A NASA scientist would be a shoe-in at any state or county fair if hosting the "guess your weight" game. Steve Chesley of JPL's Near-Earth Object Program Office has accurately determine the mass of an asteroid from millions of miles away.

MENLO PARK, Calif., June 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- SRI International, leading a multi-organization team, has been awarded a five-year cooperative agreement by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to manage, operate and maintain the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Key observations of an asteroid with a slight chance of hitting Earth may have to be shuttered in light of budget cuts, officials at a Puerto Rico observatory reported on Thursday.

Five astronomy students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have carried their research to unexpected heights -- they found a galaxy. They made their improbable find in a most improbable way, using the world's largest radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The students told the Wisconsin Sate Journal that their good fortune was not expected when they signed up for a research methods class being taught by UW-Madison astronomer Snezana Stanimirovic.

Astronomers from Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have detected for the first time the molecules methanimine and hydrogen cyanide – two ingredients that build life-forming amino acids – in a galaxy some 250 million light years away.