Asteroids and comets seed exoplanets with water

Earth's water likely came from asteroids and/or comets. New research suggests that small bodies in distant solar systems carry water to their planets, too.

What is a dwarf planet?

You'll know in 60 seconds. New Space Shorts video from NASA.

Doomed Russian spacecraft burns up over Pacific

Roscosmos said the craft "ceased to exist" over the Pacific. The final time of reentry is 9:20 p.m. CDT (02:20 UTC), with an accuracy of plus or minus 1 minute.

Traffic around Mars gets busy

With five active spacecraft now orbiting the planet, NASA has beefed up its traffic monitoring to make sure the Mars orbiters don't get too close to each other.

X2 solar flare on May 5

The flare created a pulse of UV radiation and X-rays that caused a strong radio blackout over the Pacific.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter drops nearer moon

Flight controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center completed a maneuver that lowered the spacecraft’s orbit to within 12 miles (20 km) of the moon's South Pole.

Scientists measure most distant galaxy yet

Galaxy EGS-zs8-1 sets a new distance record. It's so far away the light we receive left the galaxy over 13 billion years ago, and it is just arriving now.

Supernova missing link in gamma-ray burst mystery

Why do some supernovae produce gamma-ray bursts, while others don't? The answer may lie in the swirling disk - and powerful jets - that some supernovae leave behind.

Water abundant in first billion years after Big Bang?

Water vapor could have been just as abundant in pockets of space a billion years after the Big Bang as it is today, according to new research.

MESSENGER ends mission, crashes into Mercury

Mission control confirmed end of operations at 3:40 p.m. EDT (1934 UTC), when no signal was detected by NASA’s Deep Space Network station at Goldstone.