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.

Scientists have pooled their radio observations into a database, producing the highest precision map to date of the magnetic field within our own Milky Way galaxy.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, which is found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a similar barred spiral, and the study of galaxies such as NGC 1073 helps astronomers learn more about our celestial home.

Mars may have been arid for more than 600 million years, making it too hostile for any life to survive on the planet’s surface, according to researchers who have been carrying out the painstaking task of analyzing individual particles of Martian soil.

Pulsars are among the most exotic celestial bodies known. They have diameters of about 20 kilometers, but at the same time roughly the mass of our sun. A sugar-cube sized piece of its ultra-compact matter on Earth would weigh hundreds of millions of tons. A sub-class of them, known as millisecond pulsars, spin up to several hundred times per second around their own axes. Previous studies reached the paradoxical conclusion that some millisecond pulsars are older than the universe itself. Now this paradox may be solved by computer simulations, new research shows.

Sientists have discovered a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a nearby star. The star is a member of a triple star system and has a different makeup than our Sun, being relatively lacking in metallic elements. This discovery demonstrates that habitable planets could form in a greater variety of environments than previously believed.

Astronomers aimed Hubble at one of the most striking examples of gravitational lensing, a nearly 90-degree arc of light in the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623. Hubble's view of the distant background galaxy, which lies nearly 10 billion light-years away, is significantly more detailed than could ever be achieved without the help of the gravitational lens.

The center of just about every galaxy is thought to host a black hole, some with masses of thousands of millions of Suns and consequently strong gravitational pulls that disrupt material around them. They had been thought to hinder the birth of stars, but now astronomers studying the nearby galaxy Centaurus A have found quite the opposite: a black hole that seems to be helping stars to form.

A camera aboard one of NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the moon. MoonKAM, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, will be used by students nationwide to select lunar images for study.

A potent follow-up solar flare, which occurred Jan. 17, 2012, just days after the Sun launched the biggest coronal mass ejection seen in nearly a decade, delivered a powerful radiation punch to Earth's magnetic field despite the fact that it was aimed away from our planet.

Using models similar to those used in weapons research, scientists may soon know more about exoplanets, those objects beyond the realm of our solar system. Astronomers have come up with new methods for deriving and testing the equation of state of matter in exoplanets and figured out the mass-radius and mass-pressure relations for materials relevant to planetary interiors.

A new view shows a stellar nursery called NGC 3324. It was taken using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The intense ultraviolet radiation from several of NGC 3324's hot young stars causes the gas cloud to glow with rich colors and has carved out a cavity in the surrounding gas and dust.

Space scientists have described the first detailed analyses of captured interstellar neutral atoms -- raw material for the formation of new stars, planets and even human beings.

When scientists discovered two great swaths of radiation encircling Earth in the 1950s, it spawned over-the-top fears about "killer electrons" and space radiation effects on Earthlings. The fears were soon quieted: the radiation doesn't reach Earth, though it can affect satellites and humans moving through the belts. Nevertheless, many mysteries about the belts -- now known as the Van Allen Radiation belts -- remain to this day.

A great magnetic bubble surrounds the solar system as it cruises through the galaxy. The sun pumps the inside of the bubble full of solar particles that stream out to the edge until they collide with the material that fills the rest of the galaxy, at a complex boundary called the heliosheath. On the other side of the boundary, electrically charged particles from the galactic wind blow by, but rebound off the heliosheath, never to enter the solar system. Neutral particles, on the other hand, are a different story. They saunter across the boundary as if it weren't there, continuing on another 7.5 billion miles for 30 years until they get caught by the sun's gravity, and sling shot around the star.

Using data from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer spacecraft, an international team of researchers has measured neutral "alien" particles entering our solar system from interstellar space. A suite of studies provides a first look at the constituents of the interstellar medium, the matter between star systems, and how they interact with our heliosphere.

Hydrogen molecules may act as a kind of energy sink that strengthens the magnetic grip that causes sunspots, according to scientists using a new infrared instrument on an old telescope.

Scientists have recently discovered that vast clouds of hot gas are "sloshing" in Abell 2052, a galaxy cluster located about 480 million light years from Earth.

The sun unleashed an X1.8 class flare that began at 1:12 PM ET on January 27, 2012 and peaked at 1:37. The flare immediately caused a strong radio blackout at low-latitudes, which was rated an R3 on NOAA's scale from R1-5. The blackout soon subsided to a minor R1 storm. Models from NASA's Goddard Space Weather Center predict that the CME is traveling at over 1500 miles per second. It does not initially appear to be Earth-directed, but Earth may get a glancing blow.

Researchers have explained the puzzling disappearing act of energetic electrons in Earth's outer radiation belt using data collected from a fleet of orbiting spacecraft.

The largest solar particle event since 2005 hit Earth, Mars and the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft traveling in-between, allowing the onboard Radiation Assessment Detector to measure the radiation a human astronaut could be exposed to en route to the Red Planet.