The 50 United States each received Apollo 11 moon rock displays after the first lunar landing, but 44 years later 11 are missing. (collectSPACE.com) Eleven states' Apollo 11 moon rocks are missing. (WATCH: ) Despite a search that has lasted more than a decade, the current gifted to Alabama, Louisiana, Nevada, New York, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin are still unknown. The eleventh missing display, presented to Delaware, was stolen in 1976. Forty-four years ago Wednesday (July...

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this view of Comet ISON, C/2012 S1 (ISON), on May 8, 2013 as it streaked between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars at a speed of about 48,000 mph. (NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team) It doesn't look like Comet ISON will live up to the considerable hype, one researcher says. ISON has been billed as a potential "," with some experts saying it could blaze as brightly as the full moon around the time of its close...

X-ray of an extravehicular (EV) overshoe that was designed to be worn over the Apollo spacesuit boots while an astronaut was walking on the Moon. (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum) The familiar exteriors of astronauts' spacesuits often hide all of the ingenuity and mechanics that are built inside the suits, which were first imagined as "wearable spacecraft." Now a new art exhibit, "Suited for Space," opening Friday at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, highlights the creativity behind...

This Sept. 16, 2010 file photo shows engineers working on the Mars rover Curiosity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, file) LOS ANGELES -- Mount Sharp has beckoned Curiosity since the NASA rover made its grand entrance on Mars exactly a year ago, dangling from nylon cables to a safe landing. If microbes ever existed on Mars, the mountain represents the best hope for preserving the chemical ingredients that are fundamental to all living...

Mars, meet Barbie. A new spacefaring doll from Mattel called "" was released today (Aug. 5), just in time for the one-year anniversary of the landing of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. The new doll represents Barbie's "2013 career of the year" and was developed with input from NASA. "Barbie consulted with the NASA EVA [extravehicular activity] Suit Team on the design of the doll, to ensure the Mars Explorer Barbie doll captured the spirit and style of space explorers," a...

In this June 4 2013 photo provided by the University of Hawaii, research space scientist Oleg Abramov walks outside simulated Martian base at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. (AP Photo/University of Hawaii, Angelo Vermeulen) HONOLULU -- Six researchers have spent the past four months living in a small dome on a barren Hawaii lava field at an elevation of 8,000 feet, trying to figure out what foods astronauts might eat on Mars and during deep-space missions. They emerged on Tuesday with their...

Artist's impression of PSR J1745-2900, a pulsar with a very high magnetic field ( (Ralph Eatough/MPIfR) A strange, pulsing star has revealed a powerful magnetic field around the giant black hole at the heart of Earth’s Milky Way galaxy, scientists say. The finding may help shed light on how the galaxy's devours matter around it and spits out powerful jets of superhot matter, the researchers added. The center of virtually every large galaxy is suspected to host a supermassive black...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA called off all attempts to fix its crippled Kepler space telescope Thursday. But it's not quite ready to call it quits on the remarkable, robotic planet hunter. Officials said they're looking at what science, if any, might be salvaged by using the broken spacecraft as is. The $600 million Kepler mission has been in trouble since May, unable to point with precision at faraway stars in its quest for other potential Earths. That's when a...

When a meteor exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February, pieces of the bus-sized space rock hit the ground while its detonation shattered windows, set off car alarms and injured more than 1,000 people. Masked in the chaos, however, was an enormous plume of dust that the Russian meteor left behind in Earth's atmosphere. This cloud, which had hundreds of tons of material in it, was still lingering three months after the Feb. 15 explosion, a new study...

Artist's concept of the close-orbiting alien planet Kepler-78b, whose scorching-hot surface is likely a huge ocean of lava. (Cristina Sanchis Ojeda) Astronomers have discovered a scorching-hot "lava world" whose year lasts just 8.5 hours and determined that another planet candidate with an even tighter orbit is likely composed almost entirely of iron. The newfound Earth-size Kepler-78b is so close to its host star that its surface is likely an enormous ocean of lava, researchers said. Further, the discovery team was...

The sun unleashed a powerful storm early Tuesday morning, sending an enormous cloud of superheated particles rocketing toward Earth. The solar eruption, known as a (CME), occurred at 4:24 a.m. EDT (0824 GMT) Tuesday and blasted billions of tons of solar particles toward Earth at a mind-boggling speed of 2 million mph (3.3 million km/h). "Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 570...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- This is one baby picture you won't want to miss. The ALMA telescope in Chile has captured a close-up of the glowing material spewing from a newborn star. (MORE: ) The stunning images show material streaming from the baby star at incredible speed, glowing as it plows into the surrounding gas and dust. Astronomers say these illuminated jets are spewing out faster than ever measured before and are more energetic than previously thought. The glowing mass...