CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- An impromptu spacewalk over the weekend seems to have fixed a big ammonia leak at the International Space Station, NASA said Thursday. Spacewalking astronauts replaced a suspect ammonia pump on Saturday, just two days after the trouble arose. NASA is now calling the old, removed pump "Mr. Leaky," said flight controller Anthony Vareha.

WASHINGTON, May 15, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Scientists using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across. Researchers have identified 248 new impact sites on parts of the Martian surface in the past decade, using images from the spacecraft to determine when the craters appeared. This will lead to better age estimates of recent features on Mars, some of which may have been the result of climate change.

MOSCOW - A Soyuz space capsule with a three-man crew returning from a five-month mission to the International Space Station landed safely Tuesday on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, American Thomas Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko landed as planned southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 8:31 a.m. local time Tuesday (0231 GMT; 10:31 p.m. EDT Monday). Hadfield, 53, an engineer and former test pilot from Milton, Ontario, was Canada's first professional astronaut to live aboard the space station and became the first Canadian in charge of a spacecraft.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- Two astronauts took a hastily planned spacewalk Saturday to find and, possibly, fix a serious leak at the International Space Station. Less than 48 hours later, Thomas Marshburn and Christopher Cassidy emerged from the orbiting lab to hunt for the leak. But managers wanted to deal with the trouble now, while it's fresh and before Marshburn returns to Earth in just a few days.

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico -- Another space industry heavyweight has signed on to use Spaceport America _ Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, Gov. Susana Martinez announced Tuesday. It agreed to a three-year lease to do testing of its "Grasshopper" reusable rocket in southern New Mexico. "We've done a lot of work to level the playing field so we can compete in the space industry," Martinez said in a statement.

British opera singer Sarah Brightman's bid to travel into space has cleared a major hurdle, Russia's space agency said Monday. She will get a seat on a space flight to the International Space Station in October 2015 if Roscosmos and NASA can agree on the schedule, RIA Novosti said. "The sides will discuss in the near future the implementation of this project, including Sarah Brightman's preparation for the flight and the program of her activities on board the orbital station," Roscosmos said in a statement.

The discussion, open to NASA employees and the public, will begin at 2:30 p.m. EDT in the James Webb Auditorium of NASA Headquarters at 300 E St. SW in Washington. The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website. Owen Garriott, science pilot, Skylab 3

NASA says the Hubble telescope has captured a sharp image of the wispy red remains of a star similar to our sun that exploded as a supernova 150,000 years ago. Reduced to just a web-like gaseous shell, the object known as SNR B0519-69.0 -- or SNR 0519 for short -- exploded about 150,000 years ago but the first light from the explosion only reached Earth about 600 years ago, the space agency said. There are several types of supernovae, but SNR 0519 is known to have been a white dwarf star -- a sun-like star in the final stages of its life, astronomers said.

Carrier rocket of manned spacecraft reaches launch center BEIJING, May 2 (Xinhua) -- The Long March 2-F rocket that will carry China's new manned spacecraft Shenzhou-10 was delivered to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Thursday, China's manned space program announced. The Long March 2-F carrier rocket is technologically advanced and more reliable compared to the one that carried the Shenzhou-9, according to a press release.

NASA says it is inviting the public to submit names and personal messages for a DVD to be carried on a spacecraft that will study the Martian upper atmosphere. The DVD -- part of the mission's Going to Mars Campaign, run by the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics -- will be in NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, the space agency reported Wednesday. Members of the public can submit their names online and the DVD will carry every name submitted, NASA said.

WASHINGTON, May 1, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An asteroid that will be explored by a NASA spacecraft has a new name, thanks to a third-grade student in North Carolina. NASA's Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification- Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will visit the asteroid now called Bennu, named after an important ancient Egyptian avian deity. OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to launch in 2016, rendezvous with Bennu in 2018 and return a sample of the asteroid to Earth in 2023.

ORONO (AP) -- Construction is expected to start soon following a groundbreaking ceremony for the University of Maine's new astronomy center. Officials broke ground for the Emera Astronomy Center on Monday. The $5.2 million center was made possible with a $1 million naming gift from Emera Inc., the parent company of Bangor Hydro and Maine Public Service, and an anonymous $3 million gift.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- The U.S. space agency is paying $424 million more to Russia to get U.S. astronauts into space and home again, and the agency's leader is blaming Congress for the extra expense. NASA announced its latest contract with the Russian Space Agency on Tuesday. The $424 million represents flights to and from the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, as well as training, for six astronauts in 2016 and the first half of 2017.

April 29--BARSTOW -- In a lime green building off of Old Highway 58 a world-renowned telescope machinist works masterfully at his craft. Edward Byers, 85, has been in the telescope industry for more than 50 years specializing in telescope mountings, gears and driving systems. "Astronomy is the oldest science," he explains.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured stunning views of a monster hurricane at Saturn's North Pole. The hurricane is parked at Saturn's North Pole and relies on water vapor to keep it churning. Scientists hope to learn more about Earth's hurricanes by studying this whopper at Saturn.

MOSCOW -- A Russian cargo spacecraft has docked with the International Space Station, despite the failure of an antenna on its navigation system to deploy. The antenna didn't deploy when the craft reached orbit and Russian mission control tried repeatedly to prod it into action. However, the ship carrying more than three tons of food, oxygen, water and equipment was able to dock Friday on automatic pilot, according to video from Russian mission control.

A 59-year-old cosmonaut became the oldest person to walk in space when he installed equipment outside the International Space Station, Russian officials said. Pavel Vinogradov set the age record for spacewalking Friday while outside the ISS with fellow cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, SpaceFlightNow.com reported. The two flight engineers spent more than 6 1/2 hours outside the space station installing an experiment package, mission control officials said Saturday.

NASA's Hubble telescope has taken a new image of the iconic Horsehead Nebula to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory's launch. The Hubble Space Telescope went into orbit aboard the space shuttle Discover April 24, 1990. Astronomers used Hubble to capture a new image of the Horsehead Nebula in infrared light to reveal features never before seen, NASA reported Friday.

WASHINGTON, April 4, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the farthest supernova so far of the type used to measure cosmic distances. Supernova UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson after American President Woodrow Wilson, exploded more than 10 billion years ago. SN Wilson belongs to a special class called Type Ia supernovae.

The option the agency chose to exercise has a total estimated value of $76 million and extends the period of performance through April 30, 2016. The contractor will continue to be responsible for providing the products and services required to execute the science program and process, archive, and distribute the science data from Hubble. The contractor also will maintain and calibrate the onboard instruments; maintain the science operations ground systems; administer grants; conduct public and educational outreach; and conduct astronomical research.

The wings enable the mirror, made of 18 pieces of beryllium, to fold up and fit inside a 16.4-foot (5-meter) fairing on a rocket, and then unfold to 21 feet in diameter after the telescope is delivered to space. The center section was completed in April 2012. "This is another milestone that helps move Webb closer to its launch date in 2018," said Geoff Yoder, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope program director, NASA Headquarters, Washington.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA has selected key contributions to a 2022 European Space Agency (ESA) mission that will study Jupiter and three of its largest moons in unprecedented detail. The moons are thought to harbor vast water oceans beneath their icy surfaces. NASA's contribution will consist of one U.S.-led science instrument and hardware for two European instruments to fly on ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The moon-size planet and its two companion planets were found by scientists with NASA's Kepler mission to find Earth-sized planets in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of an orbiting planet.