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With the click of a mouse, Sandy Freund Kasper sent a command to NASA’s comet-hunting Stardust space probe to burn all its fuel, starting a sequence that would shut the spacecraft down after a 12-year run.

The Hubble Space Telescope got its first peek at a mysterious giant green blob in outer space and found that it’s strangely alive. The bizarre glowing blob is giving birth to new stars, some only a couple million years old, in remote areas of the universe where stars don’t normally form.

Skywatchers got an early holiday present this year: A total eclipse of the moon.

Scientists said Tuesday they have found the best evidence yet of ice volcanoes on Saturn’s giant moon Titan. Unlike volcanoes on Earth, such a volcano on Titan may spew ice and hydrocarbons instead of molten lava.

Lately, a handful of new discoveries make it seem more likely that we are not alone - that there is life somewhere else in the universe.

The universe may glitter with far more stars than even Carl Sagan imagined when he rhapsodized about billions upon billions.

A NASA spacecraft sped past a small comet Thursday, beaming pictures back to Earth that gave scientists a rare close-up view of its center. Mission controllers burst into applause upon seeing images from the flyby that revealed a peanut-shaped comet belching jets of poisonous gases.

Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone for life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right.

A $2 billion machine that will jump-start the search for antimatter and other phenomena was loaded onto a massive U.S. Air Force plane Wednesday for the final leg of its journey on Earth before it catches the last scheduled shuttle flight into space.

Scientists say they’ve identified a sun-like star with as many as seven different planets - including one that might be the smallest ever found outside the solar system.