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At the left of this image from NASA's Curiosity rover is the hole in a rock called "John Klein" where the rover conducted its first sample drilling on Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Space shuttle-era work platform. Credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann

Mars Science Laboratory

Kennedy Space Center

Curiosity Collects First Martian Bedrock Sample

NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building Prepared for Multiple Rockets

NASA's Curiosity rover has, for the first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a...
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The Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is undergoing renovations to accommodate future launch vehicles. A project of Ground Systems Development and Operations, or GSDO, space shuttle-era work platforms have...
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NASA's Mars rover Curiosity with an inset showing calibration targets to be used by a camera at the end of the robotic arm. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli (top) and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, both Expedition 26 flight engineers, work in the newly-attached ESA's ATV Johannes Kepler of the International Space Station. NASA photo iss026e029705.

Images like this from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show portions of the Martian surface in unprecedented detail. This one shows many channels from 1 meter to 10 meters (approximately 3 feet to 33 feet) wide on a scarp in the Hellas impact basin. On Earth we would call these gullies. Some larger channels on Mars that are sometimes called gullies are big enough to be called ravines on Earth.

This view is an excerpt from a HiRISE observation taken on Jan. 14, 2011, nearly five years after the March 10, 2006, arrival of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at Mars. North is up. The image was taken at 3:44 p.m. local Mars time. Additional image products from this observation are available at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_020940_1315 . The observation is centered at 48.4 degrees south latitude, 73.5 degree east longitude.

Mars Rover

MagISStra

True Gullies on Mars

Mars-Bound NASA Rover Carries Coin for Camera Checkup

Paolo Nespoli’s MagISStra mission at midway point

Prolific NASA Orbiter Reaches Five-Year Mark

The camera at the end of the robotic arm on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has its own calibration target, a smartphone-size plaque that looks like an eye chart supplemented with color chips and an attached penny.
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ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli is now half way into his six-month mission on the International Space Station. Monday’s handover of command heralds the departure of three crewmembers and the arrival of a new trio in the coming weeks.
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NASA's versatile Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which began orbiting Mars five years ago tomorrow, March 10, has radically expanded our knowledge of the Red Planet and is now working overtime.
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This artist's concept shows NASA's two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath, the outer shell of the bubble of charged particles around our sun. After more than 33 years of travel, the two Voyager spacecraft will soon reach interstellar space, which is the space between stars.

Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble around our solar system known as the heliosphere. The solar wind travels at supersonic speeds until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. That part of our solar system is shown in dark blue. Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock in December 2004 and Voyager 2 did so in August 2007. Beyond the termination shock is the heliosheath, shown in gray, where the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up. Outside those two areas is territory dominated by the interstellar wind, which is blowing from the left in this image. As the interstellar wind approaches the heliosphere, a bow shock forms, indicated by the bright arc.

The Voyagers were built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate.

The Rosetta orbiter swoops over the lander soon after touchdown on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

NASA's fully assembled Juno spacecraft is currently undergoing testing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems near Denver. Technicians are inspecting some of the spacecraft's components. All three solar array wings can be seen installed and stowed, and the spacecraft's large high-gain antenna in place on top. Juno is scheduled to ship from Lockheed Martin's facility to Kennedy Space Center in April, where it will undergo final preparations for launch in August 2011. The solar-powered spacecraft will orbit Jupiter's poles to find out more about the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

Voyagers in the Heliosheath

Rosetta

NASA's Jupiter

Voyager Seeks the Answer Blowin' in the Wind

Carbon fibre stretches from comet to machine tools

Bound Spacecraft Taking Shape In Denver

In which direction is the sun's stream of charged particles banking when it nears the edge of the solar system? The answer, scientists know, is blowing in the wind. It's just a matter of getting NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft in the right orientation...
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Ultra-light carbon-fibre rods used to stiffen a comet probe’s legs are now being harnessed by a German manufacturer to boost the precision and efficiency of their laser cutters.
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NASA's Juno spacecraft is currently undergoing environmental testing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems near Denver. The solar-powered Juno spacecraft will orbit Jupiter's poles 33 times to find out more about the gas giant's origins, structure,...
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Discovery approaches the International Space Station for docking on 26 February 2011 with Leonardo module in its cargo bay.

ATV Johannes Kepler in final moments before docking with ISS.

ESA's Astronaut Luca Parmitano will fly to the International Space Station in May 2013 on a long-duration mission.

