The Space Shot

NASA's Kepler space telescope has found the first confirmed Earth-size planets orbiting another star, astronomers announced Tuesday, a major milestone in an ongoing project aimed at finding out how commonplace--or rare--Earth-like worlds may be across the cosmos.

In a solar system 1,000 light years away with at least five planets, the newly confirmed Earth-size worlds orbit too close to their star to support life. But proving the Kepler observatory can, in fact, spot worlds as small as Earth across the vast reaches of interstellar space gives astronomers confidence many more such planets are awaiting discovery among the 2,more

SEATTLE--Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan have teamed up on a new winged rocket that would be carried aloft by a gargantuan twin-fuselage mothership and then dropped from 30,000 feet for the climb to orbit, they announced today.

The new rocket will be funded by Allen through a new company known as Stratolaunch Systems and built by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, of Hawthorne, Calif.

The 1.2-million-pound six-engine carrier aircraft, with a wingspan of 385 feet, will be built by Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif., a company founded by Rutan and now owned by more

Billionaire Paul Allen today announced his grand ambition for the next generation of manned space travel: the largest aircraft ever built, which would be capable of orbital missions with quick turnarounds, greater safety, and better cost-effectiveness than anything previously launched.

At a press conference this morning in Seattle, Allen--a co-founder of Microsoft--along with Burt Rutan unveiled their new company, Stratolaunch Systems. Allen and Rutan previously collaborated on the creation of SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X Prize for being the first privately funded spacecraft to leave the Earth's atmosphere.

Now, Allen and Rutan are at it again, and at more

For the first time, astronomers using NASA's Kepler space telescope have confirmed a roughly Earth-size planet orbiting a sun-like star in the so-called "Goldilocks" zone where water can exist in liquid form on the surface and conditions may be favorable for life as it is known on Earth.

Along with the confirmed extra-solar planet, one of 28 discovered so far by Kepler, researchers today also announced the discovery of 1,094 new exoplanet candidates, pushing the spacecraft's total so far to 2,326, including 10 candidate Earth-size worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars.

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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--A towering Atlas 5 rocket flashed to life and vaulted into space Saturday, putting on a spectacular weekend sky show as it boosted NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory rover on an eight-and-a-half-month, 352-million-mile voyage to the Red Planet.

Equipped with a nuclear power pack, a robot arm, and a suite of sophisticated instruments, the mobile laboratory, dubbed Curiosity in a student naming contest, is expected to spend at least two years looking for organic compounds and signs of past or present habitability in the layered terrain at the heart of a 100-mile-wide crater.more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory rover, the most complex and scientifically powerful robotic spacecraft ever built to explore the surface of another world, is poised for launch Saturday on a high-stakes mission to look for organic compounds and signs of past or present habitability.

If all goes well, the nuclear-powered rover will reach the red planet next August, slamming into the thin martian atmosphere at some 13,200 mph for a nail-biting descent to the floor of a 100-mile-wide crater dominated by a towering 3-mile-high central peak stacked with rocky layers of martian more

After exhaustive work to recover from a dramatic August launch failure, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut blasted off in blizzard-like conditions late Sunday on a delayed flight to the International Space Station, the program's first manned launching since the U.S. shuttle was retired.

Amid steady snow, the Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft roared to life at 11:14:03 p.m. EST (10:14:03 a.m. Monday local time) and quickly climbed away from its frigid launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Trailing a brilliant jet of flame from its core more

After exhaustive work to recover from a dramatic August launch failure, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut was poised for blastoff late Sunday on a delayed flight to the International Space Station, the program's first manned launching since the U.S. shuttle was retired.

Soyuz TMA-22 commander Anton Shkaplerov, board engineer Anatoly Ivanishin, and shuttle veteran Daniel Burbank were scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11:14:04 p.m. EST (10:14:04 a.m. Nov. 14 local time), roughly the moment Earth's rotation carries the pad more

An unmanned Russian Progress cargo ship loaded with 2.9 tons of supplies and equipment completed a smooth automated docking with the International Space Station today, three days after launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

It was the first Progress arrival since an August launch failure and the first successful linkup of a Russian cargo craft since June.

The Progress M-13M spacecraft, the 45th launched to the space station since assembly began in 1998, docked at the station's Pirs module at 7:41 a.m. EDT as the two spacecraft sailed 245 miles above northern China. The docking more