NASA

Shane Kimbrough, a NASA astronaut currently living on board the International Space Station, filed his ballot in last week's presidential election, according to a Tumblr post by NASA.

NASA told Yahoo News that Kimbrough filed his ballot in the 2016 election from the space station sometime over the past few days.

Astronomers can currently detect planets outside our solar system through indirect methods like observing the changes in light from the distant stars when its planet passes across it. They have been doing this for more than 15 years, but unfortunately have not documented clear pictures of any exoplanets.

Firstly, even the closest star is several light years away. So when the astronomers observe these stars from an astronomical distance, their orbiting planets appear very close to the star. That defect disables the telescope from detecting them.

The probe will take a sample of the asteroid and -- in a US space first -- bring the sample back to Earth.

"NASA did it again!" Jim Green, Planetary Science Division director at NASA, said at a post-launch briefing.

"Tonight is a night for celebration," said Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist. "We are on our way to an asteroid."

Since 29 August 2015, the group lived in close quarters in a dome, without fresh air, fresh food or privacy.

Experts estimate that a human mission to the Red Planet could take between one and three years.

The Nasa-funded study run by the University of Hawaii is the longest of its kind since a Russian mission that lasted 520 days.

This week that determination paid off.

Lost...

NASA announced Sunday that it had re-established contact with STEREO-B after communications were lost in October 2014.

Contact with the spacecraft -- which works in tandem with a second spacecraft STEREO-A to study the sun -- was lost during a test of one of its timers.

The cluster, called IDCS J1426.5+3508 (IDCS 1426), is located 10 billion light years from Earth.

NASA used data from a number of observatories to make the most detailed study yet of the galaxy cluster.

Key points:

"It suggests that it would be possible for there to be life today on Mars," NASA's science mission chief, John Grunsfeld, said at a news conference.

Scientists in 2008 confirmed the existence of frozen water on Mars. But instruments aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have yielded the strongest evidence yet that salt water in liquid form flows down certain Martian slopes each summer, according to the researchers.

The space agency's inspector general office said the company's upcoming flight plan contains significant risks, as its attempts to recover from last October's launch explosion. Orbital's Antares rocket failed seconds after liftoff from Virginia, destroying the space station goods and damaging the launch complex. It was Orbital's fourth supply mission, including a 2013 test flight.