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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed for the first time surface details of Saturn's moon Hyperion, including cup-like craters filled with hydrocarbons that may indicate more widespread presence in our solar system of basic chemicals necessary for life.

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New measurements show a difference of serveral millimeters / Geodesists from the Univeristy of Bonn participated
Although the discrepancy is not large, it is significant: Geodesists from the University of Bonn have remeasured the size of the Earth in a long lasting international cooperation project.

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will house the agency's new Einstein Probes Office, created to study the universe's exotic phenomena: dark energy, black holes and cosmic microwave background radiation.

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While the Capillary Flow Experiments (CFE) are mesmerizing, they actually have nothing to do with lava or lamps. They are a suite of three experiments designed to investigate how fluid flows in microgravity. The results will help engineers design more efficient fluid management systems, such as fuel tanks, cooling systems and water recycling systems, for future space missions.

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Scientists have recently discovered that the planet Saturn is turning 60 - not years, but moons.

"We detected the 60th moon orbiting Saturn using the Cassini spacecraft's powerful wide-angle camera," said Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team scientist from Queen Mary, University of London. "I was looking at images of the region near the Saturnian moons Methone and Pallene and something caught my eye."

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The STS-118 and Expedition 15 crews are transferring cargo and preparing for Saturday’s spacewalk. Later today, the 10 astronauts and cosmonauts will also hold the traditional joint crew news conference.

The Mission Management Team decided Thursday that the spacewalk, STS-118’s fourth, will not include repair of Space Shuttle Endeavour’s heat shield. After hours of reviewing data and imagery collected during the inspections by the STS-118 crew, the managers decided the damage did not pose a safety risk to the crew or Endeavour.

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Endeavour and Crew Home
Capping off mission STS-118, Space Shuttle Endeavour glided to a perfect landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 21. During almost 13 days in space, the crew members added a new segment to the superstructure of the International Space Station and delivered 5,800 pounds of equipment and supplies to the orbiting laboratory.

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After six weeks of hunkering down during raging dust storms that limited solar power, both of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have resumed driving.

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A rare image of the ring system of the planet Uranus has been captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, using the onboard JPL-built and designed Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

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An international team of astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope has discovered that the south pole of Neptune is much hotter than the rest of the planet. This is consistent with the fact that it is late southern summer and this region has been in sunlight for about 40 years. [...]
The temperature at the south pole is higher than anywhere else on the planet by about 10 degrees Celsius. The average temperature on Neptune is about minus 200 degrees Celsius.

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If space travelers ever visit Saturn’s largest moon, they will find a tropical world where temperatures plunge to minus 274 degrees Fahrenheit, methane rains from the sky and dunes of ice or tar cover the planet’s most arid regions. These conditions reflect a cold mirror image of Earth’s tropical and subtropical climates, according to scientists at the University.

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NASA scientists are on the trail of Iapetus' mysterious dark side, which seems to be home to a bizarre "runaway" process that is transporting vaporized water ice from the dark areas to the white areas of the Saturnian moon.

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The seven-member crew of STS-120 on board Space Shuttle Discovery is ready for Thursday’s rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station.

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Phoenix Makes a Grand Entrance
05.26.08 -- NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
› View full resolution image

› View post-landing release (May 25)

On the Phoenix Blog: Landing Day
05.25.08 -- Follow the mission team's landing blog. Comments are no longer being taken.
Go to blog
Landing Press Kit (3Mb)

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Oct. 30, 2008
Senior NASA officials are meeting today to set a firm launch date for space shuttle Endeavour's STS-126 mission to resupply and equip the International Space Station. Endeavour is targeted to lift off Nov. 14 at 7:55 p.m. EST.

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Mission managers gave the astronauts of space shuttle Endeavour an extra day in space as the crews of the shuttle and International Space Station continue transferring supplies and setting up new equipment inside the station.

Endeavour and seven astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth on Sunday at 12:55 p.m. EST. Endeavour is to land at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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Carbon dioxide, a potential fingerprint of life, has been discovered for the first time in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. However, the planet, HD 189733b, is too hot to be habitable. But the discovery nonetheless has scientists excited, because carbon dioxide is one of four chemicals that life can generate, so being able to detect it shows that astronomers have the ability to find the signs of life on other worlds."This is the first detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet, which means that three of the Big Four biomarkers for habitable/inhabited worlds have now been seen: water, methane, and now carbon dioxide," explained Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington who was not involved in the finding. "The only one that has not yet been detected is oxygen/ozone."

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NASA's crawler-transporter will be rolled under the shuttle stack for the trip to Kennedy's Launch Pad 39A, scheduled for 4 a.m. Jan. 14 -- the next major milestone of the STS-119 mission.

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Technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are finishing up their work today in the back section of space shuttle Discovery in preparation for a tentative launch to the International Space Station next week.
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For planning purposes, launch is tentatively targeted for March 11 at 9:20 p.m. EDT.