According to scientists at The Keck Institute for Space Studies in California, NASA is seriously considering capturing an asteroid to put in a high orbit around the moon. If the idea is implemented, we could be looking at a manned mission to "capture" an asteroid in the 2020s. This idea is thought to tie in with the Obama administration's enthusiasm for sending a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid. If NASA were able to capture an object and lock it into an orbit around the moon, it could be safely used as a practise mission without the need for astronauts to move beyond the range of a rescue mission. ...

The third largest asteroid to ever hit earth has been found in South Australia. According to scientists involved, the asteroid, which measured up to 20 km across, hit Earth approximately 360 million years ago. This was around the time of the Late Devonian mass extinction, strengthening the idea that asteroid impacts have been associated with many mass extinctions throughout the history of life on Earth.

This fantastic photograph of a hurricane on Saturn was recently snapped by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. It measures an astonishing 2,000 kilometers across the eye - that's big enough to cover the UK twelve times. Wind speeds reach as fast as 150 meters per second.

Mercury's surface looks similar to our Moon's. Each is heavily cratered and made of rock. Mercury's diameter is about 4800 km, while the Moon's is slightly less at about 3500 km (compared with about 12,700 km for the Earth). But Mercury is unique in many ways. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, orbiting at about 1/3 the radius of the Earth's orbit. As Mercury slowly rotates, its surface temperature varies from an unbearably cold -180 degrees Celsius to an unbearably hot 400 degrees Celsius. The place nearest the Sun in Mercury's orbit changes slightly each orbit - a fact used by Albert Einstein to help verify the correctness of his then newly discovered theory of gravity: General Relativity. The above picture was taken by the only sp ...

This picture of a green and red aurora was taken on September 26, 2013, from the International Space Station. The colours of the aurora borealis depend on which atoms the solar storm excites. Green auroras appear when charged particles from the solar wind crash with oxygen atoms in Earth’s atmosphere and produce green photons; red auroras occur when the particles collide with nitrogen atoms or when there are lower-energy oxygen collisions, producing red photons.

This is a breathtaking 'earthrise' viewed from the surface of the moon. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter sees the Earth rise 12 times a day but is usually so busy imaging the moon's surface it doesn't get to capture the moment. This colourised image was taken on 1 February 2014.

These NASA illustrations from the 1970s depict a toroidal space colony that could support 10 000 humans.

Physicists have figured out how colossal rainstorms are formed in the Sun's atmosphere, and it's surprisingly similar to how we get our rain. It turns out that plasma rain falls on the sun at 200 000 km/h. Each raindrop is the size of Ireland!

A six-metre tall boulder that bounced down a slope on Mars has left a mark visible from space. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a snapshot of the 500-metre long trail in July.

This image, released by NASA a few days ago, overlays a year's worth of photographs of the Sun, revealing the migration of active regions towards the equator.

An easy to understand animation of antimatter.

See what happens when scientists drop a bowling ball and a feather in the world's largest vacuum; for the science-illiterate viewers out there (sorry ), a vacuum is a space entirely devoid of matter (also known as an absolute vacuum). A lot of you probably already know how this one ends, but that doesn't make watching it play out any less spectacular.



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This is Zeus, a blind Western Screech Owl whose eyes look like forming galaxies. The stellar effect is likely caused by chunky vitreous strands in his eyes. The handsome owl was found injured in Southern California and now lives at the Wildlife Learning Centre in Los Angeles.

"George" was named by it's discoverer in honour of George III. It wasn't popular and Uranus, the father of Saturn in Roman mythology, was eventually settled upon.

I'd like to share this mind-opening video. Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" This is his answer. By far, one of the best...

No, we're not referring to the candy. Humanity has done great!

Here's a more intricate version of the poster above. It was created by professor Peter Alway and was published in the book Rockets of the World:

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After a journey spanning nine years and almost 5 billion kilometres, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is closer than ever to everyone’s favourite former planet, Pluto. On 14 July 2015, New Horizons is expected to fly within 12,000 km of the lonely cosmic body - about the distance between Seattle and Sydney - zooming through the orbits of its five tiny moons.

NASA scientists have nominated eight potential new targets for a 2020 Mars mission. They're focusing on ancient river deltas and hot springs as sites that have the best chance of preserving signs of life on the red planet. New sites can still be considered, and mission engineers have yet to weigh in on the technical feasibility of landing the rover in the nominated sites.

The images, taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft from a distance of 18,000 kilometres give Pluto a "strangely Arctic look", NASA scientists said.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft completed the first of three final flybys of Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus. On October 14, Cassini passed within 1838 kilometers (1142 miles) of Enceladus, providing unprecedented views of the moon’s north polar region. What's more, researchers predict that is contains a global ocean lying beneath its icy crust. Researchers found the magnitude of the moon's very slight wobble, as it orbits Saturn, can only be accounted for if its outer ice shell is not frozen solid to its interior, meaning a global ocean must be present.

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The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has just awarded Virginal Galactic their first operating license, allowing them to start using their SpaceShipTwo craft for commercial use - as soon as certain guidelines are met. This means that the company - owned by billionaire Richard Branson - will soon be able to shuttle paying passengers into space.

Other than making the flights legal, the license dictates the conditions required before Virgin Galactic can actually let any passengers on board SpaceShipTwo, which will be carried by White Knight Two (below) roughly 99 kilometres (62 miles) into the sky.


Once everything is squared away with the FAA, SpaceShipTwo - a spacecraft designed to hold two pilots and six passengers - will hitch a ride w ...

The Soviet-built space probe, Venera 3, was the first spacecraft to ever land on another planet back on March 1st, 1966, after being launched on November 16, 1965 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

The mission of this spacecraft was to land on the Venusian surface. The entry body contained a radio communication system, scientific instruments, electrical power sources, and medallions bearing the State Coat of Arms of the U.S.S.R.

Unfortunately, the probe crash-landed on Venus, causing its communication systems to fail before it could return any information about the planet. The spacecraft impacted on the night side of Venus, near the terminator, around -20º to 20º N, 60º to 80º E.

The Venera program, however, would go on to successfully submit data f ...

The strangest moon in the Solar System is bright yellow. Taken by the Galileo spacecraft, this image shows Jupiter's moon, Io, and its incredibly bright colours derived from sulphur and molten silicate rock. Io is covered in volcanoes that are so active, they effectively turn the whole moon inside out. And some of Io's volcanic lava is so hot, it glows in the dark.

Did you know that you could fit all the planets of the Solar System into the distance between the Earth and the Moon? But please don't - it would kill us all.

This is the first image taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover of what Earth looks like from its station on Mars. Not one to let a golden social media moment go to waste, Curiosity promptly tweeted: “Look Back in Wonder… My first picture of Earth from the surface of Mars."

After decades of dreaming and preparation, scientists have finally put the Rosetta spacecraft into orbit around a comet. And now the Rosetta is about to land!

Chang’e-3 and the lunar rover Yutu (Jade Rabbit) landed on the lunar surface on December 14 at about 1:11 pm UTC. This is the first successful landing on the moon by any spacecraft in more than 30 years.