The recent flyby of Mercury by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has given scientists an entirely new look at a planet once thought to have characteristics similar to those of Earth's moon. Researchers are amazed by the wealth of images and data that show a unique world with a diversity of geological processes and a very different magnetosphere from the one discovered and sampled more than 30 years ago.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/m...media_conf.html

An asteroid once thought to be on a collision course with Mars passed the Red Planet today without incident.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080...u.a57tl9DWs0NUE

Miniature "airbags" that deploy explosively to protect micro sensors during planetary exploration are being tested by Swiss and German researchers.

Space agencies around the world are exploring ways to distribute large numbers of compact sensors or "motes" on the other planets.

These distributed devices could replace larger planetary craft for relatively simple tasks, such as atmospheric sensing. But landing them safely remains a key concern.

http://technology.newscientist.com/...line-news_rss20

Scientists performing experimental brain surgery on a man aged 50 have stumbled across a mechanism that could unlock how memory works.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...ory-775586.html

A new contact lens embedded with electronic circuits could be the seed for "bionic eyes" that can see displays overlaid on a person's field of view, researchers say.

The minute circuitry could aid the vision-impaired or could be used to create tiny but discernible readouts offering data such as driving directions or on-the-go Web surfing.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...bionic-eye.html

An asteroid at least 500 feet long will make a rare close pass by Earth next week, but there is no chance of an impact, scientists reported Thursday.

The object, known as 2007 TU24, is expected to whiz by Earth on Tuesday with its closest approach at 334,000 miles, or about 1.4 times the distance of Earth to the moon.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080125.../earth_asteroid

New Mexico's Spaceport America, which is being billed as the first "purpose-built" commercial spaceport in the United States, must conquer some challenging milestones that lie ahead if it is to open in late 2009 or early 2010.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080...5OjSVBUDjis0NUE

On January 27, 1967 Astronauts t Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee died in a fire while performing tests inside the Apollo 1 capsule.

Their deaths were attributed to a wide range of lethal design hazards in the early Apollo command module such as its highly pressurized 100% oxygen atmosphere during the test.

This was considered until then one of the worst tragedies in the US space program.

In memoriam of the tragedy Space. com has posted a newsreel made at the time, recounting the horrific tragedy.


http://www.space.com/php/video/play...=080125-apollo1

An Australian girl spontaneously switched blood groups and adopted her donor's immune system following a liver transplant in the first known case of its type, doctors treating her said Thursday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2008012...ldrentransplant

When astronauts overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope this summer, they will leave behind a vastly more powerful orbital observatory to scan the universe.

Set to launch aboard NASA's shuttle Atlantis on Aug. 7, the Hubble servicing mission will be the fifth - and final - sortie to upgrade the aging space telescope.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080...telescopesreach

Four giant waterfalls will be erected in New York for three months this summer in a public art project city officials hope will create $55 million in extra tourism revenue for the Big Apple.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080117...k_waterfalls_dc

Yet another Star Trek-like device is making its way into the real world. VoxTec’s Phraselator name sounds a bit like something the Three Stooges might have used long ago but no, this PDA-like device was developed through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for use in Afghanistan and Iraq by American soldiers for communicating with locals who spoke Farsi, Dari, Pashto and other languages.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/24034

What would a dog say if it could talk? "Stranger", "fight", "walk", "alone", "ball" and "play", according to scientists who have developed a computer programme to translate dog barks.

The special programme analysed more than 6,000 barks from 14 Hungarian sheepdogs in six different situations.

In a series of tests the team of scientists, from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary led by Csaba Molnár, discovered that a computer could recognise whether a dog was in a stranger, fight, walk, alone, ball or play scenario.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...in_page_id=1811

Since our first close-up glimpses of Mercury in the 1970s, we've been left to wonder: "What does the rest of Mercury look like?" When it imaged the first planet from the Sun in 1974, NASA's Mariner 10 space probe was only able to capture 45 per cent of Mercury's surface as it flew by. Now, the US space agency's latest craft - MESSENGER - has photographed the planet closer and in more detail than ever before, revealing what looks to be an extreme version of Earth's Moon, with craters inside craters, inside craters.

http://www.discoverychannel.ca/repo...hemisphere.aspx

Fossil hunters have uncovered the greatest rodent that ever lived -- a one-tonne behemoth that bestrode the swamplands of South America some four million years ago.

The newly-identified species is the greatest-known member of the order Rodentia and by comparison makes the biggest rodent alive today, the 60-kilo (132-pound) capybara, look like a pygmy shrew.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2008011...eontologyrodent

For the first time in 33 years, a space probe zoomed by the planet Mercury with cameras blazing on Monday while eager scientists looked on from Earth.

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft successfully flew past its target planet at 2:04:39 p.m. EST (1904:39 GMT) as applause filled its mission control room here at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

"It went right according to script, so that was very comforting," MESSENGER principal investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, told SPACE.com after the flyby.

http://www.space.com/scienceastrono...flyby-wrap.html

NEW YORK - Squat, homely, dwarfed by the stately oaks and poplars nearby and unnoticed by the tourists passing in horse-drawn carriages, it's a tree that only birds and nut-hungry squirrels could love.

But on Thursday, the 100-year-old European beech on Central Park's Cherry Hill was the center of attention — chosen by city officials as the first of 25 "historical" trees to be cloned as part of a plan to add a million new trees to streets, parks and public spaces over the next decade.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080110...c/cloning_trees

Imagine what kind of spectacular show it would be like to fly into the heart of the Northern Lights. You may not have to imagine forever. Richard Branson has been busy thinking up new ways to get people excited about private space tourism, and he’s come up with something pretty spectacular. He’s offering to fly the affluent into the world’s biggest lightshow, the Aurora Borealis.


The New Mexico Virgin Galactic Spaceport isn't scheduled for completion until 2010, but Branson is already planning his next project from an Arctic launchpad located in the far north of Sweden in the small town of Kiruna. The Arctic location provides the town with unrivalled views of the spectacular phenomenon.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...n-galactic.html

In 1950, this cotton market town in northern Alabama lost a bid for a military aviation project that would have revived its mothballed arsenal. The consolation prize was dubious: 118 German rocket scientists who had surrendered to the Americans during World War II, led by a man — a crackpot, evidently — who claimed humans could visit the moon
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/u...tml?ref=science

A sketchbook Belonging to Van Gogh Found in Athens
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=21274