New software is helping NASA find safe places for the Spirit rover to ride out future Martian winters -- and also plan where Spirit and its companion rover, Opportunity, will explore in the future. The steep Martian mesa dubbed "Von Braun" would be a safe haven, the software and data analysis determined -- but the path that Spirit would have to follow to get there is a little too risky to travel with winter on the way, explained Ron Li, professor of civil and environmental engineering and geodetic science at Ohio State University........

A model of the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-InfraRed Instrument will be tested before Christmas at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, England to ensure the final instrument can see infrared light. Observing the universe in the infrared light portion of the spectrum is important because a number of objects researchers want to observe in space are far too cold to radiate at shorter wavelengths that can be seen as visible light, but they radiate strongly in infrared light........

With a click of the mouse button, the public can see NASA views from space, including some at Google Earth, of Southern California's raging wildfires and the ferocious Santa Ana winds that are driving them. Images taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (Modis) on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites are processed daily and made available by the JPL OnEarth Web Map Server, and at Google Earth. This effort is part of an ongoing collaboration with JPL, Google Earth, and NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., to make remote satellite imagery available to the public and decision makers. Latest Modis fire images at onearth.jpl.nasa.gov/socalfires........

M87, the central galaxy of the Virgo cluster in a distance of only 50 million light years, was observed by Yuri Kovalev from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronony (MPIfR) in Bonn and colleagues with the VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array) at 2 cm wavelength. The resulting image provides details down to a resolution of one milli-arcsecond, corresponding to a linear resolution of only three light months. The new image of the inner radio jet of M87 shows a highly collimated jet which appears limb-brightened, and also a faint counter-jet. It is unprecedented in its combination of sensitivity and spatial resolution........

A NASA researcher has developed a new method to anticipate food shortages brought on by drought. Molly Brown of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and her colleagues created a model using data from satellite remote sensing of crop growth and food prices. Brown conceived the idea while working with organizations in Niger, West Africa, that provide information regarding failed crops and help address local farmers' worries about feeding their families. Brown's new approach could improve the ability for government and humanitarian aid officials to plan and respond to drought-induced food price increases in Niger and elsewhere........

The first of two spectacular vehicles for the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) Observatory rolled out of its hangar and passed successfully a series of tests. This vehicle, the ALMA antenna transporter, is a rather exceptional 'lorry' driving on 28 tyres. It is 10m wide, 20m long and 6m high, weighs 130 tons and has as much power as two Formula 1 engines. This colossus will be able to transport a 115-ton antenna and set it down on a concrete pad within millimetres of a prescribed position........

Hundreds of thousands of vibrant blue and red stars are visible in this new image of galaxy NGC 4449 taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hot bluish white clusters of massive stars are scattered throughout the galaxy, interspersed with numerous dustier reddish regions of current star formation. Massive dark clouds of gas and dust are silhouetted against the flaming starlight........

"Nothing there," is what Case Western Reserve University physicists concluded about black holes after spending a year working on complex formulas to calculate the formation of new black holes. In nearly 13 printed pages with a host of calculations, the research may solve the information loss paradox that haccording toplexed physicists for the past 40 years........

ESA's Cluster was in the right place and time to make a shocking discovery. The four spacecraft encountered a shock wave that kept breaking and reforming - predicted only in theory. On 24 January 2001, Cluster's spacecraft observed shock reformation in the Earth's magnetosphere, predicted only in theory, over 20 years ago. Cluster provided the first opportunity ever to observe such an event, the details of which have been published in a paper on 9 March this year........

Of the two luminaries that dominate our sky, it is the moon that is of particular interest to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) project. The LRO will travel to the moon in late fall 2008, mapping the surface to help pave the way for humans to return. It will help prepare us for extended surface exploration on the moon and for subsequent missions to Mars and other distant destinations. Lunar surface exploration will help us to practice living, working, and gathering science data before we venture into riskier territory........

NASA scientists believe they have found a way to predict the color of plants on planets in other solar systems. Green, yellow or even red-dominant plants may live on extra-solar planets, according to scientists whose two scientific papers appear in the recent issue of the journal, Astrobiology. The scientists studied light absorbed and reflected by organisms on Earth, and determined that if astronomers were to look at the light given off by planets circling distant stars, they might predict that some planets have mostly non-green plants........

n 2002, when astronomers first detected cosmic gamma rays - the most energetic form of light known - coming from the constellation Cygnus they were surprised and perplexed. The region lacked the extreme electromagnetic fields that they thought were required to produce such energetic rays. But now a team of theoretical physicists propose a mechanism that can explain this mystery and may also help account for another type of cosmic ray, the high-energy nuclei that rain down on Earth in the billions........

The amount of water trapped in frozen layers over Mars' south polar region is equivalent to a liquid layer about 11 metres deep covering the planet. This new estimate comes from mapping the thickness of the dusty ice by the Mars Express radar instrument that has made more than 300 virtual slices through layered deposits covering the pole. The radar sees through icy layers to the lower boundary, which in places is as deep as 3.7 kilometres below the surface........

So far, astronomers have discovered about 200 planets outside our solar system, known as "extrasolar" planets. Very little is known about most of them, but for the first time, researchers have obtained new information about the atmospheres of two such planets by splitting apart the light emitted from them........

Researchers aimed the South Pole Telescope at Jupiter on the evening of Feb. 16 and successfully collected the instrument's first test observations. Soon, far more distant quarry will fall under the SPT's sights as a team from nine institutions tackles one of the. biggest mysteries of modern cosmological research. That mystery: What is dark energy, the force that dominates the universe?.......