NASA Retires Comet Hunter

(NEWSER) - An amino acid necessary to the construction of proteins, and therefore life on Earth, has been found in a comet that passes through our solar system, Space.com reports. Glycine was found in samples picked up by a NASA spacecraft in 2004. The discovery suggests that life’s building blocks could have been “delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts,” a researcher says. More»

It'll be within 125 miles of Manhattan-sized rock

(NEWSER) - A NASA spacecraft is about to make a massive comet its valentine. If all goes as planned, the Stardust spacecraft will get up close and personal today with a comet half the size of Manhattan that’s hurtling through space at 24,000 miles per hour, the Washington Post reports. The spacecraft will be a scant 125 miles from the rock, called Tempel 1—which is pretty impressive, given that the rendezvous will be 210 million miles from Earth. More»

World's first commercial supply ship has 'new car' smell

(AP) - Space station astronauts floated into the Dragon today, a day after its heralded arrival as the world's first commercial supply ship. NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, the first one inside the docked capsule, said the Dragon looks like it carries about as much cargo as his pickup truck back home in Houston. It has the smell of a brand new car, he added. "I spent quite a bit of time poking around in here this morning, just looking at the engineering and the layout, and I'm very pleased," Pettit said from the brilliant white compartment. More»

Private space firm hopes to dock Dragon next week

(NEWSER) - Commercial space firm SpaceX may be just days away from going where no private company has gone before: the International Space Station. The company is preparing to send its unmanned Dragon capsule on a mission to supply the ISS with 1,100 pounds of food, water, and other cargo. The launch, which could happen as soon as Monday, marks the next step in space strategy for the US after the retirement of the shuttle fleet, the Washington Post notes. NASA aims to turn ISS missions into low-cost, largely private ventures, leaving the agency free to plan missions further afield. More»

Phobos-Grunt, carrying toxic fuel, will come down in mid-January

(NEWSER) - A failed Russian spacecraft will plummet back to Earth next month, and more than two dozen chunks of it could make impact, along with a load of toxic fuel. The expected crash date of the Phobos-Grunt probe is mid-January, and nearly 400 pounds of fragments could survive re-entry, reports Fox News . The Russian probe launched last month —it was going to land on one of the moons of Mars and collect samples— but failed to hit its planned trajectory. It's too early to predict where it will come down, but NASA's best bet, as usual, is in an ocean somewhere. More»