Nasa has awarded its first private contracts for ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.

An asteroid nicknamed after a maligned dog and with the potential to cause catastrophic damage will pass within 40,000km of Earth this morning.

A newly discovered asteroid the size of a whale will fly by New Zealand tomorrow morning.

Night-time images captured by US defence satellites show a New Zealand much brighter than it was in the early 1990s.

Satellites in orbit are routinely used for communication, imaging and navigation - yet many people don't understand how these satellites remain in space.

A geomagnetic storm has sparked auroras around both poles - helping set up a stunning photograph taken in Otago.

Researchers established that tiny life forms were thriving in a lake beneath 800 metres of pack ice, despite not seening sunlight or fresh air for around a million years.

A New Zealand-built rocket has shattered an altitude record after reaching speeds in excess of 2000 km an hour.

A "super-duper" full moon that is bigger and brighter than any other moon this year will appear in the sky on Monday morning.

Space enthusiasts have won a battle to force the authorities to release images from a spacecraft's decade-long interplanetary mission to hunt down a comet.

Kiwi-developed technology will assist a historic hook-up when a spacecraft makes its long-awaited date with a comet next week.

The New Zealand aerospace firm planning to launch a rocket to carry satellites into low earth orbit for a fraction of the cost of competitors.

The US space agency's Opportunity rover has now clocked more kilometres on Mars than any man-made vehicle to reach another celestial body, Nasa has said.

Things aren't going as smoothly as SpaceX might hope in its quest to secure the US Military as a client.

NZ is joining the space race, with Rocket Lab building a world-first launch vehicle in Auckland to make it cheaper to send satellites in to orbit.

Britain is to build a commercial spaceport that will be used to launch manned missions and commercial satellites.

Readers and photographers snapped these photos of the most recent supermoon seen across NZ's skies.

Stargazers are beaming at the prospect of an unusual supermoon phenomenon this year.

Astrophysicists are mystified after concluding that 80 per cent of the light in the universe appears to be missing.

A galaxy more than 12 billion light years from Earth is heading for a "red and dead" future because it is running out of the fuel needed to make new stars.

India has declared itself the world's leader in cheap space exploration after its prime minister claimed that its Mars mission will cost less than the Oscar-winning science fiction film Gravity.

Astronomers have discovered an alien planet that could offer some of the most Earth-like conditions seen to date in the galaxy.

Sovereignty in outer space is always a tricky subject, but out of all the lifeless rocks in the Solar System it was safe to say Mars was more American than most.

After weeks of taunts by Elon Musk's spunky space start-up, Amercia's most established rocket-launch company, ULA, is finally pushing back.

Google could soon be going Galactic if it joins forces with Sir Richard Branson's space division.

Lockheed Martin has won a highly anticipated contract to build a "space fence" for the Pentagon that can track pieces of debris floating in orbit around the Earth.