Vast ocean found beneath ice of Saturn moon

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists have uncovered a vast ocean beneath the icy surface of a Saturn moon.Italian and American researchers made the discovery using Cassini.

"It's pure science:" Local teachers slated for NASA journey

MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- Two Milwaukee-area teachers will be heading to a special place -- out of this world, you might say.

NASA responds after backlash over Beyonce song

Sad news for fans of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air -- and NASA is responding after backlash over a Beyonce song.

NASA’s high hopes for unmanned aircraft

You’re probably familiar with drones in the military sense, but NASA is working on ways to make our lives better through the use of what it calls unmanned aircraft–planes that fly without pilots on board.

NASA grounded by government shutdown

(CNN) -- Two U.S. astronauts in space, and their support staffs on Earth, will keep working through the government shutdown that began Tuesday.But almost all the rest of NASA has been shuttered, just one of many federal agencies affected when the government shut down at midnight Tuesday because of Congress' inability to pass a budget.Many of those agencies took to social media and other online venues to share the news.

NASA wants you to stay in bed for 70 days

(HLN) -- If spending a few months in bed sounds like your idea of a dream come true, NASA may be able to help.The space agency is looking for participants willing to lie in bed at its Flight Analogs Research Unit at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, for 70 days in a row without getting up, except for specific tests.While in bed, you can read, watch TV and even use the internet.

NASA deep-sixes Deep Impact comet hunter

(CNN) -- The most-traveled comet-hunter mission in history has ended, NASA announced with reluctance Friday as it shut the book on the Deep Impact spacecraft."It has revolutionized our understanding of comets and their activity," said Mike A'Hearn, the mission's principal investigator at the University of Maryland in College Park.In its nearly nine years in space, the spacecraft "has produced far more data than we had planned," including half a million images of celestial objects, A'Hearn said in a news release.The decision to declare the mission complete was made by the project team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, after it lost communication with the spacecraft after August 8 and could not re-establish it.By then, it had traveled across 4.7 billion miles of space."It was scheduled to talk to us on August 14 and never showed up," said Timothy Larson, project manager and deputy director for safety and success at JPL.Engineers believe the problem was caused by a software bug.

Voyager 1 probe becomes first man-made object to leave solar system

(CNN) -- NASA's Voyager 1 probe has become the first man-made object to enter interstellar space, the U.S. space agency announced Thursday.Scientists report they have strong evidence that the unmanned spacecraft has crossed the magnetic boundary separating the solar system's sun, planets and solar wind from the rest of the galaxy.

Did you 'wave at Saturn'? NASA's got your picture

(CNN) -- Remember when we all waved at Saturn last month while the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft took our picture?

NASA sending a 3-D printer into space

(CNN) -- When traveling through space, there are certain items you know you're going to need.

MPS teachers back from NASA training at Kennedy Space Center

MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- Educators in the Milwaukee Public School District have said many students learn better through hands on, problem-solving opportunities.

NASA attempts to rescue planet-hunting probe

(CNN) -- Stargazers crossed their fingers Thursday as NASA attempted to revive the planet-hunting Kepler probe, idled since a piece of critical equipment gave out in orbit two months ago.Kepler has been sidelined since mid-May, when a reaction wheel that helps aim the spacecraft's telescope failed.

NASA cuts spacewalk outside International Space Station short

(CNN) -- Water observed pooling inside an astronaut's helmet was reason enough for NASA to cut short a spacewalk Tuesday morning.The spacewalk outside the International Space Station was planned to last for six and a half hours, but ended after one hour and 32 minutes, said NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries.

NASA's IBEX probe has new information about our solar system's tail

(CNN) -- Thanks to solar wind blowing out from the sun in all directions at a million miles per hour, material from comets gets whipped back into a formation that looks like a tail.Now, scientists know that our solar system has a tail of its own, with a surprising shape.NASA researchers working with data from the Interstellar Boundary Explorer announced Wednesday they have for the first time mapped the solar system's tail, called the heliotail.

NASA telescope to study mysterious part of the sun

(CNN) -- How do the outer reaches of the sun get so hot?That's one of the questions that NASA has set out to answer by launching a new telescope that will stare into a mysterious zone between the sun's surface and outer atmosphere.Material that travels through the region, known as the solar chromosphere, heats up from about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius) at the sun's surface to temperatures as high as 3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees celsius) farther out, according to NASA.The agency says its IRIS spacecraft, which reached its orbit Thursday evening after taking off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, will angle its telescope to study "how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up" in the chromosphere on its way to the outer atmosphere, the corona."IRIS will show the solar chromosphere in more detail than has ever been observed before," Adrian Daw, deputy project scientist, said in a NASA article ahead of the launch. "My opinion is that we are bound to see something we didn't expect to see."What causes the corona's intense heat has been "a scientific mystery for more than 50 years," according to NASA's Solar System Exploration unit.