NASA Breaking News NASA Calendar NASA Story Archives Year 1996 - 2008 Mystery image of 'life on Mars' An image of a mysterious shape on the surface of Mars, taken by Nasa spacecraft Spirit, has reignited the debate about life on the Red Planet. A magnified version of the picture, posted on the internet, appears to some to show what resembles a human form among a crop of rocks. While some bloggers have dismissed the image as a trick of light, others say it is evidence of an alien presence. Read more 'Space hotel' test craft launched An experimental spacecraft designed to test the viability of a hotel in space has been successfully sent into orbit. Genesis II is an inflatable module designed and launched by Bigelow Aerospace, a private company founded by an American hotel tycoon. The inflatable and flexible core of the spacecraft expands to form a bigger structure after launch. Read more From NASA's Archive Who's Orbiting the Moon? The space around Earth is a busy place, as teeming with traffic as a roundabout. More than 500 active satellites are bustling about up there right now. Some are transmitting radio, television, and telephone signals; others are gathering informa- tion about Earth's atmosphere and weather; still others are helping people navigate down here; and the rest are conducting space research. Soon the space around the moon will be busy too. China, Japan, India, Russia, and the US either have sent or plan to send satellites there for a bird's-eye view of lunar features and resources. The Vanishing Rings of Saturn Around the world, amateur astronomers have noticed the change; Saturn's wide open rings are rapidly narrowing into a thin line. Four hundred years ago, the same phenomenon puzzled Galileo. Peering through a primitive spy glass, he discovered Saturn's rings in 1610 and immediately wrote to his Medici patrons: "I found another very strange wonder, which I should like to make known to their Highnesses…." He was dumbfounded, however, when the rings winked out little more than a year later. What happened? The same thing that's happening now: we're experiencing a "ring plane crossing." As Saturn goes around the sun, it periodically turns its rings edge-on to Earth— once every 14-to-15 years. Because the rings are so thin, they can actually disappear when viewed through a small telescope. In the months ahead, Saturn's rings will become thinner and thinner until, on Sept. 4, 2009, they vanish. When this happened to Galileo in 1612, he briefly abandoned his study of the planet. Big mistake: ring plane crossings are good times to discover new Saturnian moons and faint outer rings. The Moon and the Magnetotail Behold the full Moon. Ancient craters and frozen lava seas lie motionless under an airless sky of profound quiet. It's a slow-motion world where even a human footprint may last millions of years. Nothing ever seems to happen there. Right? Wrong. NASA-supported scientists have realized that something does happen every month when the Moon gets a lashing from Earth's magnetic tail. "Earth's magnetotail extends well beyond the orbit of the Moon and, once a month, the Moon orbits through it," says Tim Stubbs, a University of Maryland scientist working at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "This can have conse- quences ranging from lunar 'dust storms' to electrostatic discharges." Solar System's 'look-alike' found Astronomers have discovered a planetary system orbiting a distant star which looks much like our own. They found two planets that were close matches for Jupiter and Saturn orbiting a star about half the size of our Sun. Martin Dominik, from St Andrews University in the UK, said the finding suggested systems like our own could be much more common than we thought. And he told a major meeting that astronomers were on the brink of finding many more of them. The St Andrews researcher said this planetary system, and others like it, could host terrestrial planets like Earth. It was just a matter of time before such worlds were detected, he explained. 100 Explosions on the Moon Not so long ago, anyone claiming to see flashes of light on the Moon would be viewed with deep suspicion by professional astronomers. Such reports were filed under "L" … for lunatic. Not anymore. Over the past two and a half years, NASA astronomers have observed the Moon flashing at them not just once but one hundred times. "They're explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the Moon," explains Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). "A typical blast is about as powerful as a few hundred pounds of TNT and can be photographed easily using a backyard telescope." ......A common question, says Cooke, is "how can something explode on the Moon? There's no oxygen up there."

Mercury Flyby Sets Stage for New Discoveries January 21, 2008: "Discoveries are at hand!" That's what members of the MESSENGER science team are saying after their spacecraft flew past Mercury on Jan. 14th at a distance of only 124 miles. The historic flyby netted 500 megabytes of data (now safely down- loaded to Earth) and more than 1200 photos covering nearly six million square miles of previously unseen terrain. "We're inundated with data — it's wonderful," says mission scientist and planetary geologist Scott Murchie of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. One of the first images beamed back from the spacecraft revealed a side of Mercury researchers have been waiting three decades to see: Read more Image: New terrain on Mercury revealed by MESSENGER's cameras during the Jan. 14, 2008, flyby. Caloris Basin is circled ____________________ From other sources NASA discovers fifth planet in 55 Cancri system The universe contains vast numbers of planetary systems similar to our own, increasing the chances of there being extraterrestrial life, astronomers have an-nounced. 'Cold spot' to shed light on Big Bang theory A giant cold spot in space may provide the first evidence of a cosmic defect that could help to explain how the universe developed, scientists say. Researchers believe the abnormality could help provide proof for fundamental theories about the way different types of particles and natural forms evolved during the Big Bang.The Big Bang theory proposes the universe was extremely hot and dense when it was created around 14 billion years ago, and that it cooled as it expan-ded. Saturn's rings are debris from collision Mars rovers continue to reveal planet's secrets The mysteries of the red planet continue to be laid bare. The Mars rover Opportunity is studying a "bathtub ring" on Victoria Crater, while her sister Spirit is looking at an intriguing layered rock formation nicknamed "Home Plate" that may shed light on ancient volcanic activity - and also searching for a safe, sunny place to spend the Martian winter. 'Hypernova' star death explained at last The brightest and most violent star death ever recorded - which some astronomers dubbed the hypernova - can now be explained, writes Roger Highfield