In this photo provided by NASA, a view of the lower reaches of Mount Sharp is shown in a cropped image taken with a 34-millimeter Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity rover on August 18, 2012 on Mars. (NASA via Getty Images) NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Mars since it landed to much fanfare last August, is back on active status Tuesday, after a memory glitch set the robot back. "We expect to get back to sample-analysis science by...

This image provided by Bezos Expeditions shows a thrust chamber of an Apollo F-1 engine on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in March 2013. (AP Photo/Bezos Expeditions) LOS ANGELES -- Rusted pieces of two Apollo-era rocket engines that helped boost astronauts to the moon have been fished out of the murky depths of the Atlantic, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos and NASA said Wednesday. A privately funded expedition led by Bezos raised the main engine parts during three weeks at...

(NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/GSFC) Last year, two NASA satellites, Ebb and Flow, mapped the moon's gravity field in unprecedented detail. Higher gravity levels are shown in red, lower fields in blue in the photo above. This week, the space agency released in mission-ending dives. NASA deliberately plunged them into a lunar mountain, well away from the and other historic sites. Scientists are still poring through the last chunk of data Ebb and Flow beamed back before their demise, but we think this is...

NOAA's GOES-13 satellite captured this image of the Earth at the spring equinox, on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 7:45 a.m. EDT. (NOAA) On Wednesday, the first day of spring, the length of day and night were about the same for most of the planet. The amount of solar energy delivered to the Northern and Southern Hemisphere was also equal. You can see that effect in an image taken Wednesday morning (March 20) at 7:45 a.m. EDT by the National...

Artist rendering of planetary discoveries by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. (NASA/W. Stenzel) Here's a collection of images from across the solar system and the universe beyond from the unique perspective of NASA, America's space agency. MORE ON WEATHER.COM: LATEST SPACE VIDEOS ON WEATHER.COM: ...

Artist rendering of planetary discoveries by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. (NASA/W. Stenzel) PARIS -- A new examination of what is essentially the universe's birth certificate allows astronomers to tweak the age, girth and speed of the cosmos, more secure in their knowledge of how it evolved, what it's made of and its ultimate fate. Sure, the universe suddenly seems to be showing its age, now calculated at 13.8 billion years - 80 million years older than scientists had thought. It's got...

A bright meteor briefly outshined the lights of New York City Friday evening, according to reports by witnesses who used Twitter and the Internet to report sightings of the fireball streaking over a broad stretch of the U.S. East Coast. (PHOTOS: ) "Strange Friday night … a passed over my house tonight!" wrote one New Yorker writing as Yanksmom19. The first fireball sightings came at about 8 p.m. EDT and sparked more than 500 witness reports to the American Meteor...

This image provided by NASA-TV shows the SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo craft as it is backed away from the International Space Station early Tuesday March 26, 2013 by the International Space Station's Canadarm2 robotic arm. (AP Photo/NASA) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The SpaceX Dragon capsule is back on Earth. The privately owned cargo ship splashed down in the Pacific on Tuesday, five hours after leaving the International Space Station. The California-based SpaceX confirmed the Dragon's return to Earth via Twitter....

Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., Lunar Module Pilot, stands near a scientific experiment on the lunar surface in July 1969. (NASA/Newsmakers) Earlier this week, a New York auction house put more than 300 space artifacts on the auction block, including original documents that were flown to the moon and used to carry out the first manned lunar landing. But contrary to recent headlines prompted by Bonhams' "Space History Sale," the Apollo 11 moonwalker, whose lunar-traveled checklists and flight plans are...

The sun should roar back to life sometime in 2013, producing its second activity peak in the last two years, scientists say. (MORE: ) Our star has been surprisingly quiet since unleashing a flurry of flares and other eruptions toward the end of 2011. But this lull is likely the trough between two peaks that together constitute "solar maximum" for 's current 11-year activity cycle, researchers say. The largest solar flare in 5 years leapt from the sun in early...

The Sun's Most Explosive Moments The sun has been exploding with activity for the last decade. From solar flares to coronal mass ejections (CMEs), NASA and its partners around the world have captured stunning images and video of this heightened period of solar activity. This year will likely mark the end of the sun's latest active cycle, according to scientists. So we dug through videos and photos to bring you . MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Stunning Northern Lights Big Lake, Alaska...

This artist's conception shows the suspected progenitor of a new kind of mini supernova called Type Iax. Material from a hot, blue helium star at right is funneling toward a carbon/oxygen white dwarf star at left, which is embedded in an accretion disk. (CREDIT: Christine Pulliam (CfA)) (Christine Pulliam (CfA)) Astronomers have discovered a new kind of supernova, a star explosion so weak that scientists dubbed it a miniature stellar blast. Supernovas represent the deaths of stars, which collapse in...