 24 marks the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope. To celebrate, NASA and the European Space Agency, which jointly run the telecope, released this image of the star cluster Westerlund 2. (NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team/A. Nota/Westerlund 2 Science Team) To earn a name like “Pillars of Creation” requires something pretty spectacular. When in 1995 the Hubble telescope snapped a shot of three wispy gas columns enshrouded in light from a nearby group of stars, the structures in the Eagle Nebula...