A team of scientists led from the UK has discovered that the rapid changes in Saturn's F ring can be attributed to small moonlets causing perturbations. Their results are reported in Nature (5th June 2008).

Saturn's F ring has long been of interest to scientists as its features change on timescales from hours to years and it is probably the only location in the solar system where large scale collisions happen on a daily basis. Understanding these processes helps scientists understand the early stages of planet formation.

ESA's orbiting gamma-ray observatory, Integral has revealed a new population of exotic and dusty binary stars which might represent a brief evolutionary period in a binary star's life.

The findings bring to light a gap in our knowledge of the formation and evolution of such binary star systems.

The following new images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft are now available:

• Proposed MSL Landing Site in Mawrth Vallis - Ellipse 4
  Mawrth Vallis has a rich mineral diversity, including clay minerals that formed by the chemical alteration of rocks by water.


• Proposed MSL Landing Site in Mawrth Vallis - Ellipse 4
  Mawrth Vallis has a rich mineral diversity, including clay minerals that formed by the chemical alteration of rocks by water.


• Small Channel in Elysium Planitia
  This image shows the head of a small, dry channel in Elysium Planitia, which is a low-lying area north of Mars' equator.


• North Polar Layered Deposits
  The north polar layered deposits of Mars form a layered stack of dusty ice up to 3 kilometers (2 miles) thick.


• Awakening Dunes
  This image captures unusual arrow-shaped sand dunes in the north polar Olympia Undae region that may have been formed by changing winds.


• Proposed MSL Landing Site in Holden Crater
  Alluvial fans are deposits of sand, gravel, and sometimes boulders that were eroded from steep slopes (mountain fronts or basin walls) and deposited on plains at the base of the slope.


• Wrinkle Ridges in Western Elysium Planitia
  This image shows “wrinkle” ridges running north to south across the lava-covered plains of Elysium Planitia.


• Ancient Highland Bedrock Cut by Valley Network
  This image shows a portion of the southern highlands cut by Arda Valles, an ancient valley network.

Two practice rounds of digging and dumping the clumpy soil at the Martian arctic site this week gave scientists and engineers gathered at the University of Arizona confidence to begin using Phoenix's Robotic Arm to deliver soil samples to instruments on the lander deck.

Those samples will not be collected before Thursday. Following Wednesday's briefing on the mission, the Phoenix team learned that NASA's Odyssey orbiter, which relays Phoenix data to and from Earth, had entered a "safe mode," preventing Wednesday's (or sol 10) instructions from reaching the lander. Instead, Phoenix will complete a sequence of commands that are already stored on board. That sequence includes instructions for the lander to continue taking images required to assemble a full-color 360-degree high-resolution panorama.

Engineers and scientists operating NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander decided early today to repeat a practice of releasing Martian soil from the scoop on the lander's Robotic Arm.

When the lander collected and released its first scoopful of soil on Sunday, some of the sample stuck to the scoop. The team told Phoenix this morning to lift another surface sample and release it, with more extensive imaging of the steps in the process.

More than 800,000 snapshots from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have been stitched together to create a new "coming of age" portrait of stars in our inner Milky Way galaxy.

The image, which depicts an area of sky 120 degrees wide by two degrees tall was unveiled at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Mo.

For decades, astronomers have been blind to what our galaxy, the Milky Way, really looks like. After all, we sit in the midst of it and can't step outside for a bird's eye view.

Now, new images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are shedding light on the true structure of the Milky Way, revealing that it has just two major arms of stars instead of the four it was previously thought to possess.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientist, Dr. Drake Deming, will present an update on the EPOXI mission on June 2, 2008 at the 212th American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, MO.

The mission which uses the Deep Impact spacecraft has begun its search for "super Earth" planets. The EPOXI team has focused its attention on the star GJ436.

One week after landing on far-northern Mars, NASA Phoenix spacecraft lifted its first scoop of Martian soil as a test of the lander's Robotic Arm.

The practice scoop was emptied onto a designated dump area on the ground after the Robotic Arm Camera photographed the soil inside the scoop. The Phoenix team plans to have the arm deliver its next scoopful, later this week, to an instrument that heats and sniffs the sample to identify ingredients.

When some stars die, they explode as supernovas and their debris fields (aka, "supernova remnants") expand into the surrounding environments. There are several different types, or categories, of supernova remnants.

One of these is known as a mixed-morphology supernova remnant. This type gets its name because it shares several characteristics from other types of supernova remnants.

Hayabusa reached 2.5AU from Earth beyond Sun at the end of May 2008. When we see Hayabusa from Earth, it can be seen at the position of 12° apart from Sun. On the other hand Hayabusa should glance at Earth of 8° from Sun.

Due to such a long distance between Earth and Hayabusa the communication time lag reaches about 40 minutes. Hayabusa has kept its attitude in the spin stabilization without thrust by the ion engines since last October.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander reached out and touched the Martian soil for the first time on Saturday, May 31, the first step in a series of actions expected to bring soil and ice to the lander's experiments.

The lander's Robotic Arm scoop left an impression that resembles a footprint at a place provisionally named Yeti in the King of Hearts target zone, away from the area that eventually will be sampled for evaluation.

On May 25, 2008, the Phoenix Mars lander arrived at Mars and raced to a safe touchdown on the northern plains. At the same time, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter turned its radio antenna to listen for signals from the spacecraft and relayed them to mission controllers on Earth.

As an added benefit of the radio monitoring, an instrument aboard Mars Odyssey, the Thermal Emission Imaging System (or THEMIS), got a chance to take an image profiling the Martian atmosphere as seen above the edge (or limb) of the planet.

A view of the ground underneath NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander adds to evidence that descent thrusters dispersed overlying soil and exposed a harder substrate that may be ice.

The image received Friday night from the spacecraft's Robotic Arm Camera shows patches of smooth and level surfaces beneath the thrusters.

Scientists have discovered what may be ice that was exposed when soil was blown away as NASA's Phoenix Mars spacecraft landed on Mars last Sunday, May 25. The possible ice appears in an image the robotic arm camera took underneath the lander, near a footpad.

"We could very well be seeing rock, or we could be seeing exposed ice in the retrorocket blast zone," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., co-investigator for the robotic arm. "We'll test the two ideas by getting more data, including color data, from the robotic arm camera. We think that if the hard features are ice, they will become brighter because atmospheric water vapor will collect as new frost on the ice.