Marcia Dunn

Mercury is putting on a rare celestial show today, parading across the sun in view of most of the world. The solar system’s smallest, innermost planet will resemble a tiny black dot Monday as it passes directly between Earth and the sun. It begins at 7:35 a.m. EST. The entire 5 ½-hour event will be visible, weather permitting, in the...

The astronauts who took part in the first all-female spacewalk are still uplifted by all the excitement down on Earth. International Space Station resident Jessica Meir, from Maine, said Monday that when she floated outside last week, she wasn’t thinking about whether she was going out with a man or woman because everyone is held to the same standard.

NASA has moved up the first all-female spacewalk to this week because of a power system failure at the International Space Station.

NASA prepping to open moon rock samples sealed since the Apollo missions.

SpaceX delayed a supply run Friday to the International Space Station, back to full power and accepting deliveries after quick repairs. A Falcon rocket was poised to blast off before dawn Friday, with a Dragon cargo capsule. But an electrical problem cropped up at the last minute with the ocean platform needed to recover the first-stage booster following liftoff. SpaceX...

SpaceX finally confirmed Thursday its crew capsule was destroyed in ground testing two weeks ago and conceded that the accident is “not great news” for the company’s effort to launch astronauts this year.

SpaceX has suffered a serious setback in its effort to launch NASA astronauts into orbit this year, with the fiery loss of its first crew capsule. Over the weekend, the Dragon crew capsule that flew to the International Space Station last month was engulfed in smoke and flames on an engine test stand. SpaceX was testing the Dragon’s abort thrusters...

SpaceX launched its second supersized rocket and for the first time landed all three boosters Thursday, a year after sending up a sports car on the initial test flight. The new and improved Falcon Heavy thundered into the early evening sky with a communication satellite called Arabsat, the rocket’s first paying customer. The Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket...

Starting Tuesday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is posting the highs and lows online , along with wind speed and atmospheric pressure from the InSight lander.

NASA’s Opportunity, the Mars rover that was built to operate just three months but kept going and going, was pronounced dead Wednesday, 15 years after it landed on the red planet. The six-wheeled vehicle that helped gather critical evidence that ancient Mars might have been hospitable to life was remarkably spry up until eight months ago, when it was finally...

A piece of rock that detached from a comet slammed into the so-called Super Wolf Blood Moon during its eclipse phase on Jan. 20.

Astronomers managed to capture the moment of an impact during this week’s lunar eclipse, the Super Blood Wolf Moon. Spanish astrophysicist Jose Maria Madiedo of the University of Huelva said Wednesday it appears a rock from a comet slammed into the moon during the total lunar eclipse late Sunday and early Monday. The strike was seen by telescopes in Spain...

Wedding bells are in Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger’s future!...
The actor took to Instagram Sunday evening to announce that he had proposed to his girlfriend of several months....
“Sweet Katherine, so happy you said yes! I’m thrilled to be marrying you,” he wrote alongside a photo of the two hugging shortly after the proposal. “Proud to live boldly in faith with...

A NASA spacecraft 4 billion miles from Earth yielded its first close-up pictures Wednesday of the most distant celestial object ever explored, depicting what looks like a reddish snowman. Ultima Thule, as the small, icy object has been dubbed, was found to consist of two fused-together spheres, one of them three times bigger than the other, extending about 21 miles...

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft pulled off the most distant exploration of another world Tuesday, skimming past a tiny, icy object 4 billion miles from Earth that looks to be shaped like a bowling pin. Flight controllers in Maryland declared success 10 hours after the high-risk, middle-of-the-night encounter at the mysterious body known as Ultima Thule on the frozen fringes of...

The spacecraft team that brought us close-ups of Pluto will ring in the new year by exploring an even more distant and mysterious world. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will zip past the scrawny, icy object nicknamed Ultima Thule (pronounced TOO-lee) soon after the stroke of midnight. One billion miles beyond Pluto and an astounding 4 billion miles from Earth (1.6...

A SpaceX delivery full of Christmas goodies arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, following a slight delay caused by a communication drop-out. The Dragon capsule pulled up at the orbiting lab three days after launching from Cape Canaveral. Commander Alexander Gerst used the space station’s big robotic arm to grab the cargo carrier, as the two craft soared...

After a two-year chase, a NASA spacecraft arrived Monday at the ancient asteroid Bennu, its first visitor in billions of years. The robotic explorer Osiris-Rex, right on cue, pulled within 12 miles (19 kilometers) of the diamond-shaped space rock. It will get even closer in the days ahead and actually go into orbit around Bennu (BEN-oo) on Dec. 31. No...

NASA’s elite planet-hunting spacecraft has been declared dead, just a few months shy of its 10th anniversary. Officials announced the Kepler Space Telescope’s demise Tuesday. Already well past its expected lifetime, the 9 1/2-year-old Kepler had been running low on fuel for months. Its ability to point at distant stars and identify possible alien worlds worsened dramatically at the beginning...

Astronomers may have found the first moon outside our solar system, a gas behemoth the size of Neptune. Plenty of planets exist beyond our solar system, but a moon around one of those worlds has yet to be confirmed. Two Columbia University researchers presented their tantalizing evidence for a moon Wednesday. The potential moon would be considerably larger than Earth...