President Barack Obama's fiscal 2014 budget proposal contains a brand-new idea that may be the most exciting and interesting one in the history of exploration—certainly since the Apollo project. Although, there is no Cold War or superpower rivalry to fuel it, the asteroid retrieval mission represents an opportunity to sustain American leadership in human space exploration with technological innovation and engineering prowess.

Scientists have “terabytes” of data from NASA's Kepler extra-solar planet-finder to analyze, but the failure of a second reaction control wheel on the space telescope probably means it will not be able to measure more of the faint flickers of distant stars when a planet passes in front of them.

U.S. Air Force controllers will slot an updated GPS satellite into the mid-Earth-orbit timing and navigation constellation following its successful launch May 15 on this United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 from Cape Canaveral. Liftoff of the 3,600-lb. spacecraft came at the opening of its launch window at 5:38 p.m. EDT. The launch vehicle's Centaur upper stage ignited twice during the 3-hr. 24-min. mission and included a 3-hr. coast phase between burns.

Sequestration setting up NASA for more start-stop development

Additive manufacturing could create structures from lunar materials

German research aims to speed composites production through collaborative automation

Japanese space programs face strict new reality

Inexpensive satellites little bigger than a Rubik's Cube have been the provenance of university and small research projects for more than a decade. Increasingly, innovations from the smartphone world are showing how these classroom projects can play outsized roles in space science.