Space

NASA, the U.S. space agency, has put people on the moon and robots on Mars, and has sent a probe rocketing towards Pluto and beyond, but contrary to popular belief it did not invent the powdery drink mix Tang. In fact, General Foods began to test-market the orange-flavored concoction in 1957, a year before NASA was born. However, the space agency did help launch Tang on the road to fame when astronaut John Glenn, in 1962, selected the mix for eating experiments in orbit. Tang flew on all Gemini and Apollo missions, a fact that General Foods used to its advertising advantage. Check out nine more technologies tied up with NASA’s history.

The discovery of tiny “nanodiamonds” supports a controversial theory that a catastrophic bombardment of space rocks altered the course of Earth history.

About 12,900 years ago, Earth was escaping the grips of an ice age when something triggered a sudden refreeze.

New observations of a massive intergalactic collision are raising more questions about the mysterious nature of dark matter.

The study looked at three huge galaxy clusters that are merging into an even bigger cluster called Abell 520, located about three billion light-years from Earth.

A comet exploded over North America about 13,000 years ago, causing a long bout of climate cooling, according to a controversial new theory presented today.

The extraterrestrial impact may help explain massive mammal die-offs and the demise of one of the earliest American cultures.

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism venture of billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, is the first step toward hypersonic travel between Earth-based cities, according to a company executive.

The most detailed x-ray image yet of one of the youngest known supernova remnants—the debris cloud created when a massive star explodes—solves a long-standing mystery about how the star died, an astronomer announced on Tuesday.

Do extraterrestrials sweep their skies with radar to scan for incoming missiles?

If so, Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, thinks he can find the radio signals leaked from warring alien civilizations.