NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.

Comets contained vast oceans of liquid water in their interiors during the first million years of their formation, a new study claims.

The first known and only visit by the flamboyant green comet, Comet Lulin, is a show that the starry heavens have not missed – even if we ourselves have trouble viewing this beauty without optical assistance and at a distance from terrestrial illuminations.

While waiting for high-energy outbursts and cosmic explosions, NASA's Swift Gamma-ray Explorer satellite is monitoring Comet Lulin as it closes on Earth. For the first time, astronomers are seeing simultaneous ultraviolet and X-ray images of a comet.

Rob Cardinal was looking for an asteroid, but ended up finding a comet. It is the first time a comet has been discovered at the University of Calgary's Rothney Astrophysical Observatory, which is located about 35 kilometres southwest of Calgary, and only the second Canadian discovery of a comet using a Canadian telescope in nearly a decade.

An international team of scientists that includes University of British Columbia astronomer Brett Gladman has found an unusual object whose backward and tilted orbit around the Sun may clarify the origins of certain comets.

The ESA/NASA SOHO spacecraft has just discovered its 1500th comet, making it more successful than all other comet discoverers throughout history put together. Not bad for a spacecraft that was designed as a solar physics mission.

Contrary to expectations for a small icy body, much of the comet dust returned by the Stardust mission formed very close to the young sun and was altered from the solar system’s early materials.

Samples of the material picked up during the NASA Stardust mission indicate that parts of the comet Wild 2 actually formed in an area close to the sun.

Four years ago, NASA's Stardust spacecraft chased down a comet and collected grains of dust blowing off its nucleus. When the spacecraft Comet Wild-2 returned, comet dust was shipped to scientists all over the world, including University of Minnesota physics professor Bob Pepin.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has probed the bright core of Comet 17P/Holmes which, to the delight of sky watchers, mysteriously brightened by nearly a million-fold in a 24-hour period beginning October 23, 2007.

ESA’s comet chaser, Rosetta, is on its way to its second close encounter with Earth on 13 November. The spacecraft’s operators are leaving no stones unturned to make sure Earth’s gravity gives it the exact boost it needs en route to its destination.