Starry Skies Network

Now that NASA engineers have Space Shuttle Endeavour on track for a July 11 launch, repair work can focus on another problem - a damaged window on the Atlantis orbiter.

Favorable chemistry and episodes with thin films of liquid water during ongoing, long-term climate cycles may sometimes make the area where NASA’s Phoenix Mars mission landed last year a favorable environment for microbes.

A successful fueling test Wednesday cleared the way for NASA to launch shuttle Endeavour next week and kept the agency on track to finish the International Space Station and retire the shuttle fleet late next year.

Every night during Mars’s winter, water-ice crystals fall from high, thin clouds over the north pole, new data from NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander have revealed.

The image of Neil Armstrong taking his first step on the surface of the Moon - almost 40 years ago - has been imprinted on the collective mind of mankind. But unseen at the time were the equally emotional scenes when his family - as well as the families of his two fellow Apollo 11 astronauts - held their breath in a mixture of agony and ecstasy, fearful for the men’s safety.

Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin says the world is at a crucial moment where decisive action from a global leader now would start humans on a path towards the colonisation of other planets:

Members of the Michoud Assembly Facility Transition Board signed the certification of transition June 25, turning over manufacturing support and facility operations management at the New Orleans facility to Jacobs Technology of Tullahoma, Tenn., on July 1 — completing the 62-day phase-in process. The facility previously had been managed by Lockheed Martin for more than 25 years.

Using a worldwide combination of diverse telescopes, astronomers have discovered that a giant galaxy’s bursts of very high energy gamma rays are coming from a region very close to the supermassive black hole at its core. The discovery provides important new information about the mysterious workings of the powerful “engines” in the centers of innumerable galaxies throughout the Universe.

Mars gets as far as 250 million miles away, but many parts of it closely resemble places on Earth, including its landscape, history of water, soil and even its weather, says a Texas A&M University researcher in the current issue of “Science” magazine.

Until now, scientists didn’t understand this light’s origin, but a new study shows that its source is a giant black hole inside the M87 galaxy.

Gullies, channels and other features on the martian surface have long suggested that water flowed across red planet long ago. But a growing number of observations show frozen water is there now.

The planet Mars conjures images of red rocks and arid, dusty plains, but as NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander showed last year, it snows on Mars.

A gadget that could sneak a glimpse inside an astronaut’s brain has cleared a significant hurdle, operating successfully aboard an aircraft that simulates the weightlessness of outer space. Eventually, the device could be used to remotely monitor astronauts for signs of brain injury, depression and even mental fatigue that could compromise their ability to make a critical repair of equipment.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has transmitted its first images since reaching lunar orbit June 23. The spacecraft has two cameras — a low resolution Wide Angle Camera and a high resolution Narrow Angle Camera. Collectively known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, they were activated June 30. The cameras are working well and have returned images of a region a few kilometers east of Hell E crater in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium.

With NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, astronomers now are getting their best look at those whirling stellar cinders known as pulsars. In two studies published in the July 2 edition of Science Express, international teams have analyzed gamma-rays from two dozen pulsars, including 16 discovered by Fermi. Fermi is the first spacecraft able to identify pulsars by their gamma-ray emission alone.

You might have missed it, but we’re spending much of July remembering the first landing on the moon. This year, of course, is the 40th anniversary.

The Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying half of the International Space Station crew has re-docked after a brief 25-minute flight overnight to swap the parking post.

An archaeological excavation in southern Vietnam of a site more than 3000 years old has shed new light on how the death of young children was viewed by community members and uncovered the oldest clear evidence of rice agriculture in the region.

Inside a newly discovered underground chamber, Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal points to an unseen carving that he suspects may be a Zodiac sign that dates back to the Roman period around the first century A.D

The last time global warming came to the Andes it produced the Inca Empire. A team of English and U.S. scientists has analyzed pollen, seeds and isotopes in core samples taken from the deep mud of a small lake not far from Machu Picchu and their report says that “the success of the Inca was underpinned by a period of warming that lasted more than four centuries.”