Panel says NASA should skip moon, fly elsewhere; suggests landing on asteroid or Martian moon

WASHINGTON — NASA needs to make a major detour on its grand plans to return astronauts to the moon, a special independent panel told the White House Thursday.

Obama hosts White House party where the stars (and the moon and Jupiter) are the real stars

WASHINGTON — Call it a star party with real star power.

Argentine astronomer calculated orbits of Halley’s Comet and Saturn’s outermost moon

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Pedro Elias Zadunaisky, an Argentine astronomer and mathematician whose calculations helped determine the orbit of Saturn’s outermost moon, Phoebe, as well as Halley’s Comet, died Wednesday. He was 91.

Crash course in geology: Water-seeking probe to smack into moon as world watches

WASHINGTON — NASA will throw a one-two punch at the big old moon Friday and the whole world will have ringside seats for the lunar dust-up.

NASA’s Spitzer telescope discovers gigantic never-before-seen ring around Saturn

PASADENA, Calif. — The Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the biggest but never-before-seen ring around the planet Saturn, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced late Tuesday.

Failure to launch: Obama space panel says Bush’s $100 billion plan moon return plan won’t fly

WASHINGTON — A White House panel of independent space experts says NASA’s return-to-the-moon plan just won’t fly.

India abandons satellite after losing contact with orbiting satellite

NEW DELHI — India’s space agency has abandoned the country’s only satellite orbiting the moon after efforts to revive communication with it failed, an official said Monday.

Paper moon: NASA’s grand return plans may fall short due to of lack of money, experts say

WASHINGTON — NASA will test the powerful first stage of its new Ares moon rocket Thursday, a milestone in a program that has already spent $7 billion for a rocket that astronauts may never use.

On 40th anniversary, Apollo 11 astronauts meet Obama, who makes no promise of moon or Mars

WASHINGTON — The same question that could have been asked 40 years ago moments after Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon is still being asked today: Now what?

Researchers: Apollo moon rocks still offering clues to origins of solar system, life on Earth

ST. LOUIS — Forty years after the Apollo 11 astronauts made their historic lunar landing, the rocks they collected are still helping researchers learn more about the moon, the solar system, even about how life on Earth began.

Apollo 11 astronauts meet President Obama as part of 40th anniversary of first moon landing

WASHINGTON — Hailing the Apollo 11 astronauts as “three genuine American heroes,” President Barack Obama said Monday that exploration spurs ingenuity and inspires students in math and science.

About to meet the president, Apollo 11 astronauts say Mars beckons more than moon return trip

WASHINGTON — The first astronauts to walk on the moon want President Barack Obama to aim for a new destination: Mars.

Moon landing is old news to Apollo 11 astronauts, who call for giant leap to Mars

WASHINGTON — The astronauts who first landed on the moon aren’t dwelling on their small lunar steps. Instead, two of them on Sunday urged mankind to take a giant leap to Mars.

Armstrong said ‘one small step for a man’ in famous moon line, but Earth missed a word

WASHINGTON — When Neil Armstrong first spoke from the moon, he said one thing and people on Earth heard another. What the world heard was grammatically flubbed: “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” Armstrong insists he said: “That’s one small step for ‘a’ man.” It’s just that people just didn’t hear it.

Indian scientists improvise to rescue maiden lunar mission from overheating, failure

NEW DELHI — India’s only satellite orbiting the moon came close to failure after overheating but scientists improvised to save it and have achieved more than 90 percent of the mission’s objectives, an official said Friday.

Lunar science probe sends back moon shots less than week after launch, another orbiting moon

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s new lunar probe launched less than a week ago has already sent back some shots of the moon.

Salts found in icy plumes ejected from a Saturn moon; adds spice to search for life in space

NEW YORK — Scientists have found new evidence that one of Saturn’s moons has an ocean beneath its surface. That’s important because liquid water is a key ingredient for life.

AP Interview: Former NASA head casts critical eye on Obama team’s slowdown on new space plan

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Michael Griffin has moved from the administrator’s suite atop NASA headquarters in Washington to the small, bare office of a new engineering professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Japan’s first lunar probe ends mission, crash-lands on moon

TOKYO — Japan’s first lunar probe made a controlled crash landing on the moon Thursday, successfully completing a 19-month mission to study the Earth’s nearest neighbor, Japan’s space agency said.

US, Europeans consider partnership to explore Mars in coming decade; put ego aside, NASA says

LOS ANGELES — For almost half a century, the United States has dominated the exploration of Mars from the first grainy black-and-white pictures of the craggy surface to the more recent discovery of ice.