This final flight of Discovery

ATV-2 closing in

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano

Leonardo attached to Space Station

Europe’s ATV supply ship docks safely with Space Station

2013 Space Station mission

After a flawless launch last Thursday and a textbook docking on Saturday, the Space Shuttle today delivered the European-built Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module to the International Space Station.
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Eight days after launch, ESA’s latest Automated Transfer Vehicle, Johannes Kepler, completed a flawless rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station at 17:08 CET (16:08 GMT) to deliver essential supplies.
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ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano has been assigned to fly on the International Space Station from May to November 2013, serving as a flight engineer for Expeditions 36 and 37.
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Image shows Grad student Nicholas Boyd (left) and Principal Investigator Ralf Gellert, both of the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, preparing for the installation of the sensor head on the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer instrument during testing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.The instrument is part of the Curiosity rover, which will fly on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. The sensor head is 7.8 centimeters, or about 3 inches tall.

This artist’s concept shows NASA's Jupiter Europa Orbiter which will carry a complement of 11 instruments to explore Europa and the Jupiter System. The spacecraft is part of the joint NASA-ESA Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM).

Alpha Particle X-ray

Launch of the ATV

NASA's Jupiter Europa Orbiter

Advanced NASA Instrument Gets Close-up on Mars Rocks

ATV Johannes Kepler on its way to the ISS

Proposed Mission to Jupiter System Achieves Milestone

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, will carry a next generation, onboard "chemical element reader" to measure the chemical ingredients in Martian rocks and soil. The instrument is one of 10 that will help the rover in its upcoming...
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ATV Johannes Kepler was launched on a specially modified launcher, the Ariane 5ES, at 22:50 CET on 16 February 2011 from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana. The second space cargo carrier in the ATV programme, it is now en route to the...
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With input from scientists around the world, American and European scientists working on the potential next new mission to the Jupiter system have articulated their joint vision for the Europa Jupiter System Mission. The mission is a proposed...
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Extending 159 km by 87 km, this image shows a region with an area of about 13865 sq km, a third of the size of Denmark. Named after a feature on Giovanni Schiaparelli’s 19th-century Mars map, Arabia Terra is part of the highlands of Mars, stretching east to west across 4500 km. With a ground resolution of about 18 m per pixel, the data were acquired near 27°N/56°E during orbit 7457 of Mars Express on 26 October 2009.

Artist's impression of the Automated Transfer Vehicle Johannes Kepler.

Diego Urbina with a computer simulation in the Mars500 facility.

Arabia Terra on Mars

ATV Johannes Kepler

The first full-duration simulation

Mars Express puts craters on a pedestal

Europe’s ATV space ferry ready for launch

Mars500 ‘arrives’ in orbit around Mars

ESA’s Mars Express has returned new views of pedestal craters in the Red Planet’s eastern Arabia Terra.
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ESA’s latest Automated Transfer Vehicle is ready for launch to the International Space Station on Tuesday, 15 February at 22:08 GMT from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The unmanned spaceship will deliver essential supplies and reboost...
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The first full-duration simulation of a manned voyage to Mars has reached a major milestone: the ‘spacecraft’ yesterday ‘arrived’ at Mars after 244 days of virtual interplanetary flight. Three crewmembers will ‘land’ on Mars on 12 February and make...
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The first two of four Galileo In-Orbit Validation satellites are due for launch in August 2011

Artist rendering of Stardust-NExT spacecraft

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., built SAM. The 40-kilogram (88-pound) instrument includes three laboratory tools for analyzing chemistry, plus mechanisms for handling and processing samples.

In this photograph, technicians and engineers inside a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., prepare to install SAM into the mission's Mars rover, Curiosity. The photograph was taken on Jan. 6, 2011.

The analytical tools in SAM are a mass spectrometer built by NASA Goddard, a gas chromatograph built by French partners supported by France's national space agency in Paris, and a laser spectrometer built by JPL. SAM's sample manipulation system, including 74 sample cups for carrying powdered samples to two ovens, was built by Honeybee Robotics, New York. Curiosity's robotic arm will deliver powdered samples, drilled from rocks or scooped from soil, to SAM's inlet tubes on top of the rover deck. Ovens will heat most samples to about 1,000 degrees Celsius (about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit). SAM will take in atmospheric samples through separate ports on the side of the rover. Inside SAM are more than 600 meters (more than 650 yards) of wiring, 52 microvalves, a saft-drink-can-size pump that rotates 100,000 times per minute, and many other components.

NASA will launch Curiosity from Florida between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011, together with other parts of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft for delivering the rover to the surface of Mars in August, 2012. During a prime mission lasting one Mars year (two Earth years), researchers will use the rover in one of the most intriguing areas of Mars to investigate whether conditions there have been favorable for microbial life and favorable for preserving evidence about whether life has existed.

