Artistic composite shows the Kepler telescope. The mission was specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to detect and characterize other Earth-size and smaller planets around the habitable zone. (NASA) LOS ANGELES — NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope is broken, potentially jeopardizing the search for other worlds where life could exist outside our solar system. (MORE: ) If engineers can't find a fix, the failure could mean an end to the $600 million mission's search, although the...

In this Saturday, May 11, 2013 photo made available by NASA, astronaut Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn, not pictured, perform a space walk to inspect and replace a pump controller box on the International Space Station after an ammonia coolant leak was discovered. (AP Photo/NASA) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- An impromptu spacewalk over the weekend seems to have fixed a big ammonia leak at the International Space Station, NASA said Thursday. The "gusher" erupted a week ago, prompting the hastiest...

Mice in a scientist's hands. (Getty Images) MOSCOW -- A Russian capsule carrying mice, lizards and other small animals returned to Earth on Sunday after spending a month in space for what scientists said was the longest experiment of its kind. Fewer than half of the 53 mice and other rodents who blasted off on April 19 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome survived the flight, Russian news agencies reported, quoting Vladimir Sychov, deputy director of the Institute of Medical and Biological...

This map shows the oldest light in our universe, as detected with by the Planck mission. The ancient light, called the cosmic microwave background, was imprinted on the sky when the universe was 370,000 years old. (ESA and the Planck Collaboration) A map of the universe based on its oldest light is giving astronomers hope that they may be able to answer some of the deepest questions of the cosmos, including how it got started. Scientists met this week at...

U.S. astronaut Karen Nyberg, Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano wave as they walk to a bus from a hotel before the launch. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel) MOSCOW – A Soyuz capsule carrying an American, Russian and Italian successfully docked Wednesday with the International Space Station, where the new crew will spend six months conducting a variety of experiments. The docking took place less than six hours after the Russian spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur...

Curiosity on Mars A composite of low-resolution images shows the NASA's Curiosity Mars rover with its robotic arm extended for the first time Monday on Mars. LOS ANGELES — Astronauts traveling to and from Mars would be bombarded with as much radiation as they'd get from a full-body CT scan about once a week for a year, researchers reported Thursday. That dose would, in some cases, exceed NASA's standards and is enough to raise an astronaut's cancer risk by 3...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Astronomers getting their first close-up glimpse of a giant asteroid about to whiz by Earth found a surprise bonus rock. A smaller moon asteroid is circling the larger space rock, an unusual but not unheard of space phenomenon. (MORE: ) The larger 1.7 mile-wide rock named Asteroid 1998 QE2 will be the closest to Earth on Friday at 4:59 p.m. EDT. Don't worry, though. It will still be 3.6 million miles away. NASA scientist Paul Chodas...

One of the newest volcanic vents discovered in Southeast Alaska is an underwater volcanic cone in Behm Canal near New Eddystone rock. (James Baichtal, U.S. Forest Service) In Alaska, scores of volcanoes and strange lava flows have escaped scrutiny for decades, shrouded by lush forests and hidden under bobbing coastlines. In the past three years, 12 new have been discovered in Southeast Alaska, and 25 known volcanic vents and lava flows re-evaluated, thanks to dogged work by geologists with the...

Rings View From Washington, D.C. At 38 degrees north latitude, the rings would be beautifully displayed. Here we see them at sunrise. (Courtesy Ron Miller) The rings around Saturn have been a subject of fascination ever since they were discovered back in 1610, when Galileo Galilei peered through a telescope and found them circling the sixth planet from the Sun. Made up mostly of ice and estimated to measure as little as 30 feet in thickness and span hundreds of...

NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft is shown here in the clean room, with its solar panels extended. (Lockheed Martin Photo) A new NASA spacecraft is weeks away from launching into orbit to study a region of the sun that will help scientists better understand how the solar atmosphere works, scientists said today (June 4). The (IRIS) probe is slated to launch on June 26 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The satellite will be carried aboard an...

Double-star system T Pyxidis seen on Sept. 19, 2011. (NASA/ESA) NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers a rare look at an enormous stellar eruption, allowing them to map out the aftermath of such blasts in unprecedented detail. (MORE: What if Earth had Rings Like Saturn?) Hubble photographed an April 2011 explosion in the double-star system T Pyxidis (T Pyx for short), which goes off every 12 to 50 years. The new images reveal that material ejected by previous T...

This image provided by NASA shows a rock outcrop in Gale Crater on Mars. The NASA rover Curiosity plans to study the outcrop before heading off to its ultimate science destination, a mountain rising from the middle of the crater, in the next several weeks. (NASA) LOS ANGELES -- Ten months after Curiosity's daring Mars landing, the NASA rover is finally about to pack up and head toward the base of a mountain. Discoveries and longer-than-expected scientific studies delayed the...