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  Jessica Orwig September. 18, 2014.Ten years ago the European Space Agency launched Rosetta, a first-of-its-kind spacecraft on a mission to meet a comet. That comet? 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It finally accomplished that goal earlier this month — getting into the comet's orbit. But it's not done yet. This November, Rosetta will deploy a small probe that, if successful, will land on the comet — the first time we've ever made contact with a space rock (intentionally). Before Rosetta, we knew comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as just a speck of light — as we do most comets. It's hard to really see what...

NASA has awarded the highly-anticipated space taxi contract to Boeing and SpaceX, a move which will end the agency’s reliance on Russian technology to transport U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. The Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract aims to restore an American capability to launch astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station by the end of 2017. Since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, American astronauts have been transported to space on Russian-built Soyuz vessels. …

We’re returning human spaceflight launches to America. Learn who will take crews to the #ISS. Watch NASA TV at 4pm ET http://youtu.be/ceQycm1uCFI

A jump, hop, and a rocket ride away lies Earth's blushing sister: Mars. While apparently lifeless today, some 4 billion years ago, Mars featured rivers, oceans, and potentially even microbial life. The good times obviously didn't last. On Earth, we fear asteroid impacts as harbingers of destruction, but to early Mars, they were cascading gifts of life. The energy and gas they provided helped keep the planet hot and wet. But as the solar system settled down after its turbulent birth, those impacts grew to be few and far between. At the same time, Mars' core was cooling, quieting the...

Superclusters – regions of space that are densely packed with galaxies – are the biggest structures in the Universe. But scientists have struggled to define exactly where one supercluster ends and another begins. Now, a team based in Hawaii has come up with a new technique that maps the Universe according to the flow of galaxies across space. Redrawing the boundaries of the cosmic map, they redefine our home supercluster and name it Laniakea, which means ‘immeasurable heaven’ in Hawaiian. Video Link

Aerospace and defense contractor Northrop Grumman recently unveiled its concept for the Pentagon’s new space plane, the XS-1 — an unmanned drone-shuttle capable of carrying small and medium-sized satellites into orbit cheaply and autonomously. “It would be a spacecraft that most resembles what people see in the movies,” former Air Force Space Command Officer Brian Weeden told War is Boring about the concept craft, which is being headed up by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Northrop is competing with Boeing and Masten Space Systems for the contract to build the final product. “If we could pull it off, it...

NASA astronaut Steven Nagel, who flew four space shuttle missions, died Thursday (Aug. 21). He was 67. Nagel joined the astronaut corps in 1978 with NASA's first group of trainees selected for the space shuttle program.

Russia's recent maiden launch of its new Angara rocket is a harbinger of bigger boosters to come. The successful test flight also marked the country's first new launch vehicle to be built from scratch since the fall of the Soviet Union. The July 9 suborbital flight of the light-lift Angara 1.2ML rocket lifted off from Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the country's northern Arkhangelsk region. (The "ML" stands for "maiden launch.") The test flight, which lasted roughly 21 minutes and was not intended to reach orbit, launched the Angara rocket over Russian territory on a ballistic trajectory. A "mass/dimensional payload simulator"...

Today in History: 1932 First Stratosphere Measurement The Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard and his assistant, Max Cosyns, climbed to an altitude of 16,203 metres with the help of a pressurised cabin attached to a balloon. During the flight through the stratosphere they gathered information about the strength of the cosmic beams and photographed the regions they flew over. Temperature measurements showed outside temperatures to a minimum of minus 60° Celsius. From 1947 Piccard, who was inspired by the Jules Vernes novels, started deep-sea investigations. In 1953 he reached a depth of 3,150 metres with his son in the deep sea...

Movies and TV shows would have us believe aliens would look a bit like us, only with a big (bald) head, green skin, and crazy eyes. But we weren't satisfied with that old cliche. So we decided to ask sci-fi authors, science experts, and ET buffs what they think a real alien might look like.

Leadership: As our space program, once an example of American exceptionalism, now sits mainly in museums, Beijing's ambitious program takes another leap forward toward an eventual return of man to the moon. As the world unravels, efforts to leave it don't seem very newsworthy, and efforts by our strategic rivals to do what we did decades before seem redundant and almost irrelevant to more immediate concerns. Yet China's space program does matter, as it's part of that country's dream of world leadership and, yes, domination. It represents a commitment to world leadership that we have lost under this administration. Beijing...