Galileo’s first satellite

Stardust-NExT

Lifting SAM Instrument for Installation into Mars Rover

Galileo satellite undergoes launch check-up at ESTEC

NASA Spacecraft Prepares for Valentine's Day Comet Rendezvous

NASA Mars Rover Will Check for Ingredients of Life

Galileo’s first satellite is undergoing testing at ESA’s technical centre in the Netherlands, checking its readiness to be launched into orbit. This marks a significant step for Europe’s Galileo satnav constellation.
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The Stardust-NExT, or New Exploration of Tempel, spacecraft will take high-resolution images during the encounter, and attempt to measure the composition, distribution, and flux of dust emitted into the coma, or material surrounding the comet's...
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The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, largest of the 10 science instruments for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, will examine samples of Martian rocks, soil and atmosphere for information about chemicals that are important to life...
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Artist's concept of the first rocky world discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. The planet, called Kepler 10-b, is shown in front of its host star.

Opportunity is imaging the crater's interior to better reveal the geometry of rock layers as a means of defining the stratigraphy and the impact process. Santa Maria is a relatively young, 90-meter-diameter (295-foot-diameter) impact crater. Note the blocks of ejected material around the crater. It is old enough to collect sand dunes in its interior.

Santa Maria crater, located in Meridiani Planum, is about 6 kilometers (4 miles) from the rim of the much larger Endeavour crater, Opportunity's long-term destination. The rim of Endeavour contains spectral indications of phyllosilicates, or clay bearing minerals believed to have formed in wet conditions that could have been more habitable than the later acidic conditions in which the sulfates Opportunity has been exploring formed.

Data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, which is also on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, show indications of hydrated sulfates on the southeast edge of the Santa Maria crater. The rover team plans to use Opportunity to investigate that area through the solar conjunction period in late January and early February. During that period, Mars is almost directly behind the sun from Earth's perspective, and commanding from Earth to Mars spacecraft is restricted. After that, Opportunity will traverse to the northwest rim of Endeavour crater, aided tremendously by HiRISE images like this for navigation and targeting interesting smaller craters along the way.

Soyuz lift-off with ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli together with Dmitri Kondratyev and Catherine Coleman for a challenging 6-month mission on the International Space Station (ISS) as members of Expeditions 26/27. They were launched in the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 15 December at 20:09 CET.
Paolo’s MagISStra mission will be Europe’s third long-duration mission on the ISS. Between December 2010 and June 2011 he will be part of the ISS crew as a flight engineer.

NASA's Kepler Mission

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Soyuz

First Rocky Planet

Rover Will Spend 7th Birthday at Stadium-Size Crater

Paolo Nespoli heads to Space Station on MagISStra mission

NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.
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The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a Dec. 31, 2010, view of the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on the southwestern rim of a football-field-size crater called "Santa...
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ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli is on his way to the International Space Station with crewmates Dmitri Kondratyev and Catherine Coleman aboard their Soyuz spacecraft following liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 20:09:25 CET yesterday.
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Artist concept of Voyager near interstellar space.

ESA's Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli captured on the final exam day in his flight suit near the Soyuz TMA simulator.

Silver for Redshift 7 Advanced Download Edition

The Voyager

Paolo Nespoli

“Software of the Year 2010”

NASA Probe Sees Solar Wind Decline

Follow the launch of ESA astronaut

Softwareload announces its UK Award winners

The 33-year odyssey of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.
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ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli will be launched to the International Space Station on 15 December at 20:09 CET (16 December 01:09 Baikonur time). Media are invited to the main event in Nespoli's home town of Verano Brianza, with subsidiary events in...
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Redshift 7 Advanced Download Edition from United Soft media GmbH, won the second place in the PC category "Hobby".

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On 26 November 2010, an Ariane 5 launcher lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on its mission to place two telecommunications satellites, Hylas-1 and Intelsat 17, into their planned transfer orbits.

Liftoff of V198, the 54th Ariane 5 flight, came at 19:39 CET (18:39 GMT; 15:39 French Guiana).

This image from the High-Resolution Instrument on NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft shows part of the nucleus of comet Hartley 2. The sun is illuminating the nucleus from the right. A distinct cloud of individual particles is visible. This image was obtained on Nov. 4, 2010, the day the EPOXI mission spacecraft made its closest approach to the comet.

