NASA scientists have discovered the first known microorganism (GFAJ-1) on Earth capable of reproducing and thriving on a highly toxic chemical known as arsenic.
Rather appropriately for the time of year, NASA's EPOXI team says that the mission's recent encounter with comet Hartley 2 observed a flurry of snow streaming out from the comet.
Scientists are examining the feasibility of constructing hopping vehicles powered by radioactive material to more effectively explore the rugged surface of Mars.
After a week in which the final launch of space shuttle Discovery has been postponed on an almost daily basis, NASA has announced that it won't be taking off until at least the end of the month.
NASA's planning to spend $5 million a year over the next three years on the development of a hypersonic vehicle that could fly at five times the speed of sound.
A prominent scientist who decoded the human genome has hypothesized that recruiting genetically enhanced astronauts could help boost NASA's manned spaceflight program into warp speed.
Astronomers have discovered buckyballs in another galaxy for the first time, lending weight to the theory that they may have been responsible for the arrival on Earth of chemicals key to the origin of life.
Astronomers have long used powerful telescopes to peer into the past. But now, NASA and ESA are using the Hubble Space Telescope to look thousands of years into the future.
NASA says the crash of a space balloon earlier this year was caused by human error - and that mistakes like an inability to remember the phone number of the Australian emergency services contributed to the danger.
The interpid duo put the phone into an insulated capsule which was then attached to a weather balloon. The balloon soared until it went outside the planet and then, at 100,000 feet above its deployment, the balloon burst.
NASA has given the green light to the development and 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) mission, which aims to investigate how Mars lost so much of its atmosphere.
