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Moon dust gathered by Neil Armstrong discovered in warehouse after 40 years

Several miscellaneous bits and pieces of the first moon mission have orbited back into our field of view lately.

In March, it was pieces of the rocket that propelled Apollo 11 spaceward, kindly dragged from their watery grave by Amazon CEO and space enthusiast Jeff Bezos.

And more recently, the auction block played host to Buzz Aldrin's space jammies, as well as Neil Armstrong's jumpin' heartbeat as he first set foot on the lunar surface.

Now, thanks to Karen Nelson, a tidy archivist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, about 20 forgotten vials of moon dust collected by Armstrong and Aldrin have been rescued from a grave of their own: a warehouse at the Berkeley lab, where they'd sat quietly gathering, um, Earth dust for the last 40 years or so.… Read more

Crave Ep. 122: When the moon hits your 3D-printed pizza pie

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This week on Crave, NASA awards a $125,000 grant to 3D-print a pizza; UCLA Health live-tweets and Vines a man as he has brain surgery; and we wish the Ethernet a happy 40th birthday. … Read more

The true shape of the Ring Nebula

Hubble has been doing some interesting work with nebulae recently, it seems. About a month ago, we saw new images of the Horsehead Nebula in the infrared spectrum, revealing new details of the famous gas formation.

The newest nebula to get the fine-detail treatment is the equally famous Ring Nebula. Combining visible-light images from Hubble with infrared data from the ground-based Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona has revealed that the structure of the nebula is more complex than was previously believed. … Read more

NASA funds attempt at 3D food printer for pizza

"Star Trek" food replicators will always be the holy grail of space-snack technology, but we could be edging a step closer to the dream thanks to the work of mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor with Systems and Materials Research in Austin, Texas.

Systems and Materials Research recently received a $125,000 grant from NASA to make a pizza. OK, it's a little more complicated than that. Contractor already created a proof-of-concept printer that can print chocolate onto a cookie. His next goal is to print out dough and cook it while printing out sauce and toppings.… Read more

Boom! NASA captures massive moon explosion on video

It's a good thing you weren't standing on the moon's Mare Imbrium crater on March 17. You might have been ground into space dust. A meteoroid "the size of a small boulder" crashed into the lunar surface and exploded with a flash so bright, it was visible to the naked eye from Earth.

NASA has been keeping an eye on the moon for eight years, looking for explosions caused by meteoroids. The space agency has seen hundreds of detectable impacts, but none quite so spectacular as this one. "For about one second, the impact site was glowing like a fourth magnitude star," NASA says.… Read more

A look back at NASA's planet-pinpointing space 'scope

NASA announced this week that a key piece of gear on its Kepler space telescope has run into trouble. And though the space agency hasn't given up on a jump-start, the mission may well be at risk.

It's already gone well beyond its planned duration, however, and presented us with many fascinating discoveries.

In this gallery, we take a look back at that mission -- at Kepler's intriguing quest to find Earth-like, life-friendly planets among the Milky Way's many stars.

Crave Ep. 121: Wake up to a dancing iPhone

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This week on Crave, we take a look at Tim-e, an iPhone dock that wakes you up in the most annoying ways possible. We salute Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield on making space travel cool again, and demonstrate Petswitch, which lets you put your face on your cat's visage. … Read more

NASA plans asteroid mission. First stop: Bennu

NASA's plan to go poking around on an asteroid, with the ultimate goal of snagging one of the space rocks and towing it closer to Earth, is moving forward, and a specific asteroid has been chosen to visit and sample in the next few years.

NASA has announced that the Origins-Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (Osiris-Rex) passed a key confirmation review Wednesday, approving the spacecraft to move into development phase. Translation: we're building a new spaceship, y'all!… Read more

Mars rover Opportunity hits new record for miles driven in space

The plucky little Mars rover Opportunity has proven itself to be the Marco Polo of space. This extraterrestrial robot has set the new record for miles explored by a NASA vehicle in a world other than Earth, according to NASA.

On its 3,309th Martian day on the planet, Opportunity drove 263 feet along the western rim of the Endeavour Crater and broke records by putting its total distance traveled on Mars at 22.22 miles.

The previous record was set 40 years ago by Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt when they visited the moon for a … Read more

Enormous asteroid to zip by Earth

A giant asteroid will pass by Earth on May 31, according to NASA, but hold off before you start browsing survival gear on Amazon.

The 1.7-mile long asteroid, labeled 1998 QE2, will come within 3.6 million miles of Earth, or about 15 times the distance between our planet and the moon. It's a golden opportunity for astronomers, who plan to extensively image the temporary visitor.… Read more