"Without hyperbole, it is true that i don't think there has ever been on one stage an assembly of science storytellers and communicators like this," said theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of the panelists assembled for the debate featured here. We're inclined to agree with him.

Astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope have just released the most detailed view of the early Universe ever captured. It's called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF for short. The image combines over ten years' worth of photographs by Hubble. It required 2-million seconds of exposure time to produce, and…

In 2018, the James Webb Space Telescope will become one of the greatest tools in humanity's quest to understand the cosmos. Now, after eight years, the technology comprising the heart and soul of the telescope — an ultra-sophisticated beryllium mirror system — is complete.

NASA researchers have detected the faint glow of what they believe to be the first stars and galaxies to form in the aftermath of the Big Bang — and it's positively stunning. If the team's findings are correct, they could offer valuable insight into the nature of the Universe's very first objects.

NASA's Kepler mission has been spoiling us with planetary discoveries left and right as of late. Now, researchers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an entirely new class of planet — they call it a "waterworld," and it might be covered in broiling-hot ice.

Bad puns aside, this is actually pretty cool. NASA has set up two webcams in the cleanroom of Goddard Space Flight Center, where engineers are busy assembling the James Webb Space Telescope — the deep space imaging apparatus that will allow us to see farther into space than ever before.

Yesterday, NASA announced a milestone in the almost 22-year history of its Hubble Space Telescope: The 10,000th refereed scientific paper based on Hubble data has now been published, reinforcing that Hubble is one of the most successful astronomical experiments in human history.

This past weekend marked the opening of the American Museum of Natural History's brilliant new exhibition, Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration. As part of our ongoing Hardcore Science Interview series, io9 spoke with the show's curator, AMNH astrophysicist Michael Shara, about the exhibit.

Billions of years ago, when the universe was still in its infancy, the formation of stars is believed to have occurred at a much faster rate than it does today. Now, a recent discovery by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) suggests that the universe's earliest galaxies may have been pumping out stars even faster than…

I'll come right out and say it: you need to watch this video. It's quite a bit longer than a lot of what we feature here on io9, but the weekend is almost here, and you owe it to yourself to set aside 53 minutes to watch a veritable scientific dream team talk about humanity's future in space.