Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: Commercial ventures have been taking lots of small steps toward the next giant leap in spaceflight — and the federal government is helping them out.

Why should politicians support trips beyond Earth orbit? It's good for jobs in the short term, and good for our survival in the long term. Commentary by NBC News' Jay Barbree.

Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: A picture from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter paints the Red Planet in shades of blue, yellow and green — but there's a method in the madness.

Amateur astronomers and students around the world are taking a close look at the asteroid Eros as part of a hands-on experiment to measure solar-system distances.

NASA may not have space shuttles to launch people into the final frontier anymore, but that hasn't stopped Americans from lining up in droves for the chance to join the agency's iconic astronaut corps during the latest recruitment drive.

Stephen Colbert, host of the nightly 'The Colbert Report,' said in a new NASA public service announcement released today that he's always been a huge fan of space.

Space Junk 3D shows the viewer how much garbage is out in space and how dangerous it could be to us.

Europe's Rosetta spacecraft is en route to intercept a comet- and to make history.

Pasadena, CA - NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft successfully refined its flight path Wednesday with the mission's first trajectory correction maneuver.

NASA recently released its highest-resolution photo of Earth - part of the agency's unofficial "blue marble" series dating back decades.

The first "Blue Marble" image showed the United States . By popular demand -- the first photo has been viewed more than 3 million times on Flickr -- the agency has released a second image , this time featuring Africa, the Middle East and part of Asia.

This Jan. 29 panorama of much of the East Coast, photographed by one of the Expedition 30 crew members aboard the International Space Station, provides a look generally northeastward: Philadelphia-New York City-Boston corridor ; western Lake Ontario shoreline with Toronto ; Montreal .

San Jose State University announced it's research center was awarded $73 million, the largest federal award in university history, to help NASA Ames Research Center improve the safety and efficiency of air space and travel.

Antarctica is so vast that pictures give you no sense of scale. A pencil-thin line seen across a satellite image of Pine Island Glacier is actually more than 18 miles long, 800 feet across in places, and 180 feet deep.

This observation provides a unique opportunity to study the physical properties of a galaxy vigorously forming stars when the universe was only one-third its present age.

United Launch Alliance today announced the completion of two key milestones leading toward the certification of the Atlas V launch vehicle for human spaceflight.

NASA says it still has confidence in the quality of Russia's manned rockets, despite an embarrassing series of glitches and failures in the Russian space program.

A botched pressure test of a Russian space capsule slated to launch the next crew to the International Space Station has forced NASA and its partners to delay the planned liftoff for more than a month.

New experiments on the International Space Station may reveal tips on fighting fires in space, and back here on Earth, too.

Moon colonies aside, Newt Gingrich has some seemingly unorthodox ideas about spurring innovation.

Russia may repeat the Mars-500 experiment simulating a crewed flight to the Red Planet on the International Space Station , the head of the Russian Space Federal Agency Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin said on Thursday "Mars-500 was a very useful thing in terms of studying people's psychology...We are now seriously considering the possibility of ... (more)

Russia would make another attempt to send a Phobos-Grunt probe to Mars' satellite in 2018, a leading space expert has said.

Do you follow space news and NASA developments religiously? If you want to know how you compare against other space geeks, you can put your knowledge to the test with NASA's new Facebook game, Space Race Blastoff .

Shannon Lucid, a member of NASA's first astronaut class to include women, has retired after more than three decades of service to the agency.

A glimpse beyond our solar system reveals the neighborhood just outside the sun's influence is different and stranger than expected, scientists reported Tuesday.