The first of two NASA spacecraft to study the moon in unprecedented detail has entered lunar orbit.

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.

The International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA), led by American businessman / educator Steve Durst, plans to place an astronomical observatory on the Moon by 2014 that will capture never before seen images of the Galaxy, Stars, Moon and Earth.

NASA has selected 24 undergraduate student teams to test science experiments under microgravity conditions. The teams will fly during 2012 as part of the agency's Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program (RGEFP).

NASA successfully conducted a drop test of the Orion crew vehicle's parachutes high above the Arizona desert Tuesday in preparation for its orbital flight test in 2014. Orion will carry astronauts deeper into space than ever before, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and ensure a safe re-entry and landing.

Cryogenic testing is complete for the final six primary mirror segments and a secondary mirror that will fly on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The milestone represents the successful culmination of a process that took years and broke new ground in manufacturing and testing large mirrors.

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) has captured the beauty of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 253. The new portrait is probably the most detailed wide-field view of this object and its surroundings ever taken. It demonstrates that the VST, the newest telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory, provides broad views of the sky while also offering impressive image sharpness.

An international team of astronomers has identified a candidate for the smallest-known black hole using data from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). The evidence comes from a specific type of X-ray pattern, nicknamed a "heartbeat" because of its resemblance to an electrocardiogram. The pattern until now has been recorded in only one other black hole system.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., is entering into a space act agreement with Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems of Louisville, Colo., to provide key wind tunnel testing of a new spacecraft designed to transport crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station.

The Houston Technology Center (HTC) and NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) have formed a strategic partnership to further expand HTC's mission of accelerating the growth of emerging technology companies in the Houston region and to develop the insights required to support NASA's long-term goals of increasing private/public collaboration. NRG Energy – a strong supporter of Houston's business community and diversified energy company – stepped up to support the effort with a $25,000 donation.

NASA's car-sized Curiosity rover has begun monitoring space radiation during its 8-month trip from Earth to Mars. The research will aid in planning for future human missions to the Red Planet.

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Paul G. Allen announced today that he and aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan have reunited to develop the next generation of space travel. Allen and Rutan, whose SpaceShipOne was the first privately-funded, manned rocket ship to fly beyond earth's atmosphere, are developing a revolutionary approach to space transportation:  an air-launch system to provide orbital access to space with greater safety, cost-effectiveness and flexibility.

Can new types of engine make spaceflight easier and more economical? This question is being investigated by researchers at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) using one of Europe's leading hypersonic wind tunnels, located in Goettingen. The engine is being tested for an Australian Scramjet-based Access-to-Space Systems (SCRAMSPACE) experimental spacecraft - SCRAMSPACE I - scheduled for launch in 2013.

NASA has announced the launch target for Space Exploration Technologies' (SpaceX) second Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration flight will be Feb. 7, 2012. Pending completion of final safety reviews, testing and verification, NASA also has agreed to allow SpaceX to send its Dragon spacecraft to rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS) in a single flight.

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space. Data obtained from Voyager over the last year reveal this new region to be a kind of cosmic purgatory. In it, the wind of charged particles streaming out from our sun has calmed, our solar system's magnetic field piles up and higher energy particles from inside our solar system appear to be leaking out into interstellar space.

News conferences, events and operating hours for the Press Site at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., are set for the agency's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover launch.

Images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) show sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars at dozens of locations and shifting up to several yards. These observations reveal the planet's sandy surface is more dynamic than previously thought.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Visitor Center in Greenbelt, Md. will host this month's Sunday Experiment on Sunday, November 20 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST. It's a free afternoon of eye-opening, hands-on activities spotlighting NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite, the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP).

Dozens of people at NASA's Langley Research Center are eagerly awaiting November 25 - the day after Thanksgiving and the launch of Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and its Curiosity rover.

NASA has released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 Performance and Accountability Report (PAR), which provides a summary of the agency's annual performance and financial information. This year's report marks an important financial milestone for the agency -- a "clean" audit opinion.

In a first of its kind prize for the reusable suborbital research community, XCOR Aerospace and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) announced today that a research flight will be awarded to one lucky paid registrant at the NSRC-2012 Conference (nsrc.swri.org) to be held 27-29 February 2012 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel and Resort in Palo Alto, California.

