This photo released by NASA shows a photo stitched together from nearly 900 images taken by the NASA rover Curiosity showing a section of Gale Crater near the Martian equator. (AP Photo/NASA) LOS ANGELES -- Martian mountain, here Curiosity comes. The NASA rover has officially kicked off its long-delayed road trip to Mount Sharp, a trek that involves rolling over rocky landscapes. Since July Fourth, the six-wheel rover has driven 190 feet to the southwest, leaving behind the spot where...

A sketch of the design for NASA's 2020 Mars rover. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) LOS ANGELES -- Explore an intriguing spot on Mars. Hunt for ancient signs of Martian life. Bag a bunch of rocks and leave them on the surface for a future mission to possibly return. That's what the next rover to Mars should strive for, a NASA-appointed team said Tuesday. The scientists released a 154-page report outlining ambitious science goals for a red planet mission that NASA wants to launch...

This image shows a diagram of the sun, the white dot in the center of the circle which represents the inner heliosphere encompassing the entire solar system. A tail of particles flows to the right of the heliosphere. (AP Photo/NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center) (NASA) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA can prove it now. Our solar system has a tail, just like comets. Scientists revealed images Wednesday showing the tail emanating from the bullet-shaped region of space under the grip...

Astronomers making visible-light observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have deduced the actual color of a planet orbiting another star 63 light-years away. The planet is HD 189733b, one of the closest exoplanets that can be seen crossing the face of its star. Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph measured changes in the color of light from the planet before, during and after a pass behind its star. There was a small drop in light and a slight change in the...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Chalk up one more moon for Neptune. (MORE: ) NASA announced the discovery of Neptune's 14th moon Monday. The Hubble Space Telescope captured the moon as a white dot in photos of Neptune on the outskirts of our solar system. This diagram provided by NASA shows the orbits of several moons located close to the planet Neptune. NASA announced the discovery of Neptune's 14th moon on Monday, July 15, 2013. (AP Photo/NASA) The new moon -...

LOS ANGELES -- A strange glow in space has provided fresh evidence that all the gold on Earth was forged from ancient collisions of dead stars, researchers reported Wednesday. Astronomers have long known that fusion reactions in the cores of stars create lighter elements such as carbon and oxygen, but such reactions can't produce heavier elements like gold. Instead, it was long thought that gold was created in a type of stellar explosion known as a supernova. But that doesn't...

(NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)) About 10,000 years ago, Comet ISON left our solar system's distant shell, a region known as the Oort cloud, and began streaking toward the sun. This November, the icy wanderer will reach the climax of its journey, potentially providing a stunning skywatching show here on Earth. (MORE: ) was discovered just last September by two Russian amateur astronomers. Scientists have since recognized ISON as a possible "comet of the century," but to live up...

Left: A shaded relief map shows channelized sedimentary deposits interpreted as an ancient river delta in Aeolis Dorsa, Mars. Right: A modern delta on Earth. (DiBiase et al./Journal of Geophysical Research/2013 and USGS/NASA Landsat) Scientists have spotted more evidence that an enormous ocean on Mars covered much of the planet's surface billions of years ago. (PHOTOS: ) The latest clues were found in photos from NASA's powerful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the planet. The images show what appears to be...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Now he knows what it's like to be a goldfish in a fishbowl. Two days after his helmet flooded during a spacewalk, astronaut Luca Parmitano relived the experience Thursday, describing how water kept trickling into his helmet until big globs covered his eyes, then his nose. It was hard to see, he said, and he could not hear. "For a couple of minutes there, maybe more than a couple of minutes, I experienced what it's like...

The European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, captured this image of a gigantic coronal hole hovering over the sun’s north pole last week. (ESA/NASA/SOHO) The European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, captured this image of a gigantic coronal hole hovering over the sun’s north pole on July 18, 2013, at 9:06 a.m. EDT. Coronal holes are dark, low density regions of the sun’s outermost atmosphere, the corona. They contain little solar material, have lower...

In this rare image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn's rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute) The Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn and the Messenger craft circling Mercury have captured tiny, yet spectacular, images of Earth from 900 million miles away.In the Cassini images captured Friday, Earth and the moon appear as dots -- Earth a pale blue and the moon...

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars toward space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on March 1, 2013 at 10:10 a.m. EST, carrying a Dragon capsule filled with cargo for the International Space Station. (NASA/Jim Grossmann) Since the Gemini 4 mission blasted off in June 1965, most of NASA’s orbital flights have been controlled from facilities in Texas. But no payloads have ever successfully rocketed to orbit from that state. That may soon change. The private company Space...