The world will have to live with surprise asteroid attacks on the scale of Friday's Russian fireball, at least for a while. The meteor that without warning Friday (Feb. 15), damaging hundreds of buildings and wounding more than 1,000 people, was caused by a space rock about 50 feet (15 meters) wide, researchers said. Asteroids of this size are both difficult to detect and incredibly numerous, so it will take a long time for astronomers to find and map out...

Highway from Kazakhstan to Chelyabinsk, Russia A dashboard camera, on a highway from Kostanai, Kazakhstan, to Chelyabinsk region, Russia on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013 shows a meteorite contrail. A meteor streaked across the sky of Russia’s Ural Mountains, causing sharp explosions and injuring dozens of people. (AP Photo/Nasha Gazeta, www.ng.kz) MOSCOW-- Scientists have found more than 50 tiny fragments of a meteor that exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains, and preliminary tests are turning up information about its contents. However, local...

Last Friday morning, residents of Russia's Chelyabinsk region were shocked by a giant fireball streaking across the sky. The explosion, caused by a small meteoroid entering the atmosphere, reportedly injured hundreds as it blew out windows and sent glass flying. Dozens of videos of the meteor trail and its aftermath quickly appeared online, and analyses of these eyewitness accounts as well as measurements from scientific instruments are giving scientists one of the best looks ever at an atmospheric meteor burst....

NASA says no problems happened after a brief communication outage with the International Space Station Tuesday. (NASA.GOV) WASHINGTON (AP) -- The International Space Station regained contact with NASA controllers in Houston after nearly three hours of accidental quiet, the space agency says. (MORE: 7 Massive Meteors That Impacted Earth) Officials say the six crew members and station are fine and had no problem during the brief outage. NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said something went wrong around 9:45 a.m. EST Tuesday...

NASA has revealed the first radar video of an asteroid flyby that sent a space rock half the size of a football field buzzing by Earth last week. The new , released today (Feb. 19), shows the asteroid 2012 DA14 as it headed away from Earth over the weekend. The asteroid zipped close by Earth on Friday (Feb. 15), when it approached closer to the planet than many communications satellites. Before Friday's flyby, astronomers suspected asteroid 2012 DA14 was about...

Jupiter vacuumed up the pieces of the disrupted comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 in 1994, but the impacts were a reminder of the danger faced by Earth. (JPL/NASA/STScI) Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 experienced one of the most spectacular ends that humans ever witnessed. Several months after its discovery, pieces of the comet smashed into the planet Jupiter. The collision produced scars that were visible from Earth in small telescopes. "This is the first collision of two solar system bodies ever to be observed,...

Highway from Kazakhstan to Chelyabinsk, Russia A dashboard camera, on a highway from Kostanai, Kazakhstan, to Chelyabinsk region, Russia on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013 shows a meteorite contrail. A meteor streaked across the sky of Russia’s Ural Mountains, causing sharp explosions and injuring dozens of people. (AP Photo/Nasha Gazeta, www.ng.kz) After the close shave asteroid 2012 DA14 gave Earth last week and the unexpected meteor blast over Russia, it is all too be clear why some scientists have their eyes...

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star like our sun, approximately 210 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. (NASA) LOS ANGELES – Astronomers searching for planets outside our solar system have discovered the tiniest one yet – one that's about the size of our moon. But hunters for life in the universe will need to poke elsewhere. The new world orbits too close to its sun-like...

Justin Bieber during a performance in Atlanta in December. (Getty Images) For Justin Bieber, it's "ask and ye shall receive." On Saturday, he tweeted, "I wanna do a concert in space." Who knows if he was joking, but at least somebody took it seriously: NASA. retweeted Justin's comment, and then added, "Maybe we can help you with that. 'All Around the World,' next off it?" (MORE: ) "All Around the World" is the name of a song on Justin's album...

An artist's illustration of the NEOSSat asteroid-hunting satellite in Earth orbit. The Canadian Space Agency mission will search for large asteroids near Earth and track space debris. A rocket carrying seven new satellites, including the first spacecraft designed to hunt huge asteroids and two of the world's smallest space telescopes, launched into space Monday from an Indian spaceport. The Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle blasted off at 7:31 a.m. EST from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, on...

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. LOS ANGELES — While Mars was likely a more hospitable place in its wetter, warmer past, the Red Planet may still be capable of supporting microbial life today,...

This undated image provided by NASA shows powdered rock in the scoop of the Mars rover Curiosity. The six-wheel rover collected the sample after drilling into a Martian rock. The next step is to transfer a portion to its onboard laboratories for analysis. Curiosity landed in August 2012 to study whether the environment was hospitable for microbes. (AP Photo/NASA) PASADENA, Calif. -- The Mars rover Curiosity has successfully transferred a pinch of rock dust to its onboard laboratories for inspection,...