Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: The camera on NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer transforms a relatively ho-hum star into a shocking stunner.

Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: While NASA's Spirit rover is frozen in place on Mars and potentially dead to the world, the twin Opportunity rover is hale and hearty as it begins its eighth year of operation on the Red Planet.

Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: The European Space Agency?s Mars Express orbiter snaps a fresh round of high-resolution images of the Martian moon Phobos, including 3-D pictures and a look at a yet-to-be-launched probe?s once and future landing site.

View and discuss the pictures and issues that caught our eyes.

Skywatchers who are out and about past the witching hour of midnight Monday night will have an interesting celestial array to admire: a cosmic triangle created by the moon, the planet Saturn and a bright star.

Twenty-five years ago, NASA's Voyager 2 zipped past the planet Uranus on its way to Neptune. It was the first spacecraft ever to grab a close-up look at this bizarre world. Voyager 2 made its closest approach on Jan. 24, 1986, and since then we've only been able to gaze on the "ice giant" from afar.

NASA will commemorate three space tragedies this week, which also marks the 25th anniversary of the shuttle Challenger accident that killed seven astronauts. The space agency will also pause to remember the 2003 loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew and the earlier Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts.

See the year's best images from outer space, including scenes from the shuttle's sunset days and views of glittering galaxies.

A quarter-century after teacher Christa McAuliffe and six other astronauts died in the Challenger shuttle explosion, her former students are making sure that people who weren't even born then know about McAuliffe and her dream of going into space.

A Japanese rocket carrying supplies for the International Space Station successfully lifted off from a remote island Saturday on a mission designed to help fill a hole left by the retirement of NASA's space shuttle program.

Talk about a comeback story: The tiny NASA  NanoSail-D satellite, once teetering on failure, has successfully unfurled its solar sail while orbiting the Earth, the space agency announced Friday,  and is operating as planned.

A pair of Russian spacewalkers breezed through a series of chores outside the International Space Station on Friday, installing a camera and an experimental radio system.

After 233 days in a locked steel capsule, six researchers on a 520-day mock flight to Mars are all feeling strong and ready to "land" on the Red Planet, the mission director said Friday.

Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: As if the Maya calendar wasn't enough to worry about, talk of a potential California superstorm or a catastrophic supernova have stoked 2012 paranoia.