European Space Agency's INTEGRAL satellite project reveals a black hole that had been slumbering for years chomping on a giant, low-mass object that had come too close. (ESA) Astrophysicists have witnessed the rare event of a black hole awakening from its slumber to snack on a planet-sized object in a galaxy 47 million light years away, the University of Geneva said Tuesday. The observation made using the European Space Agency's INTEGRAL satellite project, revealed a black hole that had been...

A privately built rocket reached its highest altitude and traveled its longest distance to date in a demonstration last week for NASA officials at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, Calif., according to a news release. In development for about two years, the Xombie suborbital rocket built by Masten Space Systems was airborn for some 80 seconds during the test flight, according to spaceref.com. The rocket was controlled by Charles Stark Draper Laboratory's Guidance Embedded Navigator Integregration Environment...

The internal structure of a human immune cellis seen in this image taken in simulated gravity inside the Kubik centrifuge on the International Space Station. (European Space Agency) Astronaut photos of Earth from space are undeniably amazing, but snapshots of inner space — particularly human cells — can be spectacular, too. A new photo of human cells in space taken on the International Space Station looks more like art than science. The image, titled "Goldfinger" by scientists, reveals a monocyte...

This artist's rendering provided by NASA shows the positions of the sun, Earth and Mars, at left. Radio communications between Earth and Mars are limited during this planetary alignment, which occurs in April. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech) LOS ANGELES -- It's the Martian version of spring break: Curiosity and Opportunity, along with their spacecraft friends circling overhead, will take it easy this month because of the sun's interference. For much of April, the sun blocks the line of sight between Earth and...

A billion cosmic ray detector on the International Space Station has found the footprint of something that could be dark matter, the mysterious substance that is believed to hold the cosmos together but has never been directly observed, scientists say. (AP Photo/NASA/European Space Agency ESA. Keystone) GENEVA -- It is one of the cosmos' most mysterious unsolved cases: dark matter. It is supposedly what holds the universe together. We can't see it, but scientists are pretty sure it's out there....

Powerful new computer simulations like this one are allowing astronomers to understand how spiral arms in galaxies form and survive. These simulations suggest that the arms arise as a result of the influence of giant molecular clouds. (Thiago Ize & Chris Johnson (Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute ) New supercomputer simulations show how spiral galaxies like the Milky Way get, and keep, their skinny, star-studded arms. Spiral galaxies are quite common in the universe. We live in one and 70...

WASHINGTON — A top senator says President Barack Obama and NASA are planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon. Then astronauts would explore it in 2021. (VIDEO: How to Land on An Asteroid) Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said the plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth. An artistic image depicts an astronaut performing...

A simulation of magnetic fields at the time of solar maximum. (University of Montreal Solar Physics Research Group w) A magnetic "solar heartbeat" beats deep in the sun's interior, generating energy that leads to solar flares and sunspots, according to new research. A new supercomputer simulation, described in the April 4 edition of the journal Science, probes the sun's periodic magnetic field reversals. Every 40 years, according to the model, the sun's zonal magnetic field bands switch their orientation, or...

These global views of Jupiter's icy moon Europa were captured by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in June 1997. The image on the left shows Europa in natural color, while the right-side image has enhanced colors to bring out subtle color differences to show differences between pure water ice (white and bluish white) and non-ice components (red, brown and yellow spots). (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona ) A potential energy source for life appears to be common on Jupiter's icy moon Europa, a new...

Data from NASA's Kepler mission finds evidence for at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy. Image released January 3, 2013. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) NASA has picked two new low-cost missions for launch in 2017: a planet-hunting satellite and an International Space Station experiment designed to probe the nature of exotic, super-dense neutron stars. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) are the latest missions chosen under NASA's Astrophysics Explorer Program, which caps costs at $200...

Artist's concept: Disappearance of the ancient magnetic field may have triggered the loss of the Martian atmosphere. (NASA ) The planet Mars lost most of its original atmosphere long ago when huge amounts of gas escaped into space, leaving only a wispy remnant behind, scientists say. NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has revealed that a light variant of the gas argon is relatively depleted in Martian air, bolstering a longstanding belief that the Red Planet's current atmosphere — which is just...

A look at a powerful M6.5 class flare, the strongest of 2013 at the time, at 3:16 EDT on April 11, 2013. This image shows a combination of light in wavelengths of 131 and 171 Angstroms. (NASA/SDO) The most powerful solar flare of the year erupted from the sun Thursday, sparking a temporary radio blackout on Earth, NASA officials say. The solar flare occurred at 3:16 a.m. EDT and registered as a M6.5-class sun storm, a relatively mid-level flare on...