deep space

(Newser) - The moon may have to start earning its keep if NASA gets its way. With the far side of our lunar satellite a perfect environment for delicate, deep-space measurements, two research teams are furiously plotting ways to deploy astronomy equipment there. If astronauts return to the moon after 2019, they...

(Newser) - The Navy tonight struck an errant spy satellite with its first missile shot, the AP reports. A ship in the Pacific hit the satellite as it passed about 130 miles above the ocean. The military says it needed to destroy the satellite before it crashed to Earth because the toxic...

(Newser) - Astronomers have added 14 “invisible galaxies” to their map of the heavens, thanks to an imaginative breakthrough and a massive telescope. Researchers realized that some galaxies might be hidden by the bright lights of quasars behind them, so they scanned quasar data for “dips” where those lights might...

(Newser) - In a cost-cutting move, NASA is shutting down its futuristic think tank, source of way-ahead-of-the-curve ideas, many of them worthy of a Star Trek script. Closing the Institute for Advanced Concepts will save $4 million out of NASA’s $16 billion dollar budget. But former NASA scientist Keith Cowing describes...