Charged solar particles strip away Mars’ atmosphere over time. ...

With famed physicist Stephen Hawking at his side, an Internet investor announced Tuesday that he's spending $100 million on a futuristic plan to explore far outside our solar system. Yuri Milner said the eventual goal is sending hundreds or thousands of tiny spacecraft, each weighing far less than an ounce, to the Alpha Centauri star system. That's more than 2,000 times as far as any spacecraft has gone so far. Propelled by energy from a powerful array of Earth-based lasers,...

The "Spider" Nebula, formally named IC 417, lies about 10,000 light-years away from Earth and is a site of active star formation. It is in the outer part of the Milky Way, almost exactly in the opposite direction from the galactic center. A cluster of young stars known as "Stock 8" are seen at the center right of the image. The light from this cluster carves out a bowl in the nearby dust clouds, seen here as green fluff. Along...

A compilation of SpaceX’s many launches and landing attempts, before it finally was able to land a spacecraft stage on a drone ship in the ocean. ...

Be sure to check out Mercury next week just after the sunset it will become visible. ...

Mercury is never brighter or easier to spot with the naked eye than it will be in the next week. It's a rare treat to get such a clear view of the planet closest to the sun, and this front row seat will only last so long. To see Mercury yourself, go outside about 30 minutes after sunset and look for the planet near the horizon. It will appear just above where the sun sinks, about 15 degrees above the...

An Inflatable room was attached to the International Space Station. ...

A strange crater on Ceres seems to be warning spacecraft not to land on the dwarf planet's battered surface. The rim of Ceres' Haulani Crater is composed of relatively straight lines, making the 21-mile-wide (34 kilometers) feature look oddly like a stop sign, as several dazzling new photos captured by NASA's Dawn probe show. "The crater's polygonal nature (meaning it resembles a shape made of straight lines) is noteworthy because most craters seen on other planetary bodies, including Earth, are...

Artist's illustration of a free-floating world called WISEA J114724.10−204021.3, thought to be an exceptionally low-mass "brown dwarf," which is a star that lacked enough mass to burn nuclear fuel and glow like a star. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) Not all planets are lucky enough to have neighboring planets, or even a sun. Astronomers know these "lonely" free-floating planets exist in droves in our universe, but no one knows exactly how they formed or where they came from. But astronomers have now identified a...

The next full moon, known as the Pink Moon, is coming up this week — just days after the Internet ran wild with an entirely different, and completely fake, lunar event. Earlier this week, bloggers and social media users spread the hoax that on Wednesday,the moon would appear green. This rumor was debunked by scientists at NASA and Space.com, but not before the originator received thousands of shares for the false post. Stargazers are still due for a treat this...

The Hubble Space Telescope has sent back photos of a star inflating a giant bubble. ...

Info from space probe shows freezing polar regions on Venus ...