New Frontiers program

A sample from the asteroid Bennu, which could be key to understanding the formation of the solar system and our own planet, is set to be analyzed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston after it reaches Earth in late September.

An asteroid known as Bennu will pass within half the distance of the Earth to the Moon in the year 2135 but the probability of an impact with our planet in the coming centuries is very slight, scientists said on Aug. 11.

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With rubble from an asteroid tucked inside, a NASA spacecraft fired its engines and began the long journey back to Earth on May 10, leaving the ancient space rock in its rearview mirror.

The trip home for the robotic prospector, Osiris-Rex, will take two years.

The American space agency has successfully flown a small helicopter on Mars.

The drone, called Ingenuity, was airborne for less than a minute, but Nasa is celebrating what represents the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world.

Confirmation came via a satellite at Mars which relayed the chopper's data back to Earth.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed on asteroid Bennu last week, and already it's found water on the minor planet, reported Geek.com

Early data from the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission revealed water locked inside Bennu.

Two years after launching from Florida, a NASA spacecraft is closing in on an ancient asteroid, Bennu, for a sample of space dust that could reveal clues to the start of life in the solar system.

The spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, has even snapped its first, blurry pic of the cosmic body, which is about the size of a small mountain, about 500 yards (meters) in diameter.

The discovery of seven Earth-size planets around a nearby star, TRAPPIST-1, is certainly exciting news. But what would it take to visit one of these potentially Earth-like alien worlds?

Pluto has blue skies and patches of frozen water, according to the latest data out Oct. 8 from NASA's unmanned New Horizons probe, which made a historic flyby of the dwarf planet in July.

Never before has Pluto -- a resident of the distant Kuiper Belt, a frigid region of the solar system beyond Neptune that is home to many comets and asteroids -- been observed in such detail.    

An unmanned NASA spacecraft whizzed by Pluto on July 14, making its closest approach in the climax of a decade-long journey to explore the dwarf planet for the first time, the US space agency said.