Returning astronauts to the moon in 2024 could cost about $30 billion, or roughly the same price tag as the Apollo 11 spaceflight when factoring in inflation, NASA has said."For the whole programme, to get a sustainable presence on the moon, we're looking at between...

The US space agency has awarded a total of $254 million to three companies to land their machines on the lunar surface, paving the way for NASA astronauts to land on the Moon by 2024.The three companies are: Astrobotic of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Intuitive...

Drilling by Curiosity Mars rover at a region of the Red Planet called the "clay-bearing unit" has revealed the highest amounts of clay minerals ever found during the mission, NASA has said.The rover recently drilled two samples at rock targets called "Aberlady"...

NASA has completed the first hardware test of a robot in space that would take care of the International Space Station (ISS) in the near future.The robot named Bumble is one of three Astrobee robots that will research automated caretaking aboard the ISS.Bumble,...

The US space agency NASA has selected 11 companies including Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Elon Musk's SpaceX to develop prototypes of human landers for its Artemis lunar exploration programme.NASA aims to put the first woman on the Moon's south pole by 2024...

NASAs ambitious plan to put the first woman on the Moon by 2024 has been named Artemis. It was set in motion following an additional increase to the agency's budget.NASA's plans for the first woman on the lunar surface ever comes nearly five decades after...

 Even as an investigation into the Crew Dragon engine failure in a test last week has started, finding out the root cause of the problem may take time, a top NASA official has said.The SpaceX Crew Dragon is designed to carry humans to the International Space...

A team of NASA researchers, including an Indian-origin scientist has found the surface inside the International Space Station (ISS) is littered with microbes just like in a gym or office on Earth -- threatening astronauts' health at the orbiting laboratory.The...

NASA's Parker Solar Probe has successfully completed its second close approach to the Sun, the US space agency has said.The maneuver, called a perihelion, resulted in a closest approach at 6:40 p.m. EDT (2240 GMT) on April 4. The spacecraft was about 24 million...

After the successful launch of NASA's InSight on Mars on Monday, the spacecraft has sent signals to Earth indicating that its solar panels are open and collecting sunlight on the Martian surface.NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, that is currently orbiting the...

NASA's InSight spacecraft touched down safely on Mars on Monday, kicking off a two-year mission to explore the deep interior of the Red Planet.NASA's online live broadcast reported InSight touched down on Mars at approximately 2:54 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) on Monday,...

NASA has chosen Jezero Crater delta, where the sediments contain clays and carbonates, as the landing site for its upcoming Mars 2020 Rover mission, the US space agency said.Jezero Crater, 45 kilometres in size, is located on the western edge of Isidis Planitia...

As NASA's InSight spacecraft touches down on the Red Planet on November 26, people from around the world will be able to watch the event live on NASA Television, the agency's website and social media platforms, including on YouTube, the US space agency...

NASA is planning to send small devices containing human cells in a 3D matrix -- known as tissue chips or organs-on-chips -- to the International Space Station (ISS) to test how they respond to stress, drugs and genetic changes.Made of flexible plastic, tissue...

Parker Solar Probe, NASA's historic mission to solve the mysteries of the Sun, is alive and well after skimming by the Sun at just 15 million miles from its surface.This is far closer than any spacecraft has ever gone -- the previous record was set by Helios...

NASA's Ralph, one of the most well-travelled scientific instrument, is set to explore Jupiter's Trojan asteroids aboard the Lucy spacecraft in 2021, the US space agency said.Ralph has made many discoveries since it first launched aboard the New Horizons spacecraft...

Besides over two weeks of scientific operations, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has conducted its longest drive since experiencing a memory anomaly two months ago, pushing its total odometry to over 20 kilometers.The rover is now located at the Red Planet's Lake...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a formation of galaxies that looks like a smiling face, said the US space agency.On Saturday, it posted an image on its Instagram handle that showed two yellow orbs above an arc of light -- painting a smiley face in...

Delhi Environment Minister Imran Hussain on Wednesday released recent satellite images from NASA showing widespread stubble burning across north India."I have consistently maintained that crop residue (stubble) burning in parts of northern India leads to severe...

