...starts with research from Japan which indicates that there may be orphan planets orbiting around the centre of the galaxy independent of any star: http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ed-worlds.html

New research conducted by the Carnegie Institution of Washington has shown that lunar rocks reveals that they have the same concentration of water as the Earth's upper mantle. This might ultimately mean that theories of the Moon's origin have to be reviewed: http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ingly-wet.html

Complex, multi-planet solar systems appear to be relatively common: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05...world_results/

NASA and the European Space Agency are cooperating on a potential replacement for an automated resupply vessel to dock with the International Space Station: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13286238

A cataclysmic explosion of a huge star near the edge of the observable Universe might be the most distant single object yet spied by a telescope at a distance of just over 13 billion light years from Earth: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13539914

The first results from a major astronomical survey using a new cutting-edge technique appear to have confirmed the existence of dark energy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13462926

NASA has confirmed that the vehicle it will use to send astronauts to places like asteroids will be based on its Orion capsule concept: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13532968

Reusable commercial rockets will soon be able to take scientists — and tourists — on suborbital spaceflights. Are these vehicles vital research tools, or an expensive dead end? Article here in Adobe Pdf format: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110504/pdf/473021a.pdf

China unveils a plan for a space station: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/1105...l/473014a.html
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/1105...14a/box/1.html

Regarding that last story, that Chinese space station is a tad grandiose (and expensive) and they would do far better if they first considered something along the lines of the Salyut space stations such as Salyut 7:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut

But what a valient effort - 6 years of exploring Mars!

Raises glass to Spirit! Salut!

I like the design for the Chinese Space Station, it looks a lot more tidy than Mir and the ISS. Of course who knows if it will stay so neat, I suppose in space a nice design isn't really needed.

Space Shuttle Endeavour heads home for the last time....live on Sky News now

...and there's more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13600575

The NGC 6744 spiral galaxy is 30 million light-years away in the constellation Pavo the peacock. Although it is actually twice as large as the Milky Way Galaxy, it has a similar form and structure hence it has been dubbed as a twin galaxy.

Another galactic twin is NGC 4565 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040409.html which is also 30 million+ light-years away but this galaxy is seen edge-on from Earth and our own Milky Way Galaxy would look pretty much the same when seen edge-on too.

Live Soyuz Launch to the ISS, with a US, Russian and Japaneseese crew on board.

http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv

Soon good ol' reliable Soyuz will be the only way of getting humans into space for the time being. I guess it's going to blast off in about 2 minutes' time - cool

...starting with Mars.

Over the next few year, the USA, Russia, China, and European Space Agency will all be sending missions to Mars to look at various aspects of the planet including geology, meteorology, localised magnetic fields and, of course, the search for life. More here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...40-years-space

Based on what we know, it's probably safe to say that any indigenous Martian life, should it exist, will be simple and it won't be widespread, diverse or abundant. My guess is that Mars has been a dead world for a long time and the best that can perhaps be hoped for is trace microfossils arising from microbial life that died out hundreds of millions of years ago.

Things might be complicated by the no doubt millions of bacteria and bacterial spores from Earth that have no doubt hitched their way to Mars already on the sides and insides of our spaceprobes notwithstanding sterilisation efforts.

And now for further afield...

Researchers Raymond Pierrehumbert at the University of Chicago and Eric Gaidos from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu have jointly postulated that there could be some planets in the galaxy that could be relatively far from their sun but could still nevertheless support liquid water and life.

They theoreticaly could do that because of a thick, insulating atmosphere of hydrogen gas. It's an interesting theory and given the large range of solar systems that we have encountered so far, a situation like this could have perhaps occurred within this galaxy. More here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/...-blankets.html

The next 'Great' comet....????

The Minor Planet Center have issued a details of a new comet discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey in Hawaii. Designated 'C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS)' it may be very bright in spring 2013!
Perihelion is currently forecast to be 0.36AU, and the comet could reach a magnitude between 0 and 2 in April 2013.
(the brightest stars are magnitude 0 - 1)
It's early days yet - it's still a long way out, and very dim - but with comet's brightness being notoriously unpredictable it might go even brighter.

Fingers crossed.

Let us hope that it turns out like Comets Hyakutake http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=com...2&ved=0CD8QsAQ and Hale-Bopp http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...l244l505l1.2.1 and not some overhyped damp squib!

Spacecraft from the 70s to journey beyond the sun..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13720438

Pretty cool achievement.

Okay, kinda fun rather than serious but I thought this would be the place to find interested parties...

I was hunting around the internet looking for free stuff and I found THIS.

It's a technically accurate (albeit vastly simplfied) Space Shuttle simulator. And it's free.

Download it HERE.
The sim, for some reason, is completely silent so you also need to download the sound-pack from HERE.

I just had a play around with it and although a lot of the stuff is gibberish to somebody who's more used to games it's fascinating to watch the tutorials and muck about with.

If your PC is up to it, and you have an interest in space, it's well worth a look.

hearing this on the news the other day has put a chill down my spine ,what i can't get my head round is why is it just taking 16 hours for any radio signal to get back to earth ,but yet its take over 30 years for the space craft to get to this point? why the difference?

Er, because light goes much faster than any man-made spacecraft...

radio signals is not light ?is it? sorry if thats sounding think ,but was not away of that,as in radio not being light.

Radio signals travel at the speed of light.

It's all part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio waves just have a much longer wavelength than visible light, which in turn has a much longer wavelength than gamma rays. As a sort of shorthand, physicists just talk about "light". It all goes at the same speed in a vacuum.

understand now thank you,but its very interesting to hear that the space craft now so far out into deep space will never return to earth & that it will take even longer for any signal to return to earth the much further it travels into deep space,astonishing

Sadly, in another ten years or so, the power supplies will be exhausted and the probes will fall silent. They will then continue a lonely 40,000 year journey to their next encounter with a star.

A famous photograph, Pale Blue Dot, shows the view Voyager 1 had of the Earth in 1990.

this really goes to show how a very lonely place space really is & i wounder how long we have left before we no long see it again?

By then the New Horizons probe will hopefully have taken over as the only spacecraft in the outer Solar System still sending data back to Earth in its post Pluto mission thru the Kuiper Belt.

wheres that probe at the moment?

Last ever roll-out of a Shuttle to the pad happened over the last couple of days.

I hope the media are going to make a fuss over the last shuttle mission as I could do with a space fix. The BBC did an excellent job of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 2 years ago so i hope they do as good a job of this.

Rather hope so too...most folk seem to think shuttle MK 2 is waiting..

Aw, don't say lonely ...

http://xkcd.com/695/