In brief: NASA asks for moon, Mars exploration ideas

NASA released a synopsis Friday announcing plans to issue an announcement for proposals for the commercial use of Launch Pad 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The announcement is expected next week.

Missions to Mars have only scratched its surface. To go deeper, scientists are proposing a spacecraft that can drill into the Red Planet to potentially find signs of life.

Setting foot on Mars by the 2030s is human destiny and a US priority, and every dollar available must be spent on bridging gaps in knowledge on how to get there, NASA's chief said Monday.

Alien worlds resembling giant eyeballs might exist around red dwarf stars, and researchers are now proposing experiments to simulate these distant planets and see how capable they are of supporting life.

Amateur astronomers in Russia made a discovery last week any professional would envy – it seems they may have identified the remnants of the ill-fated Soviet Mars 3 lander, 30 years after it lost contact ...

NASA is picking up the construction pace on the inaugural space-bound Orion crew capsule at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida – and accelerating towards blastoff on the unmanned Exploration Flight ...

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs), emissions of magnetized ionized gas from the Sun, can damage satellites and communication technology, so being able to predict where they are heading and how much energy they ...

(Phys.org) —Saturn's moon Titan might be in for some wild weather as it heads into its spring and summer, if two new models are correct. Scientists think that as the seasons change in Titan's northern hemisphere, ...

For decades, Landsat satellites have documented the desiccation of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Once one of the largest seas in the world, it shrunk to a tenth of its original volume after Russia diverted ...

UPDATE 16:30 p.m. EDT: The M7-class flare was also associated with a coronal mass ejection or CME, another solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of particles into space. While this CME was not Ea ...

What people take from nature – water, food, timber, inspiration, relaxation – are so abundant, it seems self-evident. Until you try to quantitatively understand how and to what extent they contribute ...

An Ecuadoran satellite launched last month could collide with the remains of a Russian rocket in the coming hours, the country's civilian space agency warned.