NASA

"Well, here it is," said aerospace engineer William Ailor as he paused next to the hulking metal shells arrayed along the plaza outside a visitor entrance at Aerospace Corp.'s El Segundo, Calif., headquarters.

The stuff is junk. But, Ailor said, it's no ordinary junk. This garbage has traveled to space and back.

A 150-pound hollow sphere of blackened titanium is all that remains of a motor casing from a Delta II rocket that fell to Earth in 2001, landing in the Saudi Arabian desert west of Riyadh.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's retired space shuttle Atlantis is a step closer to completing its final journey.

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex broke ground Wednesday for Atlantis' permanent home, a $100 million exhibit due to open in summer 2013. Schoolchildren waved red, white and blue Atlantis flags -- 33 flags representing each of Atlantis' space missions -- as state and local dignitaries joined former shuttle staff at the construction site.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- NASA's Kepler mission has found the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. But they're too hot to support liquid water -- or life.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A private space company will attempt the first-ever commercial cargo run to the International Space Station in February.

CLEARFIELD, — NASA’s biggest Mars rover is shooting toward the red planet aboard an unmanned Atlas V rocket that an aerospace company’s Utah plant helped build.

When the Curiosity Mars Rover blasts off from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas Rocket Saturday, two area science teachers will know they had a small part in its success.

Jeff Karlin, astronomy, marine biology and zoology teacher at Idaho's Lewiston High School, and Jim Gustin, science teacher at Orofino Junior/Senior High School, accompanied the man behind Mission Curiosity -- NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay -- this summer on the NASA-sponsored Idaho Spaceward Bound study. The five-day expedition took 10 teachers from Idaho, California, Massachusetts and Nevada, three University of Idaho delegates and seven NASA Ames Research Center teachers across Idaho to explore sites such as Hells Half Acre, Craters of the Moon National Monument and Shoshone Ice Caves and bring their discoveries back to the classroom. The trip also had a second focus, according to Karlin.