Washington: Nasa’s planet-hunting Kepler telescope has been crippled by the loss of two wheels that control the telescope’s orientation in space. If engineers can’t find a fix, the failure means Kepler won’t be able to look for exoplanets - planets outside our solar system ...

WASHINGTON: Nasa said it will pay $424 million more to Russia for giving US astronauts a lift to the International Space Station. The hefty bill includes the training and transporting of six astronauts to and from the ISS in 2016 and the first half of 2017 in Russian Soyuz spacecraft. That comes ...

WASHINGTON (AFP)Nasa's Mars rover Curiosity has been temporarily put into "safe mode," as scientists monitoring from Earth try to fix a computer glitch, the US space agency said. Scientists switched to a backup computer so that they could troubleshoot the problem, said to be linked to a glitch in ...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Two NASA probes crashed into the moon on Monday after spending months gathering data by orbiting miles above the lunar surface, the US space agency said. The site where the tiny probes, dubbed Ebb and Flow, crashed will be named after astronaut Sally Ride, the first American ...

KATHMANDU - The world’s highest mountain should not be hard to spot but American space agency Nasa has admitted it mistook a summit in India for Mount Everest, which straddles the border of Nepal and China.The agency said on its website that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko’s snap ...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Nasa downplayed talk of a major discovery by its Martian rover after remarks by the mission chief raised hopes it may have unearthed evidence life once existed on the Red Planet.Excitement is building over soon-to-be-released results from Nasa’s Curiosity rover, which is ...

IT is a unique view of an eclipse - but one that causes more problems for astronomers that any other.Twice a year, for three weeks near the equinox, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft moves into its eclipse season—a brief spell when Earth blocks its view of the sun for a ...

WASHINGTON  - A rock analysed by Nasa’s Mars rover Curiosity has a surprising and more varied composition that resembles rare rocks from the bowels of our planet, the US space agency said.“This rock is a close match in chemical composition to an unusual but well-known type of ...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The US space shuttle Endeavour took its final flight Friday, making a spectacular series of flypasts over California before landing in Los Angeles where it will retire near its birthplace.Riding piggyback on a specially fitted Boeing 747, the shuttle flew over San ...

WASHINGTON  - Nasa’s Curiosity rover has temporarily halted its journey across the surface of Mars as it tests the tools on its robotic arm, the US space agency said. The $2.5 billion craft - which landed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet on August 6 - has covered more than a football ...

NASA approved a $100,000 investment that pushes the envelope- not to mention sound barriers- when it comes to plane design. The space organization approved the hefty fund to allow for further development of a new type of aircraft called the supersonic plane concept.The plane is created in a way ...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - NASA’s Curiosity rover has begun its first major drive across the surface of Mars, handling “beautifully” as it prepares to start some serious scientific work, the US space agency said Wednesday.The $2.5 billion craft - which landed in Gale Crater on the Red ...

CAPE CANAVERAL - A small NASA lander being tested for missions to the moon and other destinations beyond Earth crashed and burned after veering off course during a trial run at the Kennedy Space Centre, officials with the US space agency said.There were no injuries after the prototype, known as ...

NASA has successfully landed its $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover on the surface of the Red Planet, breaking new ground in US-led exploration of an alien world.The one-ton rover is the largest ever sent to Mars, and its high-speed landing was the most daring to date, using a ...

THE first official British European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake is being trained for a mission to land on an asteroid, it can be revealed. It is a space mission straight from the Hollywood film Armageddon. A team of astronauts are being trained to land on an asteroid to explore its surface, ...

WASHINGTON  - The first of two NASA lunar probes on a mission to study the Moon’s inner core so as to better understand the origins of planets went into orbit Saturday, the US space agency said.The first Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL-A) began orbiting the Moon at about ...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Twin NASA spacecraft are set to blast into lunar orbit at the weekend on a mission to study the subterranean structure of the Moon in order to better understand the origins of planets.The first Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL-A) will begin orbiting the Moon at ...

CAPE CANAVERAL (Reuters) - A private company will make a trial cargo run to the International Space Station in February, a key step in a new US programme to buy spaceflight services on a commercial basis, NASA said on Friday. California-based Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, plans to ...

SINCE the dawn of the space age, Nasa has been relying on radio communications technology to send and receive data to and from spacecraft. Although it has developed higher data-rate radio frequency systems, data-compression, and other techniques to boost the amount of data that its current RF ...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - What goes up must come down. But where? Thats the big question when it comes to a 20-year-old Nasa satellite the size of a tour bus which is careening toward Earth and set to crash-land later this week. The US Department of Defense and Nasa are tracking the six-ton spacecraft, ...

THE Atlas V rocket that will power NASAs new Juno science probe to Jupiter was rolled out to the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 and now sits poised for blastoff on Friday, Aug. 5 at 11:34 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Atlas V booster rocket was pushed out of ...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US radar that launched into space has detected craters filled with ice on the moons north pole, NASA scientists said Monday. The US space agencys Mini-SAR radar found more than 40 small craters ranging in size from 1.6 to 15 kilometers, each full of water ice. Although the ...

ASTRONOMERS and space enthusiasts around the world watched as Nasa sent a rocket and a probe into the lunar surface this afternoon. The ambitious project was set up to look for frozen water at the polar caps of the Moon. The 2.2tonne rocket that launched the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing ...

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida) (AFP) - NASA deferred the launch of its shuttle Endeavour on Wednesday for the second time in less than a week due to a nagging hydrogen leak whose cause experts are struggling to figure out. Obviously there is something we dont understand, deputy shuttle manager LeRoy Cain ...

VAST glaciers, up to a mile thick and tens of miles long, have been discovered on Mars in what scientists believe is the remnants of an ice age. The ice sheets are the 'most dramatic' evidence yet of climate change on the red planet, and could help us understand temperature shifts on Earth, the ...

SCIENTISTS using NASA's RHESSI spacecraft have measured the roundness of the sun with unprecedented precision. They find that it is not a perfect sphere. During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin "cantaloupe skin" that significantly increases its apparent oblateness: the sun's ...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US shuttle Atlantis faces nearly twice the risk of being struck by debris on a mission next month to the Hubble telescope, due to the high levels of space litter floating at the altitude of Hubble's orbit, NASA said Monday. "It's a very challenging mission. We have hazards ...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Phoenix lander's analysis of recent soil samples taken on Mars has found possible traces of perchlorate, a highly oxidising substance detrimental to life, Nasa said late Monday. Two separate soil samples were analysed within the last month by two onboard Phoenix ...

CAPE CANAVERAL(Florida)(AFP) - NASA began pumping fuel into Discovery's external tank Saturday, a key step toward launching the shuttle to the International Space Station (ISS), officials said. NASA officials said Discovery, which will carry key components of Japan's Kibo lab to the ISS, was on ...