WASHINGTON, Feb. 1, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A camera aboard one of NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the moon. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) GRAIL consists of two identical spacecraft, recently named Ebb and Flow, each of which is equipped with a MoonKAM.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has captured the best and most complete glimpse yet of what lies beyond the solar system. The new measurements give clues about how and where our solar system formed, the forces that physically shape our solar system, and the history of other stars in the Milky Way. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)

MOSCOW - The head of Russia's space agency says that a manned launch to the International Space Station is being postponed from March 30 because of faults found in the Soyuz capsule. He did not specify what the problems were, but the state news agency RIA Novosti cited the director of Russia's cosmonaut-training program as saying leaks had been found in the capsule's seals. It is be the second significant postponement of a manned Russian launch in the past year.

The search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is back on, after a yearlong delay due to funding problems, U.S. researchers said. Forty-two radio telescopes, known as the Allen Telescope Army, have set up shop near Lassen Peak, Calif., searching for radio signals from the constellation Cygnus. The project was operated by the University of California until last year, when it ran out of money, The New York Times reported Monday.

MOFFET FIELD, Calif., Jan. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form.

The space shuttle Discovery will take to air one last time during its voyage to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, officials said. The shuttle is expected to depart Kennedy Space Center April 17 for a non-stop ferry flight atop a 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft to Dulles International Airport, NASA and the Smithsonian Institution said Thursday. In the last major processing operation in preparation for the flight, technicians fitted a tail cone over replica main engines installed on the retired shuttle, Florida Today reported.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The first commercial cargo run to the International Space Station is off until spring. Space station commander Daniel Burbank said as much as he'd like to take part in the historic event, it's important that SpaceX fly when it's ready. "If that's not to be during our mission, then that's OK," Burbank said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.

PASADENA, Calif., Dec. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's twin spacecraft to study the moon from crust to core are nearing their New Year's Eve and New Year's Day main-engine burns to place the duo in lunar orbit. The distance from Earth to the moon is approximately 250,000 miles (402,336 kilometers). Launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Sept. 10, 2011, the GRAIL spacecraft are taking about 30 times that long and covering more than 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers) to get there.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A peculiar cosmic explosion first detected by NASA's Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010 was caused either by a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years away or an unusual collision much closer to home, within our own galaxy. Papers describing both interpretations appear in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Nature. "What the Christmas burst seems to be telling us is that the family of gamma-ray bursts is more diverse than we fully appreciate," said Christina Thoene, the supernova study's lead author, at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada, Spain.

Agency Moves to Implement Deep Space Exploration Plan WASHINGTON, Nov. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA plans to add an unmanned flight test of the Orion spacecraft in early 2014 to its contract with Lockheed Martin Space Systems for the multi- purpose crew vehicle's design, development, test and evaluation. This test supports the new Space Launch System (SLS) that will take astronauts farther into space than ever before, create U.S. jobs, and provide the cornerstone for America's future human spaceflight efforts.