A flawless launch

The operating space science missions

EPOXI Mission

Hylas-1 in orbit brings Europe broadband from space

Europe maintains its presence on the final frontier

Cosmic Snow Storm During Comet Encounter

A flawless launch has delivered Hylas-1, ESA’s first public–private partnership in a full satellite system, into space. The satellite was released today into its transfer orbit after a textbook launch by an Ariane 5 vehicle from Europe’s Spaceport...
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ESA has decided to extend the productive lives of 11 of its operating space science missions. This will enable ESA’s world-class science missions to continue returning pioneering results until at least 2014.
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The EPOXI mission's recent encounter with comet Hartley 2 provided the first images clear enough for scientists to link jets of dust and gas with specific surface features. NASA and other scientists have begun to analyze the images.
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An international team of astronomers has observed what happens after asteroids crash together. Using Hubble to study the aftermath of one such collision over five months, they watched a strange, comet-like debris trail slowly evolve as the collision site orbited the Sun. This research gives clues about how asteroids behave when they collide, and how the fall-out from these impacts contributes to the dust that pervades the Solar System.

At the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the prime and backup crews to join Expedition 24 on the International Space Station pose for a picture in front of their Soyuz booster rocket in its integration building June 11, 2010. From left to right are prime crew members Doug Wheelock, Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Shannon Walker, with backup crew members Cady Coleman, Dmitri Kondratiev and Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency. Wheelock, Yurchikhin and Walker will launch next week in the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft on a two-day trip to the International Space Station.

This false-color composite image, constructed from data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows the glow of auroras streaking out about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from the cloud tops of Saturn's south polar region. It is among the first images released from a study that identifies images showing auroral emissions out of the entire catalogue of images taken by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.

Hubble captures aftermath of asteroid collision

MagISStra

Glowing southern lights on Saturn

Intruder is linked to an unseen asteroid collision

Counting down for ESA’s mission to Space Station

New Views of Saturn's Aurora

Last January astronomers thought they had witnessed a fresh collision between two asteroids when images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope revealed a bizarre X-shaped object at the head of a comet-like trail of material.
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In Latin magistra means 'female teacher', and now Europe’s third long-duration astronaut mission to the International Space Station will carry almost the same name: MagISStra.
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A new movie and images showing Saturn's shimmering aurora over a two-day period are helping scientists understand what drives some of the solar system's most impressive light shows. The movie and images are part of a new study that, for the first...
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The ESA's lunar lander mission aims to land in the mountainous and heavily cratered terrain of the lunar south pole, possibly in 2018. The region may be a prime location for future human explorers because it offers almost continuous sunlight for power and potential access to vital resources such as water-ice.

The ‘Phase-B1’ study is going on under the leadership of EADS-Astrium Bremen and some of the key technologies will be developed and tested for the first time.

The project will be presented to ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting in 2012 for full approval.

Whole Mars500 crew in portrait, September 2010: (clockwise from top left) Sukhrob Kamolov, Romain Charles, Diego Urbina, Yue Wang, Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Alexey Sitev.

Artist's concept of Cassini's flyby of Enceladus.

Europe explores the Moon

Mars500

Cassini

Next step for ESA’s first Moon lander

105 days in isolation

Hunting Enceladus 'Tigers' with Night Vision

Mission description: land autonomously with pinpoint precision near the Moon’s south pole, a region full of dangerous boulders and high ridges. The aim of ESA’s proposed precursor is to probe the moonscape’s unknowns and test new technology to...
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Sailing now in interplanetary space on their simulated mission towards the ‘Red Planet’, the Mars500 crew has entered in a new phase of their isolation. The previous mission endured 105 days in 2009 and from now on, everything in this experiment is...
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be hunting for heat signatures at the "tiger stripes" in the dim south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus on Friday, Aug. 13. The closest approach will bring the spacecraft to within about 2,500 kilometers (1,600...
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Magazine

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has at last found buckyballs in space, as illustrated by this artist's conception showing the carbon balls coming out from the type of object where they were discovered -- a dying star and the material it sheds, known as a planetary nebula.

Buckyballs are made up of 60 carbon atoms organized into spherical structures that resemble soccer balls. They also look like Buckminister Fuller's architectural domes, hence their official name of buckministerfullerenes. The molecules were first concocted in a lab nearly 25 years ago, and were theorized at that time to be floating around carbon-rich stars in space.

But it wasn't until now that Spitzer, using its sensitive infrared vision, was able to find convincing signs of buckyballs. The telescope found the molecules -- as well as their elongated, rugby-ball-like relatives, called C70 -- in the material around a dying star, or planetary nebula, called Tc 1. The star at the center of Tc 1 was once similar to our sun but as it aged, it sloughed off its outer layers, leaving only a dense white-dwarf star. Astronomers believe buckyballs were created in shed layers of carbon that blew off the star.