NASA is kicking off its second annual NASA OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Video Contest to raise student awareness of how NASA technologies provide benefits to the public. Registration for the contest is open until January 3, 2012.

Do you dream of flying in space? Now is your chance. NASA is accepting applications for the agency's next class for the Astronaut Candidate Program.

Sierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC) Space Systems announces the completion of additional Dream Chaser Space System Milestones under NASA's Commercial Crew Development Phase 2 (CCDev2) Program. To date, SNC has completed five of thirteen Milestones, all on time and on budget.

NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin launched to the International Space Station at 10:14 p.m. CST Sunday (10:14 a.m. Kazakhstan time, Monday) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Space Systems/Loral, the leading provider of commercial satellites, and Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Limited (AsiaSat), Asia's leading satellite operator, today announced the signing of two construction agreements for two communications satellites, AsiaSat 6 and AsiaSat 8.

New observations indicate that the asteroid Lutetia is a leftover fragment of the same original material that formed the Earth, Venus and Mercury. Astronomers have combined data from ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, ESO’s New Technology Telescope, and NASA telescopes. They found that the properties of the asteroid closely match those of a rare kind of meteorites found on Earth and thought to have formed in the inner parts of the Solar System. Lutetia must, at some point, have moved out to its current location in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) on board NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite, NPP, acquired its first measurements on November 8, 2011. The image shows the ATMS channel 18 data, which measures water vapor in the lower atmosphere. Tropical Storm Sean is visible in the data, as the patch of blue, in the Atlantic off the coast of the Southeastern United States. The data were processed at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility (NSOF) in Suitland, Md.

NASA's most advanced mobile robotic laboratory, which will examine one of the most intriguing areas on Mars, is in final preparations for a launch from Florida's Space Coast at 10:25 a.m. EST on Nov. 25.

NASA conducted a successful 500-second test firing of the J-2X rocket engine on Wednesday, Nov. 9, marking another important step in development of an upper stage for the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS).

Using its near-infrared vision to peer 9 billion years back in time, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered an extraordinary population of young dwarf galaxies brimming with star formation. While dwarf galaxies are the most common type of galaxy in the universe, the rapid star-birth observed in these newly found examples may force astronomers to reassess their understanding of the ways in which galaxies form.

In less than a month, NASA will take a bold new step in the exploration of Planet Mars with the launch of a new rover, Curiosity. Curiosity is the centerpiece of the Mars Science Laboratory mission and will seek to determine if the Red Planet has ever had conditions supportive of life. Scheduled to launch November 25, 2011, Curiosity will carry a Canadian-made science instrument that will enable the rover to determine the chemical composition of the rocks and soil on Mars.

On 8 November at 21:16 CET (02:16 on 9 November, local time) the Russian Phobos-Grunt (Phobos Soil) spacecraft began its journey to Mars on board a Zenit-2 rocket that lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The spacecraft is expected to land on the Martian moon Phobos in February 2013, where it will collect samples of the surface and return these to Earth in a capsule in August 2014. Phobos-Grunt is the first Russian spacecraft to be launched beyond Earth's orbit since 1996.

AMPAC-ISP CORP., American Pacific Corporation's (NASDAQ®: APFC) wholly-owned in-space propulsion subsidiary (AMPAC-ISP), is proud to play a key role in propelling the Juno spacecraft which recently launched on its five year voyage to Jupiter.  The Juno spacecraft will carry out the first in-depth study of the giant planet including, but not limited to: investigating the existence of an ice-rock core, determining the amount of global water and ammonia present in the atmosphere, studying convection and deep wind profiles in the atmosphere, investigating the origin of the Jovian magnetic field and exploring the polar magnetosphere

NASA plans to add an unmanned flight test of the Orion spacecraft in early 2014 to its contract with Lockheed Martin Space Systems for the multi-purpose crew vehicle's design, development, test and evaluation. This test supports the new Space Launch System (SLS) that will take astronauts farther into space than ever before, create U.S. jobs, and provide the cornerstone for America's future human spaceflight efforts.

