Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Planetary Science
Revisiting a forgotten planet
Engineers are readying a NASA spacecraft for a May 11 launch to Mercury, one of the least-explored planets in the solar system.
- Astronomy
Nudging asteroid fragments toward Earth
New computer simulations detail how fragments of asteroids travel to Earth and rain down as meteorites.
- Astronomy
Invisible Universe
X-ray astronomy opens a new window on the most energetic cosmic events.
- Planetary Science
Radio link may hamper a Titan probe
A recently discovered communications problem could prevent the Huygens probe from relaying all of its precious data when it parachutes through the cloud-bedecked atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in 2004.
- Astronomy
Deepest Vision Yet: Hubble takes ultralong look at the cosmos
Astronomers unveiled the deepest visible-light portrait of the universe ever taken, a million-second-long exposure by the Hubble Space Telescope that includes near-infrared images of what appear to be the most-distant galaxies known.
- Planetary Science
A New Flight Plan
President Bush recently unveiled an ambitious plan for a manned mission to Mars, using the moon as a testing area and stepping-stone, but for many planetary scientists the moon is a desirable destination in and of itself.
- Planetary Science
Red Planet Makes a Splash: Rover finds gush of evidence for past water
A robotic rover on Mars has gathered what scientists are calling the best evidence to date that liquid water once flowed on the Red Planet.
- Astronomy
Pulsar pas de deux
Astronomers have for the first time discovered two pulsars orbiting each other, offering the chance for new precision tests of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
- Astronomy
Wrenching Findings: Homing in on dark energy
In an analysis of a group of distant supernovas, astronomers have found hints that dark energy is distributed uniformly throughout space.
- Astronomy
Finding the star that was
Sifting through archival images, astronomers have identified the star whose explosive demise was recorded by telescopes last year.
- Planetary Science
A view of Mars, European style
Although the Mars lander Beagle 2 is presumed dead, its mother craft, the European Space Agency's Mars Express, has transmitted its first data from a polar orbit about the Red Planet.
- Astronomy
Bare-Naked Galaxies
A decade's worth of observations is spotlighting how the vast sea of gas surrounding a cluster of galaxies can alter the shape of a galaxy plowing through it.
