Smithsonian plans festival to welcome Discovery

(AP) -- The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is preparing to welcome the space shuttle Discovery into its collection.

The US space agency said it will announce the museums that will host the three retiring space shuttles on Tuesday during an event to mark the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle launch.

NASA's retired space shuttle Atlantis is a step closer to completing its final journey.

The end of the US space shuttle program brings the start of a new chapter for the remaining orbiters, which will soon take up residence as museum pieces in Florida, Virginia, California and New York.

(AP) -- NASA's retired space shuttles are trading places.

The US space shuttle Discovery's mission to the International Space Station has been extended by one day, and will now return to Earth on March 8, NASA said.

(Phys.org) —A team of researchers from the SETI Institute, the Mars Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, and the space robotics company Honeybee Robotics, has successfully completed a first series of field ...

(Phys.org) —NASA's senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on "Cape York" with examination of a rock intensely altered by water.

On 5:24 a.m. EDT on May 17, 2013, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space that can reach Earth ...

While Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt visited Earth's moon for three days in December 1972, they drove their mission's Lunar Roving Vehicle 19.3 nautical miles (22.210 statute miles ...

For the past 8 years, NASA astronomers have been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. "Lunar meteor showers" have turned out to be more common than anyone ...

(Phys.org) —NASA's first mission to sample an asteroid is moving ahead into development and testing in preparation for its launch in 2016.