NASA has launched an eight-episode podcast series that follows the InSight mission as the robotic explorer journeys to Mars for a November 26 landing.The first two episodes of the "On a Mission" series are now available for download, the US space agency said...

NASA's historic Parker Solar Probe -- enroute to the Sun to unravel its mysteries -- has become the closest spacecraft to it.The spacecraft passed the current record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun's surface on October 29, as calculated by the Parker Solar...

NASA has created a world record with its "supersonic parachute" for the Mars 2020 mission that survived 37,000 kg load and was deployed in just four-tenths of a second -- twice the speed of sound.Less than two minutes after the launch of a 58-foot-tall (17.7-metre)...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has returned to normal operations and completed its first science observations after a three-week hiatus owing to a failed gyroscope.The observations were of the distant, star-forming galaxy and were taken in infrared wavelengths...

NASA has used certain characters from modern myths such as the "Hulk" and "Godzilla" to name its new set of 21 gamma-ray constellations constructed in celebration of its Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's 10th year of operations.Fermi has mapped about 3,000...

With NASA's Juno spacecraft needing more time to gather the mission's required data, the US space agency has decided to extend its science operations until July 2021, making way for the probe to spend three more years in orbit around Jupiter.Juno is in 53-day...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first image of a surviving companion to a supernova, a compelling evidence that some supernovas originate in double-star systems, the US space agency said.Seventeen years ago, astronomers had witnessed a supernova...

In a first, a team of scientists from NASA are on a research mission to study phytoplankton -- the tiny sea creatures -- and their impact on the atmosphere and climate on Earth.The North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study (NAAMES), which is in...

NASA has updated its commercial crew contract with Boeing to let the US-based aerospace company fly three people to the International Space Station (ISS) who will stay there for up to six months from an earlier planned two-week trip.The move is seen as to...

NASA is investing in several next-generation technology concepts that will help the US space agency use them for future space exploration missions.This include meteoroid impact detection, space telescope swarms and small orbital debris mapping technologies,...

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which aims to find alien worlds with capacity to harbour life is scheduled to launch on April 16 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.On March 15, the spacecraft...

NASA is now targeting May 2020 for the launch of its James Webb Space Telescope, the $8 billion dollar Hubble successor.The announcement on Tuesday made after an independent assessment of remaining tasks for the highly complex space observatory further pushes...

To continue long-term measurements of the Sun's incoming energy, NASA has powered on a new instrument installed on the International Space Station (ISS).The instrument, Total and Spectral solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS-1), became fully operational with all...

Seven per cent of astronaut Scott Kelly's genes linked to the immune system, DNA repair and bone formation, showed an unexpected change as a result of spending nearly a year in space, reveals NASA's "Twins Study" aimed to unravel the genomics era of space...

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have unearthed a "relic galaxy" in the Milky Way's backyard.The galaxy NGC 1277, lies near the centre of the Perseus cluster of over 1,000 galaxies, located 240 million light-years away. The findings, published...

Scientists have combined data from three NASA satellites to develop a 3D model that simulates how shocks following coronal mass ejections (CMEs) propagate from the Sun.CMEs, often called solar storms or space storms, are a significant release of plasma and magnetic...

If you want your name to travel through the Sun's atmosphere, braving brutal heat and radiation conditions, here comes your chance. NASA is inviting people around the world to submit their names online to be placed on a microchip aboard its historic solar...

Permafrost in the coldest northern Arctic -- formerly thought to be at least temporarily shielded from global warming by its extreme environment -- could thaw enough to become a permanent source of carbon to the atmosphere in a few decades, warns a NASA-led study.This...

The sea level may rise twice as high by 2100 as previously estimated as a result of climate change, a new NASA study says.According to the findings detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, rise in sea level may increase by...

NASA's Curiosity rover has conducted a new drill method on Mars, marking the first operation of the rover's drill since a motor problem began acting up more than a year ago.This early test produced a hole about a one-centimetre deep at a target called Lake...

A new analysis of data from India's Chandrayaan-1 mission and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter suggests that Moon's water may be widely distributed across the surface, not confined to a particular region or type of terrain.The water appears to be present...

