Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA engineers have developed a tiny but powerful laser that could one day help astronauts find water on the Moon. Smaller than a US quarter, the laser makes use of quantum mechanical effects to produce a THz beam that can highlight hidden water.

New computer models suggest that Venus may have been habitable as recently as 700 million years ago.

Saturn may sport the most famous rings in the solar system, but it’s far from the only thing with some bling. Now, two new studies have found evidence of new rings in the inner solar system – a dusty one in the orbit of Mercury and a new set of asteroids following Venus’ path around the Sun.

A team of scientists has studied 25 years' worth of satellite data, and calculated that the sea level isn't rising at a steady rate, it's accelerating. If the trend continues, the total sea level rise could be twice as high as previous projections by 2100.

A sandstone slab covered in fossilized footprints has been excavated from the grounds of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It contains 70 tracks from at least eight different species, including rarely-seen interactions between both dinosaurs and mammals.

A new instrument developed by NASA could function as “a rover’s sense of smell” to aid the search for alien life. Using lidar, a light-based system like radar, the instrument can detect organic particles that indicate living organisms, and even determine how recently that life may have been present.

Vaporless clouds have been spotted on Saturn's moon Titan for the second time. A new theory says that a process involving solid state chemistry might be involved in producing the unlikely formations.

For over forty years, NASA has been launching satellites to image the Earth continously and now the agency says it plans to launch LandSat 9 and to continue the mission as long as possible.

April 24 will mark a significant milestone in the life of one of mankind's greatest scientific instruments – the 25-year anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. Join us as we celebrate the history and achievements of the telescope that inspired a generation.

The hunt for present or past life on Mars got a boost as NASA's Curiosity rover records spikes in atmospheric methane ten times greater than previously measured by the unmanned probe.

Mission operators working from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are undergoing final adjustments for orbital insertion of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft, due to take place September 21.

A laser-based instrument set for deployment on the International Space Station will probe the depths of Earth's forests to reveal their 3D architecture in a bid to learn more about the role trees play in the carbon cycle and wider ecosystem.