A new electric thruster that blasts out iodine just passed a key test in orbit, a milestone that could help lead to smaller, cheaper and higher-performance spacecraft engines.

The first operation to ever collide a spacecraft with an asteroid is set to launch Wednesday (Nov. 24) and will see whether humans can deflect a potentially disastrous cosmic impact.

The fastest spacecraft ever flown, NASA's Parker Solar Probe, regularly experiences high-speed collisions with dust particles that create explosions of plasma, a new study finds.

Future Mars astronauts could make rocket fuel on the Red Planet using air, water and sunlight, a new study finds. The technology could fuel the astronauts' flights back to Earth.

Potential evidence of extraterrestrial radio signals from Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth, were likely just interference from human technology, researchers say.

Astronomers may have for the first time detected evidence that a distant planet had its atmosphere partially blown away by a giant impact, a new study finds.

Mysterious radio signals may blast out from auroras on distant stars triggered by hidden planets, a new study finds.

Catastrophic floods from overflowing lakes on early Mars may have carved out many of the Red Planet's valleys, a new study finds.

Astronomers may have captured the best view yet of matter colliding with the surface of a young star, findings that may shed light on what the sun looked like in its youth.

Astronomers have uncovered evidence of explosions triggered by dead stars ramming into live stars, possible proof of a new type of supernova, a new study finds.

Mysterious repeating pulses of radio waves may come from a hitherto unknown kind of extraordinarily powerful cosmic magnet, and not pairs of stars as previously suggested, a new study finds.

Bright reflections that radar detected beneath the south pole of Mars may not be underground lakes as previously thought but deposits of clay instead, a new study finds.

A fizzled example of a gamma-ray burst, the most powerful kind of explosion known in the universe, suggests these outbursts can be surprisingly brief, researchers say.

In the wisp-thin sky of Jupiter's moon Ganymede, the largest satellite in the solar system, astronomers have for the first time detected evidence of water vapor, a new study finds.

A mysterious whiff of an unstable chemical in the skies of Venus may not be a sign of life but the result of explosive volcanic eruptions, a new study finds.

Mysterious flares of X-rays from Jupiter's auroras suggest that the giant planet's "northern lights" may possess unexpected similarities with those of Earth, a new study finds.