Inspiration

NASA's Opportunity rover has been silent since June 10, when a planet-encircling dust storm cut off solar power for the nearly-15-year-old rover. Now that scientists think the global dust storm is "decaying" -- meaning more dust is falling out of the atmosphere than is being raised back into it -- skies might soon clear enough for the solar-powered rover to recharge and attempt to "phone home."

Hours before the rise of the very star it will study, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched from Florida Sunday to begin its journey to the Sun, where it will undertake a landmark mission.

Launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Parker Solar Probe will make its journey all the way to the Sun’s atmosphere, or corona — closer to the Sun than any spacecraft in history.

A new paper published in Science this week suggests that liquid water may be sitting under a layer of ice at Mars' south pole.

The European Space Agency announced that radar data collected by its Mars Express spacecraft point to a pond of liquid water buried under layers of ice and dust in the south polar region of Mars.

Marking the anniversary of New Horizons' historic flight through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, mission scientists have released the most accurate natural color images of Pluto and Charon.