A base on the Moon? That would be awesome! But it can't be done for profit... yet (ESA). For more on this topic, you can listen to me chat with BBC 5live’s Dotun Adebayo (from “Up All Night” on Jan. 28 — at 1hr 26mins into the show) and check out the Al Jazeera article (“Gingrich...

"A big rusty transporter came over the hill and the Jawas sold it for scrap metal..." -- Paul Quinn NASA is giving Mars rover Spirit one more month to signal that she’s still alive before search operations are scaled back and attention shifted to her sister rover Opportunity. Unfortunately,...

Comet Tempel 1 near Stardust-NExT close approach (NASA) A NASA spacecraft, a lonely comet and a Valentine’s date with no comparison. Last night, NASA’s veteran Stardust-NExT mission successfully visited its second comet, Tempel 1. Having already been visited by NASA’s Deep Impact mission...

Solar spicules as imaged by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (NASA) There’s one recurring question I’ve been asking for nearly a decade: Why is the Sun’s corona (its atmosphere) so hot? When asking this out loud I inevitably get the sarcastic “um, because the Sun is…...

There’s not a lot to add to this video, it’s too awesome. It was captured by NASA’s converted DC-8 jet that was flying over Australia when the Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft broke up during re-entry. I’ll let the video do the rest of the talking: Oh yes, and that little dot ahead...

Hayabusa re-enters over the Australian Outback, generating a bright fireball (screen grabs from the JAXA video feed) Staring hard at the live streaming video of the black Australian skies, I was hoping to see a faint streak of light glide across the camera’s field of view. But no, it wasn’t...

The Voyager 2 spacecraft has been speeding through the Solar System since 1977 and it’s seen a lot. Besides scooting past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the probe is now passing through the very limit of the heliosphere (called the heliopause) where it has begun to detect a magnetic field...

Where is this mystical land? (NASA/ESA/HST). Sometimes, words are not enough to describe views of the universe when captured through the lens of the Hubble Space Telescope. This is one of those moments. Kicking off its 20th anniversary (yes, that super-sized telescope has been in space that long —...

Things have been moving fast for NASA in recent weeks, culminating in President Obama’s inspiring speech at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday. I haven’t commented on the new direction for the US space agency’s direction thus far as I’ve needed some time to digest the ramifications...

The Habitation Extension Module (HEM) proposed by UK engineers (University of Bristol) The UK has started its own space agency (at long last) and the agency has a logo. The latter is the big news here. At a time when motivation for manned spaceflight by NASA is dwindling and yet private industry is forcing...