Astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley announced that they had discovered the two most massive black holes to date. Their findings situate the black holes at between 10 and 21 billion times the mass of the sun. They are being published in journal Nature. Theoretical astrophysicist Chung-Pei Ma led the team that made these discoveries, and she joins The Takeaway to discuss what this all means.

NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the discovery of a planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. A NASA researcher says the Earth-like planet would have a surface temperature around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes it a so-called "Goldilocks planet" — not too hot, not too cold, just right to support life. Researchers have also measured the largest black holes yet. A team of UC Berkeley scientists have confirmed the discovery of the two biggest black holes yet to be documented. Each black hole is 10 billion times larger than our sun.

On Saturday, NASA will be launching the new rover "Curiosity," also known as Mars Science Laboratory. The mission is meant to examine chemical ingredients to see if the planet can support human life. The spacecraft will explore a crater the size of a large lake. Curiosity is delivering a rover equipped to test if there is methane in the air. This could be a key sign that the "Red Planet" may be able to support life.

Just a few months ago, the future of NASA seemed in doubt. But the space agency announced on Wednesday a new rocket design that it says will be the centerpiece of a deep-space exploration program for decades to come. The Space Launch System could lift astronauts farther than ever before, making it eventually possible to journey to Mars.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has snapped pictures of what appears to be flowing liquid water on the surface of the red planet. The pictures, which were taken over the past five years, show what look like seasonal patterns of flow, in which a spring surge trickles down the side of the crater throughout the summer, then dries up in winter. Though frozen water has been found on Mars, near the polar ice caps, liquid water is different. The presence of liquid water on the Martian surface would open the possibility of taking samples and finding living microbes. NASA may eventually be able to bring home and study the first known evidence of extraterrestrial life.

The landing of the space shuttle Atlantis at Cape Canaveral this morning marked the bittersweet end of NASA's 30-year-old shuttle program. In this video, host Celeste Headlee reflects on the legacy of the space shuttle program, remarking that today is a day to honor all those responsible for the success of the program as well as a time to look to the future. Celeste says she's optimistic that we may one day send shuttles to Mars and make visits to asteroids, and suggests that perhaps the contributions of America's very rich will make these dreams a reality.

The space shuttle Atlantis returned this morning, marking the end of an era. The space shuttle program began with the launch of Columbia on April 12, 1981. The program advanced space exploration into the twenty-first century. Contrary to the Apollo missions, which sparked fierce competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the space shuttle program existed mostly in an era of collaboration and cooperation between nations.

The mood was bittersweet in Cape Canaveral. this morning, as the space shuttle Atlantis landed, bringing NASA's 30-year-old shuttle program to a close. A permanent marker will be placed on the runway where Atlantis touched down just before 6:00 AM EDT. In its final mission, the 135th of the shuttle program, Atlantis brought supplies to the International Space Station. With the end of the shuttle era, NASA's involvement in future space flight has been called into question.

The Shuttle Endeavour is set to blast off one last time Monday morning./ The space shuttle will be carrying a $2 billion particle physics detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which will search for dark matter. It is an emotional day for commander Mark Kelly, who is heading the mission. His wife, Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head is at the launch site. Kelly is carrying a wedding ring into space. Science reporter for The New York Times, Henry Fountain is at the launch.

The Space Shuttle Endeavor is schedule to launch at 3:47 PM on today. Big crowds are expected at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida — because this is not any ordinary launch. The 14-day mission will be the Endeavor’s 25th and FINAL voyage and it is the second to last space shuttle launch in the foreseeable future. The program will be ending in June.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the first human orbiting the earth. That human, Yuri Gagarin, was Russian, and his accomplishment was, like the Sputnik launch, a moment that terrified Americans and fed our fears that we couldn’t keep up with the Joneses across the sea. We look at this anniversary, and at the fact that we’re still lagging behind our international neighbors in math and science. What would it take for us to catch up? Recreational mathematician Vi Hart has some ideas. First on the list: to stop seeing math as a skill of right and wrong, and to begin embracing it as a tool of creativity.

As Vostok 1 lifted off, Yuri Gagarin said to the world: “Poyekhali!" (Let’s go!”). The first man in space spent 108 minutes orbiting the earth. He landed separately from Vostok 1, parachuting down in the middle of a field, greeted by a woman and her daughter 370 miles off target. The cosmonaut reportedly said to the stunned farm women, “Don’t be afraid, I am a Soviet like you who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!” If only he had an iPhone.

Photographs of Mercury have come to earth for the first time. The Messenger spacecraft entered Mercury's orbit on March 17 and has just sent back its first batch of photographs. The very first image received shows a crater near the planet's southern pole, an area that has never been seen before. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of "Star Talk Radio." He helps explain why these photos are important.

When the space shuttle Discovery lands at Kennedy Space Center later today, its odometer will read somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000,000 miles. The shuttle has flown 39 missions in its 27 year career. After today's landing, it will retire on planet earth. With Discovery's retirement, an era of American space exploration comes to a close; and, due to political and economic realities at home, future chapters remain in doubt. Yesterday, the US National Research Council reported that two planned rover missions to Mars, which NASA intended to launch along with ESA in 2018, may be about $1 billion outside of the U.S. budget.

Today will mark the last launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, which made its maiden voyage back in 1984. This starts the countdown to the end of the Space Shuttle program, with final launches of Endeavor and Atlantis scheduled. Was the Shuttle Program worth it? To answer that question is Peter Spotts, science reporter for The Christian Science Monitor.

NASA has recently agreed to partner up with the Colorado Association for Manufacturing on an effort they hope will accomplish two goals: speed up the commercial rollout of space technologies, and, more importantly in this down economy, create jobs. The two groups hope to create 10,000 jobs in Colorado over the next five years because of this agreement. As a benefit, the partnership should allow more rapid prototyping, meaning new technology products could hit the market much sooner than before — 18 months, say, instead of five years.

Since it was launched in the 1970s, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is reaching the edge of the solar system, and it has made an interesting discovery. 11 billion miles from home, the particles that surround it — emanating from the sun — are no longer moving outward but sideways. The craft's long trip, which will only end when it runs into something in mostly-empty space, continues to beam back basic data homeward. Dan Andrews, an expert in planetary science especially the study of comets and asteroids at the Open University in the UK, joins us for more on Voyager 1's recent discoveries and continuing journey. 

It sounds like something you'd see in a late-night Sci-Fi flick: Scientists have discovered bacteria in a California lake that uses arsenic instead of phosphorous to survive. Arsenic is plentiful in the universe, and so bacteria that uses it to survive suggests the possibility of alien life. But just how likely is it that this bacteria exists in space?

Using powerful instruments at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, astronomers recently discovered that the universe stretched much further than originally thought. Between 50 and 300 million light years away, feint light from red dwarf stars in eight giant "elliptical galaxies" suggest there may be three times the number of stars originally thought to exist in the universe. Joining us is Brendan Owens, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England.  

We review some of our best interviews about space exploration from the last year, including clips from: Matthew J. Holman, Smithsonian Astrophysicist and Lecturer at Harvard University; Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars; Jim Meigs, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics; and Caroline Moore, who at 14-years-old, became the youngest person to discover a supernova. We also review our interview on the last flight of the space shuttle Atlantis, with Jerry Ross, a seven-time astronaut who has spent five missions aboard Atlantis, and Colonel William Pailes, who was aboard the very first Atlantis mission.