NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission and the asteroid Bennu have had a date planned for two years, and just after noon ET today, they finally got to meet face to face. OSIRIS-REx fired its thrusters for a small burn, putting it about 4.3 miles from Bennu, marking the end of its journey to the asteroid.
Four years ago, a co-pilot was killed during a Virgin Galactic test flight. The tragedy left the future in doubt for the space tourism company and derailed its plans to begin commercial flights to the edge of space.
In a new step forward, NASA announced Thursday that nine US companies are eligible to bid on $2.6 billion worth of contracts over the next 10 years to deliver services to the moon.
On Monday, the NASA Mars InSight lander survived the "seven minutes of terror" during entry, descent and landing to safely arrive on Mars and took up permanent residence on the Red Planet. Unlike the rovers already on the Martian surface, InSight will stay put during its planned two-year mission.
After seven months of traveling through space, the NASA InSight mission has landed on Mars. A few minutes after landing, InSight sent the official "beep" to NASA to signal that it was alive and well, including a photo of the Martian surface where it landed.
At 3 p.m. ET on Monday, November 26, a group of researchers will be really sweating. The NASA InSight spacecraft will try to land on Mars.
For the first time, astronomers have discovered a beautiful serpentine, pinwheel-like star system that is doomed to end in an explosion of gamma rays. It's 8,000 light-years from Earth in the Milky Way, but astronomers never expected to find a star system like this in our galaxy.
NASA's ICON mission to explore where Earth's weather meets space weather was expected to launch early Wednesday, but did not go up. The next launch opportunity will be Thursday, the space agency said, but there is no official launch date selected yet.
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has run out of fuel, and its mission has come to an end 94 million miles from Earth, the agency announced Tuesday. The deep space mission's end is not unexpected, as low fuel levels had been noted in July.
A seven-year, eight-million-kilometer voyage expected to shed light on the mysteries of Mercury, the solar system's least-understood planet, is nearly ready for takeoff.
