ATLANTIC, Va. – A company contracted by NASA to deliver supplies to the International Space Station successfully launched a rocket on Sunday in a test of its ability to send a cargo ship aloft. About 10 minutes after the launch from Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles declared the test a success after observing a practice payload reach orbit and safely separate from the rocket. The Sunday launch comes after two previous attempts were scrubbed....

The Red Planet This image released Aug. 27, 2003 captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows a close-up of Mars when the telescope was 34,648,840 miles away. The picture, assembled from a series of exposures, was taken just 11 hours before the planet made its closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years. LONDON —A nonprofit organization that aims to land four astronauts on Mars in 2023 will kick off its two-year, televised search for Red Planet explorers by this summer....

This contrast-enhanced, computer-processed image was produced from photos of Comet ISON taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on April 10, 2013, when the comet was 386 million miles from the sun. (NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute)/Hubble Comet ISON Imaging Science Team) NASA's iconic Hubble Space Telescope has snapped stunning new photos of Comet ISON, which could become one of the brightest comets ever seen when it zips through the inner solar system this fall. Hubble captured the new...

San Mateo College student Paola-Castillo used her cell phone to capture the Oct. 17, 2012 fireball over Northern California while stuck in traffic. (Paola-Castillo) The dramatic fireball that exploded over Russia in February got many people wondering if there is any way to anticipate future dazzling meteors before they appear. Well, meteors not associated with an annual shower are certainly tough to predict. But there are some patterns that skywatchers can keep in mind to maximize their chances of spotting...

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Via an NBC Connecticut screenshot, the meteorite that hit a Connecticut man's home on April 19 is seen. Celestial events can be awe-inspiring, as long as they remain at a distance and don't come crashing through your home. The Lyrid meteor shower was little more than a close call for Larry Beck, whose Wolcott, Conn. house was struck by what appeared to be a baseball-sized rock in the middle of the night, late Friday, April 19. It was originally thought...

The third coronal mass ejection in two days erupted off the sun in the direction of Mercury on April 21, 2013. This image shows the CME shooting off to the right. (ESA&NASA/SOHO ) The sun has unleashed a trio of solar eruptions toward the planet Mercury in recent days, solar storms that may pass one NASA spacecraft while dealing a glancing blow to another, NASA officials say. (MORE: 10 Stellar Solar Moments) The three flares erupted from the sun over...

Minsk, Belarus The moon is seen from the Belarusian capital Minsk, during a partial lunar eclipse, late Thursday, April 25, 2013, as the Earth casts a shadow on the face of the moon. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) The moon dipped through Earth's shadow in a partial lunar eclipse on Thursday, the first of five eclipses of the moon and sun in 2013. The next eclipse, an annular solar eclipse, will make the star look like a May 10, according to SPACE.com....

(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) Saturn's rings just can't catch a break. The billions of tiny particles of rock and ice orbiting Saturn are constantly hammered by other space rock fragments. Now, thanks to a rare occurrence, scientists have seen these cosmic impacts in action. (WATCH: Gorgeous Time-Lapse of the Sun) Saturn's orbit around the sun is equivalent to about 30 Earth years. On about the 15th year of that cycle — which happened most recently in 2009 — the lengths of...

BERLIN — Nets, harpoons and suicide robots could become weapons of choice to hunt down the space junk threatening crucial communications satellites currently in orbit round Earth, scientists said Thursday. Even lasers that act like "Star Trek" tractor beams were among the proposals put forward to protect some $100 billion worth of satellites from man-made cosmic garbage. "Whatever we do is going to be an expensive solution," Heiner Klinkrad, a space debris expert at the European Space Agency, said at...

This image of a coronal mass ejection (CME) was captured on April 20, 2013. The CME is headed in the direction of Mercury. The large bright spot on the left is Venus. (ESA&NASA/SOHO) Two NASA spacecraft are safe and sound, after the sun unleashed three intense back-to-back solar eruptions in their direction, scientists say. (WATCH: Space Junk Becoming Dangerous) NASA's Messenger spacecraft in orbit around Mercury and the Stereo-A, which studies the sun from Earth orbit, suffered no damage from...

New York New York City, posted on April 23, 2013. Cmdr. Chris Hadfield tweets: Incredibly clear, before the trees have filled with leaves. (Chris Hadfield/NASA) Orbiting some 230 miles above Earth, Chris Hadfield, commander of the International Space Station, has become something of a social media sensation. Since the Canadian astronaut arrived on the ISS on Dec. 19, he has been posting extraordinary images of Earth and uploading videos that answer our most pressing questions about life in space. This...