Six-year-old Cara O'Connor of Ireland, who dreams of becoming a NASA astronaut one day, wrote a letter to the space agency urging it to reclassify Pluto as a planet, The Washington Post reported this week.Pluto was downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet in 2006...

NASA's Hubble space telescope has captured Neptune's mysterious dark storm, that probably smells like rotten eggs, shrinking out of existence."It looks like we're capturing the demise of this dark vortex, and it's different from what well-known studies led...

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has set a new record by capturing the farthest images from Earth by a spacecraft, surpassing the Voyager 1's record of capturing an image when it was 6.06 billion km away from Earth.The new images released by NASA on Thursday...

NASA has said it is preparing to send its deep space atomic clock on a test flight in 2018 as a hosted payload on General Atomic's Orbital Test Bed spacecraft aboard the US Air Force Space Technology Program (STP-2) mission.The the "Deep Space Atomic Clock"...

NASA on Wednesday said that at least the main control system of its IMAGE satellite, which was re-discovered by an amateur astronomer on January 20, is operational.Launched on March 25, 2000, IMAGE, short for Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration,...

US space agency NASA on Monday said that it's attempting to contact a satellite it lost more than a decade ago, after it was discovered possibly still alive by an amateur astronomer earlier this month."We are attempting to contact the IMAGE satellite via...

The conditions at Enceladus appear right for supporting life, Cassini Project Scientist Linda Spilker said here on Thursday while hinting at a possible future mission to go back to the Saturn moon."Personally, I would like to go back to Saturn," Spilker...

SpaceX's Dragon cargo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Saturday after nearly four weeks in space.Dragon splashed down successfully about 10:37 a.m. EST (1537 GMT) west of Baja California, completing the second resupply mission to and from the...

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope -- the world's premier infrared space observatory of the next decade -- has successfully completed critical testing in a massive thermal vacuum chamber, enabling it to function properly in the extremely cold and airless environment...

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, will encounter the most primitive and most distant object in the history of space exploration, on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in 2019.New Horizons' next mission -- the Kuiper Belt object,...

John Young, America's "most experienced astronaut" who walked on the Moon during the Apollo programme and commanded the first space shuttle mission, has passed away, NASA said on Saturday.Young died on Friday night following complications from pneumonia,...

With the declining levels of ozone-destroying chlorine, scientists have for the first time observed less ozone depletion.The findings showed that an international ban on chlorine-containing manmade chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons(CFCs) has resulted in...

NASA has announced that it would launch two missions to explore a little-understood area 96 km above Earth's surface.The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission will be launched aboard a commercial communications satellite in January...

US space agency NASA said on Thursday its industry partners, Boeing and SpaceX, are targeting the return of human spaceflight from Florida's Space Coast in 2018."Both companies are scheduled to begin flight tests to prove the space systems meet NASA's requirements...

NASA has said the logo it has released for use in observing the 60th anniversary of its establishment as a US government agency in 2018 represents its quest for knowledge.A crescent moon, a ringed planet and a field of stars amid a nebula of light blue represent...

NASA is turning 60 in 2018 and the agency is looking forward to launching a slew of important missions in the coming year, including one to "touch" the Sun.NASA's Parker Solar Probe is scheduled for launch in 2018 to explore the Sun's outer atmosphere.The...

NASA has said its flying observatory Sofia is preparing for its 2018 campaign, which will include, among others, observations of celestial magnetic fields, star-forming regions, comets and Saturn's giant moon Titan.This will be the fourth year of full operations...

 NASA scientists have found that a wet winter corresponds to more small wildfires in the following fire season, not fewer, as is commonly assumed.Large fires behave more "logically," with fewer large fires after a wet winter and more after a dry one."This...

To push its search for life in alien terrains, NASA has developed a new spectroscopy instrument designed to detect compounds and minerals associated with biological activity more quickly and with greater sensitivity than previous instruments.Although no...

NASA has picked two concepts for a solar system mission planned to launch in the mid-2020s -- a comet sample return mission and a drone-like rotorcraft that would explore potential landing sites on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.Which of these two mission will...