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NASA Engineers Aim to Unsnag Spirit November 13, 2009 
For NASA's stuck Mars rover, the Spirit may be willing, but the wheels could prove too weak. The space agency on Thursday outlined a rescue plan to try to free the rover Spirit, which has been bogged in a sand trap on the red planet for half a year. The risky operation is expected to last several months.
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Space Clown's Return Ends 'Anarchy' Aboard ISS October 13, 2009 
Guy Laliberte, a billionaire who once worked as a stilt-walker and fire-eater, said Tuesday that he accomplished his mission by using a 10-day trip to the International Space Station to promote a humanitarian cause. The Canadian Cirque du Soleil founder -- dubbed "the first clown in space" -- said his $35 million trip was an effective "marketing tool to put the One Drop Foundation on the map."
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Rocky Extrasolar Planet Too Close to Its Sun for Comfort September 17, 2009 
Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there's a firm place to stand -- if only it weren't so broiling hot. Scientists have already found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. However, all are of them are gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now, a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first discovery of a rocky extrasolar planet.
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Minor Glitches All in a Day's Work for Spacewalkers September 02, 2009 
A pair of spacewalkers successfully tackled a hefty tank removal job at the international space station Tuesday as their crewmates unloaded comedian Stephen Colbert's namesake treadmill for all "those famously fat astronauts." The only concern Nicole Stott and Danny Olivas had about mass -- everything is weightless up there, after all -- involved the huge ammonia tank they needed to disconnect.
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SpaceX Chalks Up Another First for Commercial Space Travel July 14, 2009 
Space Exploration Technologies -- or SpaceX, as it is usually called -- took a key step toward providing support for NASA and advancing private space travel on Monday: It successfully launched a small satellite into orbit atop its Falcon 1 rocket. It was a first for the company, which has been making significant strides in private space flight since its founding in 2002 by Elon Musk, cofounder of PayPal.
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NASA Tests New Deep Space Cyber-Net November 20, 2008 
NASA has announced it has successfully tested the first deep-space communications network. The new network, modeled on the Internet, was able to transmit scores of space images between Earth and a NASA science spacecraft located more than 20 million miles away. Dubbed the "Interplanetary Internet," the software protocol was a joint venture between NASA and Vint Cerf, a vice president at Google, that began in 1998.
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Planetary Goo and the Threat of Vegetarianism October 31, 2008 
About 30 years ago, we Earthlings sent a probe to check out Mercury, the tiny planet closest to the sun, and concluded that it was just a big hot rock. But after poking around on the moon and Mars for a few decades, we decided to take another look at Mercury.
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Messenger Finds Blue Goo on Mercury October 30, 2008 
The results are in, and NASA's latest fly-by of Mercury is shedding new light on the solar system's smallest planet. The Messenger space probe zipped around Mercury early in October, examining parts of the planet never before explored. The latest mission is the second of three passes Messenger will take around the planet.
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GeoEye Starts New Earth Photo Album With High-Res Pics October 10, 2008 
Some five weeks after its launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, GeoEye-1, the satellite developed by aerial and geospatial information provider GeoEye, has signaled back to Earth. GeoEye-1 snapped the first location the satellite saw when the camera door was opened -- Kutztown University, located midway between Reading and Allentown, Penn.
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NASA Craft to Make Second, Closer Swing Past Mercury October 02, 2008 
NASA is poised to take a closer-than-ever look at the closest planet to the sun. The space agency's Messenger spacecraft will zoom over Mercury's surface in the wee hours of the morning on Monday, coming within 124 miles of the rocky ground. The move marks NASA's second scan of the surface in its first mission to Mercury in decades.
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SpaceX Private Rocket Blazes Post-Shuttle Trail September 30, 2008 
A man who made his name by founding PayPal has now made history by launching a small, low-cost rocket into space. Elon Musk, who heads up space exploration company SpaceX, successfully sent a Falcon 1 rocket into orbit over the weekend. It marked the company's fourth attempt and first success in launching the rocket.
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One Giant Leap for Malware August 28, 2008 
Call it proof that no one's above the common malware attack: NASA's own International Space Station laptops fell victim to an infection attempt, the space agency has revealed. The bug was caught and stopped before any damage was done, but the incident is raising awareness of just how easily harmful code can reach any computer -- and how important is really is to take preventative precautions before your own system is hit.
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City-Sized Collider Set for Smashing Debut August 08, 2008 
A machine poised to make science history is now ready to launch. The Large Hadron Collider -- a giant machine built 330 feet below the France-Switzerland border -- is scheduled to fire up for the first time next month, on Sept. 10. The LHC, as its name suggests, works by smashing tiny particles called "hadrons" together at extremely high energies -- higher than has ever been possible before.
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Prize Power: How Competition Inspires Tech Innovation August 06, 2008 
Bob Weiss knows a thing or two about dreams. "I grew up with the promise that if one wanted to go to space, they would get the chance," said Weiss, president of the X Prize Foundation. The trouble was that nobody kept the promise. "It became obvious that the only people that were going to space were government-trained employees called 'astronauts.' Other folks were not getting to go," Weiss said.
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Brackish Soil Sample Suggests Martian Dirt Is Toxic August 05, 2008 
A new discovery made on Mars throws a curve ball at the question of whether life ever existed on the Red Planet. NASA's Phoenix Lander has uncovered a harshly reactive salt called "perchlorate" in soil samples taken from the ground. The finding stands in stark contrast to the original belief that Mars's soil was in many ways similar to Earth's and could support a variety of life.
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Virgin Galactic's Mothership Ready to Haul Tourist Rocket to Space July 29, 2008 
Don't book that cruise just yet -- the vacation to outer space is a step closer to becoming reality. Virgin Galactic unveiled its White Knight Two carrier this week, starting the countdown to the world's first airline to take tourists to the stars. White Knight Two is set to carry passengers to near zero-gravity reaches of the skies on Virgin's SpaceShipTwo rocket.
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