This close-up look at an active region taken on July 9, 2010, shows a hotbed of magnetic activity, including a small solar flare bursting out into space. (NASA Solar Dynamics Laboratory) Our sun keeps us going, but in this age of advanced technology, it could also cripple our electronic devices. According to SPACE.com, the sun is approaching the peak of its 11-year cycle, and , creating temporary radio blackouts and shutting down GPS navigation. However, this would require the coronal...

NASA's audacious plan to grab an asteroid and park it near the moon is short on candidate space rocks at the moment, one researcher says. It's possible that not a single known object meets the current criteria of NASA's asteroid redirect mission (ARM), astrodynamical consultant Dan Adamo said during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group on Wednesday. To pull the mission off in a timely fashion, Adamo added, it may be necessary to mount a dedicated, space-based...

The supermoon sets near the Statue of Liberty, Sunday, June 23, 2013, in New York. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) Look up this weekend -- the moon is getting closer and bigger. The most super of all supermoons spotted over the course of the year will peak this Saturday and Sunday, June 22 and 23, when the moon makes its closest pass to Earth of 2013. It's known as the , according to EarthSky, and it's the largest of the half-dozen-or-so supermoons...

BEIJING -- A Chinese space capsule with three astronauts landed safely Wednesday on the country's northern grasslands after a 15-day trip to a prototype space station, marking the latest success for China's manned space program as it enters its second decade. The Shenzhou 10's descent module landed by parachute in the vast territory of Inner Mongolia early Wednesday with the three crew members smiling and waving on live television after wriggling through the blackened capsule's narrow hatch. "Space is our...

NEW YORK -- PayPal wants to explore space - or at least begin to figure out how payments and commerce will work beyond Earth's realm once space travel and tourism take off. PayPal, which is eBay Inc.'s payments business, says it is launching an initiative called PayPal Galactic with the help of the nonprofit SETI Institute and the Space Tourism Society, an industry group focused on space travel. Its goal, PayPal says, is to work out how commerce will work...

In this artist's rendering released by NASA, the Voyager 1 spacecraft explores a new region of space at the edge of the solar system. (AP Photo/NASA) LOS ANGELES -- New research pinpoints the current location of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft: It's still in our solar system. Since last summer, the long-running spacecraft has been exploring uncharted territory where the effects of interstellar space, or the space between stars, can be felt. Scientists don't know how thick this newfound region in...

This undated image provided by NASA shows technicians preparing at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. for the launch of NASA’s latest satellite, Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), that will study the sun. (AP Photo/NASA,VAFB, Randy Beaudoin, File) VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- From its perch in low-Earth orbit, NASA's newest satellite will soon get a close-up look at a little-explored region of the sun that's thought to drive space weather that can affect Earth. The Iris satellite was boosted...

American Monuments on Display With the opening of the space shuttle Atlantis' permanent exhibit in Florida on Saturday (June 29), the last of NASA's retired space planes will be officially on display for the public to enjoy, but you'll have to go state-hopping to see all four of the iconic spacecraft. From Los Angeles to New York, the space shuttles have made their homes around the country. If you're looking for a good summer vacation destination, try visiting one (or...

MOSCOW -- A Russian booster rocket carrying three satellites crashed shortly after launch at a Russian-leased cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Tuesday. The Proton-M booster unexpectedly shut down the engine 17 seconds into the flight and crashed some 2 kilometers (over a mile) away from the Baikonur launch pad, the Russian Space Agency said in a statement. (MORE: ) News channel Rossiya-24 broadcast the launch live on Tuesday morning. The footage showed the rocket tilt to one side shortly after the launch,...

This image from a 2011 rocket launch campaign shows the liftoffs of a Black Brant V and Terrier-Orion sounding rocket. Similar rockets will be used to launch NASA's Dynamo mission to study Earth's ionosphere in July 2013. (NASA Photo) NASA is hoping to celebrate the Fourth of July with some fireworks if its own today with a double rocket launch from Virginia's Eastern Shore. After a series of weather delays, scientists at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va.,...

If Earthlings decide to go planet-hopping in the future, scientists believe there will be plenty of safe landing spots that sustain life. (MORE: ) In this handout illustration made available on December 5, 2011 by NASA, the Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star is digitally illustrated. (Ames/JPL-Caltech/NASA via Getty Images) There could be as many as 60 billion habitable planets , according to a SPACE.com report. Using data collected by the...

PASADENA, Calif. -- Jason-1, a satellite that for more than a decade precisely tracked rising sea levels across a vast sweep of ocean and helped forecasters make better weather and climate predictions, has ended its useful life after circling the globe more than 53,500 times, NASA announced Wednesday. The joint U.S. and French satellite was decommissioned this week after its last remaining transmitter failed, according to a NASA statement. Launched on Dec. 7, 2001, Jason-1 was designed to have a...