Scientists on the trail of comets in deep space "reluctantly" announced Friday an end to NASA's Deep Impact mission after nearly a decade that included celestial fly-bys and hundreds of thousands of ...

Blasting a hole in a comet with an earth-launched spacecraft sounds like the stuff of science fiction. Or fare for a Hollywood blockbuster. But this example of American space ingenuity is real and ...

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft is running on fumes after chasing down two comets in the last five years, but the probe's cosmic work may not be done yet. Deep Impact cruised to within 435 miles (700 ...

If the $333 million mission is successful, Deep Impact will be the first spacecraft to touch the surface of a comet. In 2004, NASA's Stardust craft flew within 147 miles of Comet Wild 2 on its way ...

LOS ANGELES — NASA said Tuesday it is recycling two used spacecraft to lead new robotic missions to study comets and planets around other stars. The encore performances of the Deep Impact and Stardust ...

PASADENA, Calif. – They weren’t a red, white, and blue spectacle, but the cosmic fireworks NASA created by blasting a hole in a comet were something for scientists to cheer about this Fourth of July ...

PASADENA, Calif. - A NASA spacecraft was speedily closing in Friday on its target, a comet scientists hope to smash open this weekend, producing celestial fireworks for the Independence Day weekend.

When NASA's DART mission crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos, the first stage of the impact saw the spacecraft's solar panels strike and pulverize two large boulders on the target, debris from which ...

These images, showing ejecta around the impacted near-Earth asteroids, were taken during the approach (with Didymos to the upper left) and departure (Didymos to the upper right) of DART's companion ...