Space-watchers saw the handwriting on the wall months ago, but now it’s official: NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, by far the most successful planet-hunting telescope in history, isn’t coming back. Engineers ...

Thirty years ago this week, two Swiss astronomers announced that they had spotted the first known planet orbiting a Sun-like ...

From GPS to innovations in computing and optics, technologies developed for space research at UC Santa Cruz touch nearly ...

Scientists have found thousands of planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets, throughout the galaxy. This artist’s concept shows how they range in size and composition, although scientists ...

Natalie Batalha, a former project scientist for NASA’s Kepler Mission, will lead the audience on a journey to the stars, providing insight into future missions to search for lives beyond the Earth in ...

A huge "super-Earth" with an extreme climate that results in it being habitable for only part of its orbit has been discovered orbiting a star 2,472 light years away. And the most remarkable thing is, ...

When the Kepler space telescope malfunctioned last spring, it looked as though its incredibly successful planet-hunting mission might be over—and NASA made that sad fact official a few months later.

Since being launched into space in March 2009, NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been searching the Milky Way for planets that might sustain liquid water. Named after the German astronomer who discovered ...

Space scientists look back on three decades of exoplanet discoveries—from rows of massive ‘super-Earths‘ to worlds with ...