New telescopes revealed a big clue about the origins of a huge asteroid that’s been dancing around Earth for centuries as it orbits the sun.

Something mysterious is going on at the Sun. In defiance of all logic, its atmosphere gets much, much hotter the farther it stretches from the Sun’s blazing surface. Temperatures in the corona — the Sun’s outer atmosphere — spike to 3...

At any given moment, as many as 10 million wild jets of solar material burst from the sun's surface. They erupt as fast as 60 miles per second, and can reach lengths of 6,000 miles before collapsing. These are spicules, and despite their...

The sun is the primary force in Earth's climate system. Sunlight warms our world. Sunlight drives atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. Sunlight powers the process of photosynthesis that plants need to grow. Sunlight causes...

Oliver Price, a planetary science Ph.D. student at University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom, has developed a new image-processing technique to mine through the wealth of data about comet tails....

A total solar eclipse passed across North America on August 21, 2017. Are there other total solar eclipses in the solar system?

Skin cancer is a big problem. Sunscreen can help protect your skin. All this is very well known. It turns out, though, that the active ingredients in sunscreen can get into peoples' bloodstreams in pretty high concentrations. And the...

Excerpts from 14 short films about NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The concept of a Star Tracker can be traced back to the early sailors who used to navigate the open seas using star field patterns. Star Trackers act as the eyes of the satellite pointing it in the right direction. This is important to...

In celebration of the 31st anniversary of the launching of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, 1990, astronomers aimed the renowned observatory at a brilliant “celebrity star,” one of the brightest stars seen in our galaxy,...

Summer 2019, NASA's Space Environment Testbeds, or SET, will launch on its mission to study how to better protect satellites in space. SET studies the very nature of space itself -- which isn't completely empty, but brimming with...

A study conducted by the British Association of Dermatologists shows that using a moisturizer with sun protection factor isn't as effective as applying sunscreen.

GOES is a series of weather satellites providing continuous delivery of real time data helping meteorologists predict weather on Earth with great accuracy. The GOES satellites also look at the Sun and send critical data to space weather...

Humans have always looked up at the sky. They used astronomy to track time, orient their cities, decide when to plant their crops, and even based their religious practices on their celestial world. But there was much more to learn.

Dr. Amy Simon has always been fascinated with space. From a young age she dreamed of lifting off in the space shuttle, just like her hero, astronaut Sally Ride. Over the years her interest in space remained, and she eventually found...

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, spacecraft was launched on Feb. 11, 2010, and began collecting science data a few months later. With two imaging instruments – the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly and the Helioseismic and Magnetic...

What NASA calls its 'Heliophysics Observatory' is an impressive fleet of spacecraft designed (often with international partnership) to study the relationship between the Sun, Earth, and Solar System. Flying in an array of trajectories...

Two NASA spacecraft have provided the most comprehensive movie ever of a mysterious process at the heart of all explosions on the sun: magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection happens when magnetic field lines come together, break...

NASA scientists are seeking a strange breed of northern lights in the Arctic. When these auroras shine, Earth’s atmosphere leaks into space. In the tiny Arctic town of Ny-Ålesund, where polar bears outnumber people, winter means three...

Have more questions about Earth’s radiation donuts? Ask our scientists in the comments below! Join Van Allen Probes scientists Feb. 12 from 1-3 p.m. EST10 a.m. - 12 p.m. PST to get your questions answered! Earth is surrounded by giant,...

Earth’s so-called “second moon” will make one final pass this week before floating out into space forever.

The orbit of Earth on a tilted axis around the sun leads to the seasons. The resulting change of angle of the sun, and length of day controls how warm we get at different times of the year. With those changes in seasons come changes in...

Reuel Marc Gerecht is speaking at the IQ2 debate "Iran is a paper tiger" on February 24th 2011. Reuel Marc Gerecht - IQ2 highlights

We look at the sun rising every day. It's bright, it's big and it warms us up. Our sun happens to be the brightest object in our universe and it has captured our curiosity and imaginations throughout history. Our sun is very dynamic and...