The BepiColombo mission to our sun's innermost planet - fascinating little Mercury - launches from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana on October 20 at 01:45 UTC (tonight at 9:45 p.m. EDT). Here's how to watch.

NASA is again being encouraged to expand its search for alien life - not just intelligent life - all forms of life, including microbes.

Binary asteroids - that is, asteroids with moons - aren't uncommon. More than 300 have been discovered so far. Astronomers found a moon for 2018 EB when it swept closest to Earth on October 7.

And, more to the point, are any asteroids that might be hidden in the Taurid meteor stream potentially hazardous to Earth?

In 1670, skywatchers saw a nova, a star that appeared where none had been before. Today's astronomers have learned it was a collision between an aging white dwarf star, and less massive brown dwarf.

How did life on Earth begin? A new technology, called Planet Simulator, might finally help solve the mystery.

For the 1st time, astronomers have detected the faint radio afterglow of a ghost explosion - a kind of cosmic sonic boom - possibly the result of a weird kind of gamma-ray burst.

Voyager 2, launched in 1977, is now about 11 billion miles (17.7 billion km) from Earth. NASA says the spacecraft has detected an increase in cosmic rays, which might mean it's close to becoming only the 2nd human-made object, after Voyager 1, to enter interstellar space.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been in safe mode since last Friday evening, following the failure of one of the gyros that helps stabilize it. NASA is analyzing the problem and hopes to resume operations soon.

Night launches are always fun, and this October 7 launch by SpaceX - from Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles, California - generated more than its fair share of awesome images.