Two months ago, after much lobbying by the biggest satellite company in North America, DigitalGlobe, the US government relaxed restrictions to allow for commercially available satellite imagery up to 25 cm resolution—twice as detailed as the previous limit of 50 cm. Now, the first commercial satellite set to capture these high-res images, DigitalGlobe's Worldview-3, will launch this Wednesday. The extra sharp images from Worldview-3 will greatly increase the maps' level of detail to the point where it can make out 10-inch objects, which means Google will soon be able to see “manholes and mailboxes” from its hired eyes in the...

Astronomers are scrutinizing a star system in a distant galaxy that exploded, possibly leaving behind a zombie star. They say their study of this system will help them understand supernova explosions, which are an important piece of the cosmic puzzle, used to help measure distances in vast space and the expansion of the universe. Standard Type Ia supernovae occur when a white dwarf draws enough material from a companion star onto itself to raise its own core temperature, ultimately creating a runaway nuclear reaction that causes the white dwarf to explode as a supernova. In such cases, the explosion typically...

After a decade in space and 4 billion miles, Europe's Rosetta spacecraft has made history: For the first time ever, a robotic probe from Earth is flying with a comet and will soon enter orbit. The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft arrived at its target, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, today (Aug. 6) to end a 10-year journey across the solar system. The spacecraft performed an engine burn that brought it about 62 miles (100 kilometers) from the comet's surface. Comet 67P/C-G and Rosetta are now flying about 251 million miles (450 million kilometers) from Earth. Engineers on the ground had to program...

Texas is offering more than $15 million in incentives to bring SpaceX's commercial rocket launch facility and 300 jobs to the Brownsville area. Gov. Rick Perry announced the incentive package Monday for the project that is expected to bring $85 million in capital investment to the state. "Texas has been on the forefront of our nation's space exploration efforts for decades so it is fitting that SpaceX has chosen our state as they expand the frontiers of commercial space flight," Perry said in a statement. "In addition to growing the aerospace industry in Texas, SpaceX's facility will provide myriad opportunities...

Could rocket scientists be an endangered species? You're probably betting "no," given the contemporary efforts to hurl hardware to the moon, to Mars, and to a passel of other unearthly locales. The rocket biz is busy, and it's diversifying. An enthusiastic troupe of private companies is also getting into the act, hoping to cash in by lifting off. It seems that "rocket scientist" is a job category that's here for the long haul, like "mortician." But all this activity masks an important point: rockets are not a terribly efficient way to lift things into space. For every pound of payload,...

Until yesterday, every physicist was laughing at this engine and its inventor, Roger Shawyer. It's called the EmDrive and everyone said it was impossible because it goes against classical mechanics. But the fact is that the quantum vacuum plasma thruster works and scientists can't explain why. Shawyer's engine is extremely light and simple. It provides a thrust by "bouncing microwaves around in a closed container." The microwaves are generated using electricity that can be provided by solar energy. No propellant is necessary, which means that this thrusters can work forever unless a hardware failure occurs. If real, this would be...

If the tests of the Cannae Drive technology hold up, a trip to Mars could take weeks instead of months 7 inShare NASA has been testing new space travel technologies throughout its entire history, but the results of its latest experiment may be the most exciting yet — if they hold up. Earlier this week at a conference in Cleveland, Ohio, scientists with NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories in Houston, Texas, presented a paper indicating they had achieved a small amount of thrust from a container that had no traditional fuels, only microwaves, bouncing around inside it. If the results can be...

It's highly unlikely we're alone in the universe, NASA experts are saying, and we may be close to finding alien life. In fact, it may happen in the next two decades. NASA held a panel discussion at the agency's Washington headquarters on Monday, where space experts talked about the search for Earth-like planets that host life. Based on recent advancements in space telescope technology, scientists estimated that in the coming decades we'll confirm suspicions that we're not alone. "I think in the next 20 years we will find out we are not alone in the universe," NASA astronomer Kevin Hand...

FULL TITLE:UFO landing site? Meteorite crater? Scientists baffled by gigantic 262ft hole that has appeared at Siberia's 'End of The World' Enormous crater appears suddenly in part of Russia whose name translates as 'the end of the world' Teams of scientists are rushing east to fathom the cause of this unusual - and rare - geographical occurrence One especially outlandish theory talks about a UFO landing as a possible cause of this colossal chasm in the earth An urgent expedition will leaves tomorrow to probe a giant crater that has appeared in gas-rich northern Siberia. Extraordinary aerial images show a...