Tc 1 does not show up that well in images, so a picture of the NGC 2440 nebula, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, was used in this artist's conception.

Distant exoplanets can easily have habitable moons, as this illustration shows.

Space Weather

NASA Telescope Finds

Exoplanets

Southern Polar Lights

Elusive Buckyballs in Space for First Time

Earth-like Planets May Be Ready for Their Close-Up

The solar eruption of August 7th might affect Earth after all. Newly-arriving data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) show a CME heading our way with a significant Earth-directed component.
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Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules, known as "buckyballs," in space for the first time. Buckyballs are soccer-ball-shaped molecules that were first observed in a laboratory 25 years ago.
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Many scientists speculate that our galaxy could be full of places like Pandora from the movie "Avatar" -- Earth-like worlds in solar systems besides our own.
That doesn't mean such worlds have been easy to find, however. Of the 400-plus...
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Magazine

The small round black spot in this THEMIS image may be a hole in the roof of a Martian lava tube or cave.

This artist's concept depicts the Hayabusa spacecraft (left) and sample return capsule (right) entering the atmosphere over South Australia.

Students find Mars-Crater

Water Content of Moon's Interior Underestimated

June 13 circled on the calendar

Middle-school project discovers cave skylight on Mars

More Water on the Moon

NASA Helps in Upcoming Asteroid Mission Homecoming

They went looking for lava tubes on Mars — and found what may be a hole in the roof of a Martian cave. The 16 students in Dennis Mitchell's 7th-grade science class at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., chose to study lava tubes, a...
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NASA-funded scientists estimate from recent research that the volume of water molecules locked inside minerals in the moon’s interior could exceed the amount of water in the Great Lakes here on Earth.
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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) expects the sample return capsule of the agency's technology demonstrator spacecraft, Hayabusa, to boomerang back to Earth. The capsule, along with its mother ship, visited a near-Earth asteroid,...
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This first light image of the TRAPPIST national telescope at La Silla shows the Tarantula Nebula, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) — one of the galaxies closest to us. Also known as 30 Doradus or NGC 2070, the nebula owes its name to the arrangement of bright patches that somewhat resembles the legs of a tarantula. Taking the name of one of the biggest spiders on Earth is very fitting in view of the gigantic proportions of this celestial nebula — it measures nearly 1000 light-years across! Its proximity, the favourable inclination of the LMC, and the absence of intervening dust make this nebula one of the best laboratories to help understand the formation of massive stars better. The image was made from data obtained through three filters (B, V and R) and the field of view is about 20 arcminutes across.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft, illustrated in this artist's concept, is propelled by ion engines.

Lengthy detective work with data NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit collected in late 2005 has confirmed that an outcrop called "Comanche" contains a mineral indicating that a past environment was wet and non-acidic, possibly favorable to life.

Spirit used its panoramic camera to capture this view of the Comanche outcrop during the 689th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Dec. 11, 2005). The rover's Moessbauer spectrometer, miniature thermal emission spectrometer and alpha particle X-ray spectrometer each examined targets on Comanche that month. On June 3, 2010, scientists using data from all three spectrometers reported that about one-fourth of the composition of Comanche is magnesium iron carbonate. That concentration is 10 times higher than for any previously identified carbonate in a Martian rock.

Carbonates originate in wet, near-neutral conditions but dissolve in acid. The find at Comanche is the first unambiguous evidence from either Spirit of its twin, Opportunity, for a past Martian environment that may have been more favorable to life than the wet but acidic conditions indicated by the rovers' earlier finds.

In this image, Comanche is the dark reddish mound above the center of the view. The image is presented in false color, which makes some differences between materials easier to see. It combines three separate exposures taken through filters admitting wavelengths of 750 nanometers, 530 nanometers and 430 nanometers. The main Comanche outcrop is about 5 meters (16 feet) from left to right from this perspective. The paler material visible at bottom right is part of another outcrop, "Algonquin."

TRAPPIST

PASADENA, Calif.

New National Telescope at La Silla

NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Fires Past Record for Speed Change

NASA Rover Finds Clue to Mars' Past and Environment for Life

A new robotic telescope has had first light at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, in Chile. TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) is devoted to the study of planetary systems through two approaches: the detection and...
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Deep in the heart of the asteroid belt, on its way to the first of the belt's two most massive inhabitants, NASA's ion-propelled Dawn spacecraft has eclipsed the record for velocity change produced by a spacecraft's engines.
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Rocks examined by NASA's Spirit Mars Rover hold evidence of a wet, non-acidic ancient environment that may have been favorable for life. Confirming this mineral clue took four years of analysis by several scientists.
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