Starmap, the world’s first planetarium mobile application for the iPhone, announced today on their website that Spacemap is the only astronomy mobile application currently available that can display the orbit of the nearby passing asteroid 2005YU55 in 3D animation. The asteroid is making headlines this week because of its rare close proximity to Earth. Starmap founder and creator Frederic Descamps caught the asteroid with his iPad using Spacemap, and videoed its course using the mobile application.

NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., has captured new radar images of Asteroid 2005 YU55 passing close to Earth.

NASA has selected Vantage Partners LLC of Lanham, Md., to provide engineering and scientific services to the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

520 days without sunlight, fresh air or direct contact with the outside world - the six test subjects on the Mars500 mission have had to forego plenty of things while 'travelling' to Mars and back to Earth in their virtual spacecraft. After a year and a half of isolation, the sealed hatch of the Mars500 container was finally opened at 11:00 CET on 4 November 2011. The 'cosmonauts' at the Moscow Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) had been simulating a flight through space since 3 June 2010 and carrying out numerous experiments along the way. "The crew is doing well," says Peter Graef of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), Project Manager for the German part of the mission. He is pleased with the research results thus far: "The scientists working on the 11 German experiments have already started their initial assessments and are very satisfied with the quality of the data."

ViaSat Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT) has announced that ViaSat-1, the highest capacity satellite in the world, is now positioned in geosynchronous orbit where it will begin in-orbit testing. Since launching on October 19, ViaSat-1 has successfully completed all scheduled maneuvers:

An international team of scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a surprisingly powerful millisecond pulsar that challenges existing theories about how these objects form.

NSR's Global Assessment of Satellite Supply & Demand, 8^th Edition study, released today, indicates that satellite operators continue to buck the global economic malaise. In 2010 global satellite operators saw a strong revenue increase of over US$550 million, derived from the lease of commercial satellite capacity. NSR projects that by 2020 capacity leasing revenues will reach US$17.2 billion, up from US$10.1 billion in 2010.

NASA has signed an agreement with the Space Florida Small Satellite Research Center of Cape Canaveral, Florida, to manage the Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge, one of the agency's new Centennial Challenges prize competitions.

On 31 October at 22:58 CET (on 1 November at 05:58 local time), the Chinese spaceship Shenzhou-8 was launched on board a Long March rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia. On board is the SIMBOX (Science in Microgravity Box) experimental facility containing 17 experiments from the fields of biology and medicine, which will be conducted by German researchers together with their Chinese colleagues This is the first time that the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) cooperates with another nation in the use of Shenzhou - the core of China's human spaceflight programme.

To this day, continental drift has been responsible for changes to Earth’s surface. Venus, on the other hand, displays a motionless crust, but this was not always the case. Using simulations, planetary researchers at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) have now discovered that, in the past, the surface of Venus was probably quite hot, and consequently dynamic.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has awarded six contracts to four organizations to develop concept studies in areas related to future space exploration ventures. The studies are part of the CSA’s strategy to invest in emerging ideas that could become Canada’s next revolutionary technologies, like a high resolution Canadian-led space telescope; robots to remove space debris and tune-up ailing satellites; an instrument to measure the composition of the atmosphere of planets; and a device that measures radiation exposure more accurately.

Right in the heart of Goettingen -  236 cubic metres of outer space! The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) will now be able to conduct research on electric spacecraft propulsion systems under realistic conditions. The new test facility, inaugurated on 27 October 2011, will be known by an acronym derived from the German version of the name 'Goettingen Propulsion Beam Simulation Facility - Electric Thrusters'  (Simulationsanlage fuer Treibstrahlen Goettingen -  Elektrische Triebwerke; STG-ET). At its heart is a vacuum chamber where researchers will be able to investigate electric propulsion systems at temperatures as low as minus 268 degrees Celsius. With the STG-ET, Goettingen becomes a significant focal point for European spacecraft propulsion research.

A very special space breakthrough is approaching; on 31 October at 23:00 CET (1 November at 06:00 local time) the Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou-8 will be launched on board a Long March rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia. On board will be the SIMBOX (Science in Microgravity Box) experimental facility containing 17 experiments from the fields of biology and medicine, which will be conducted by German researchers together with their Chinese colleagues.