The History of the Space Shuttle in Pictures

From its first launch 30 years ago to its final launch on July 8th 2011, NASA's Space Shuttle program has seen moments of dizzying inspiration and of crushing disappointment. The program has sent up 135 missions, ferrying more than 350 humans and thousands of tons of material and equipment into low Earth orbit. Fourteen astronauts have lost their lives along the way -- the missions have always been risky, the engineering complex, the hazards extreme. We'd like to look back at the past few decades of shuttle development and missions as we await the next steps toward human space flight.

It Fell from the Sky

It Fell from the Sky: 

The Tunguska Event

Though it flattened all the trees in every direction for 30 miles, the airburst that took place over Siberia's Tunguska River left no crater behind. Scientists theorize that the blast, caused probably by a meteor or comet fragment that exploded a few miles over the surface of the Earth, was 1000 times as powerful as the bomb that fell on Hiroshima, Japan.

What Will NASA Name Its New Spaceship?

NASA has unveiled the design of its Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the next-generation spaceship that will carry astronauts to an asteroid and then, later, to Mars. But don't get too attached to that clunky name; we'll be calling it something else soon enough.

MPCV is jargony NASA-speak for the new deep space vehicle, just as "Space Transportation System" refers to the space shuttle program (that's why shuttle Endeavour's last mission is STS-134, for example) and "Crew Exploration Vehicle" denotes the spaceship we know as Orion.

The Strangest Alien Planets

Check Out Some of the Strangest Alien Planets Believed to be Found:

The Smallest

 This artist's concept of Kepler-10b shows the smallest known exoplanet, announced in January 2011.

Is the Rocky Alien Planet Gliese 581d Really Habitable?

An image released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) shows an artist's impression of the atmosphere around a super-Earth exoplanet, the name given to rocky exoplanets only a few times larger than our own. Gliese 581d, a rocky world orbiting a nearby star, has been confirmed as the first planet outside our solar system to meet key requirements for sustaining life, scientists say.

A rocky alien planet called Gliese 581d may be the first known world beyond Earth capable of supporting life as we know it, a new study suggests.

Finding an Ocean of Fire on Jupiter's Moon Io

Old spacecraft never die. Well, actually, they do die, and sometimes in spectacular fashion — burning up as they plunge through a planet's atmosphere or into the fires of the sun.

Mercury, Venus, Mars & Jupiter Converge in Night Sky

During this month of May, four bright planets will engage in a fascinating dance with each other in the morning sky.

Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter will be involved in a series of conjunctions, joined at the end of the month by a very thin, waning crescent moon.  We could even refer to this as a "celestial summit meeting," or more precisely, a series of summit meetings during May 2011.

Top astronomy Images

Heat from the interior of Saturn shows red in this false-colour composite image, constructed from data gathered by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer on Nasa's Cassini spacecraft