WASHINGTON - Skywatchers in the Western Hemisphere will be able to view the full moon in shades of red as it slides into the shadow of the Earth during a total lunar eclipse Wednesday night.If weather conditions are favorable, the entire eclipse will be visible in South America and most of North America late Wednesday. […]

WASHINGTON - Two weeks before the US space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to lift-off, the US space agency NASA says a piece of equipment that was to fly on the mission was deliberately sabotaged. And as if that weren’t enough, there were reports Thursday that astronauts flew while drunk.
During a briefing on launch preparations for […]

WASHINGTON - Officials at the U.S. space agency NASA says they are working to help restore computers that crashed in the Russian section of the International Space Station, threatening to lengthen the mission of the U.S. space shuttle.
Three guidance, navigation and control computers, as well as a set of command and control computers, aboard the […]

WASHINGTON - A computer glitch caused NASA officials to run through emergency procedures Tuesday to make sure no fire had occured aboard the International Space Station.
The incident occured while two newly-installed solar arrays were being unfurled by the space station.
An alarm sounded in the Russian-built Zarya control module, prompting mission controllers to run through emergency […]

WASHINGTON - Scientists have announced they have begun assembling an Internet catalog of every living thing on Earth. The organizers say the new website will become the single location where researchers can go to study the nearly 2 million known plant and animal species.  This so-called Encyclopedia of Life is expected to be a major […]

WASHINGTON - The U.S. space agency NASA says storm damage repairs are likely to keep the space shuttle Atlantis grounded at least until May, two months after it was originally set to visit the International Space Station. NASA officials say the delay will not postpone completion of the research outpost in three years.
NASA says the […]

WASHINGTON - Early next month, construction crews will begin carving out a mountain near the North Pole to make way for a unique underground seed storage facility. The so-called doomsday vault will be the ultimate safeguard for the world’s agricultural heritage.
The Svalbard International Seed Vault is named for the Norwegian islands where the mountain is […]

TORONTO (RFE/RL) — At least 40 countries around the world, including China, Uzbekistan, and Iran, engage in some kind of Internet censorship. But Canadian researchers have devised new software to give people in these countries unfettered Internet access without getting them into trouble.
Ronald Deibert, director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, calls it a […]

WASHINGTON - The Hubble Space Telescope is temporarily idle because of power supply problems. The U.S. space agency NASA says the orbiting observatory’s main camera may not regain full function, but other instruments are expected to resume their searches in a few days.
NASA says Hubble’s problem is with the power supply to the Advanced Camera […]

WASHINGTON - The American space shuttle Discovery has docked with the International Space Station, beginning a week-long mission of major renovations to the orbiting laboratory.
Crews from the U.S. space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station are preparing for Tuesday’s space walk, the first of three for the current mission.
Astronauts will begin the installation of […]

WASHINGTON - After a number of delays, Microsoft has officially launched the newest version of Windows, called Vista.  The new operating system, which Microsoft says will make computers more secure and easier to use, was introduced to the business community last week.  But as VOA’s Mil Arcega reports, Vista will not be available to consumer […]

WASHINGTON - A rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Friday carrying a replacement satellite to help improve the accuracy of the space-based U.S. navigation network, the Global Positioning System. The government hopes to enhance the system by linking it to a similar Russian satellite network and one being developed for Europe.
The new satellite is […]

Monster Stellar Flare Seen by NASA Scientists Dwarfs All Others
GREENBELT, Md. — Scientists using NASA’s Swift satellite have spotted a stellar flare on a nearby star so powerful that, had it been from our sun, it would have triggered a mass extinction on Earth. The flare was perhaps the most energetic magnetic stellar explosion […]

NASA Approves Mission and Names Crew for Return to Hubble
WASHINGTON — Shuttle astronauts will make one final house call to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope as part of a mission to extend and improve the observatory’s capabilities through 2013.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced plans for a fifth servicing mission to Hubble Tuesday during a meeting with […]

BELLINGHAM - A tsunami this past July off the south coast of Java left 700 people dead. The casualty toll demonstrates both progress and shortcomings as Pacific Rim nations strive to build a robust tsunami warning system. Two years ago, when the Indian Ocean tsunami swept entire communities into the sea, there were no tsunami […]

WASHINGTON - The International Space Station has received a new pair of giant solar energy panels that will double the amount of power to the outpost.  Spacewalking astronauts have begun the task of connecting them to the outpost.
The 17-ton girder holding the folded solar arrays arrived on the U.S. shuttle Atlantis Monday. On Tuesday, Canadian […]

WASHINGTON - Officials with the U.S. space agency NASA say the space shuttle Atlantis appears to have escaped any damage from falling debris from its external fuel tank during Saturday’s launch. The flight was postponed for nearly two weeks due to inclement weather and technical problems.With just minutes left of the official countdown in the […]

WASHINGTON - The U.S. National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) has picked the aerospace company Lockheed Martin to build the next generation spacecraft that will return man to the moon for the first time in more than three decades.
NASA administrator Doug Cooke said competition for the multibillion-dollar contract to build the next manned lunar spaceship […]

Watchdog Group Warns Against Free AOL Software
WASHINGTON - The software watchdog group StopBadware.org, ran by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society of Harvard Law School and the Oxford Internet Institute, has opened a dialogue with AOL with concerns over the presence of badware, also known as malware, in the now-free AOL 9.0 software. Badware […]

WASHINGTON - The U.S. space agency NASA has taken a step to transfer the job of resupplying the International Space Station to the private sector. NASA hopes crews and cargo can fly up on commercial rockets so it can focus on returning astronauts to the moon in the next decade and eventually sending crews to […]

SYDNEY - The printed version of Australian newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, has published an article reporting the loss of the original recordings of the Apollo Moon landings.
Under the title “One giant blunder for humankind: how NASA lost moon pictures”, the article reveals that the famous tapes went missing from the Goddard Space Flight Center […]

WASHINGTON - Astronauts aboard the US shuttle Discovery learned from mission control Sunday that they are cleared to return to Earth in one week after an inspection of the exterior of the spacecraft. There had been some concern about whether a dangling piece of fabric filler would have to be repaired during a spacewalk. But […]

WASHINGTON - Two U.S. shuttle astronauts bounced at the end of a long pole in space Saturday as they circled the earth docked at the International Space Station. They were testing whether the boom is suitable as a platform from which to make shuttle repairs in orbit.
Like a circus highwire act, astronauts Mike Fossum and […]

WASHINGTON - The Space Shuttle Discovery rocketed into orbit Tuesday, the first shuttle launch in nearly a year and the first-ever on America’s Independence Day holiday.After two cancellations due to poor weather conditions, Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida under mostly-sunny skies for a 12-day mission.
Headed by Commander Steven Lindsay, Discovery’s seven-member crew, will […]

WASHINGTON - The U.S. space shuttle Discovery is set to launch to the International Space Station July 1, a decision that has caused controversy. The space agency, NASA, is sending the ship up for the first time in nearly one year, despite objections from two top agency officials that engineers have not done everything possible […]