http://www.physorg.com/space-news/space-exploration/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on space, space exploration, space science and earth sciences. (AP) -- Space shuttle Atlantis and its seven astronauts returned to Earth with a smooth touchdown Friday to end an 11-day flight that resupplied the International Space Station. http://www.physorg.com/news178530037.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:58:45 EST news178530037 China will launch its second moon orbiter next October, state media reported Friday, as it powers ahead with a space programme that has sparked concerns abroad. http://www.physorg.com/news178527266.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:55:20 EST news178527266 (AP) -- Space shuttle Atlantis' astronauts thought they were going to give thanks with pantry leftovers Thursday as their mission drew to a close, but found turkey dinners awaiting them. http://www.physorg.com/news178454727.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:00:01 EST news178454727 (AP) -- A top Russian space official says there is no space for tourists wishing to fly to the International Space Station. http://www.physorg.com/news178438842.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:23:52 EST news178438842 (PhysOrg.com) -- On Sol 2095 (Tuesday, Nov. 24), Spirit performed a set of diagnostic actions related to a stall of the right-rear wheel on the previous drive, three days earlier. http://www.physorg.com/news178393606.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:00:03 EST news178393606 (PhysOrg.com) -- The team operating NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter plans to uplink protective files to the spacecraft next week as one step toward resuming the orbiter's research and relay activities. http://www.physorg.com/news178359134.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:12:42 EST news178359134 (PhysOrg.com) -- Alien beings on faraway planets may not have noticed, but it`s been 35 years since human beings made the first deliberate effort to send them a message. http://www.physorg.com/news178304289.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:10:01 EST news178304289 (PhysOrg.com) -- In the first video showing the auroras above the northern latitudes of Saturn, Cassini has spotted the tallest known "northern lights" in the solar system, flickering in shape and brightness high above the ringed planet. http://www.physorg.com/news178303936.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:53:17 EST news178303936 (PhysOrg.com) -- New research adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting the Red Planet once had an ocean. http://www.physorg.com/news178216318.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:33:14 EST news178216318 (AP) -- A spacewalking astronaut put aside the impending birth of his daughter and blazed through his first-ever venture outside the International Space Station on Saturday. http://www.physorg.com/news178009250.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:33:55 EST news178009250 (PhysOrg.com) -- When NASA's Cassini spacecraft began orbiting Saturn five years ago, a dozen highly-tuned science instruments set to work surveying, sniffing, analyzing and scrutinizing the Saturnian system. http://www.physorg.com/news177927581.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:20:02 EST news177927581 (AP) -- A pair of spacewalking astronauts, one of them a surgeon, hustled through antenna and cable work outside the International Space Station on Thursday and even whipped off an extra chore. http://www.physorg.com/news177847217.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:48:03 EST news177847217 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., have collaborated to create a Web site where Internet users can have fun while advancing their knowledge of Mars. http://www.physorg.com/news177699754.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:03:57 EST news177699754 (PhysOrg.com) -- Space shuttle Atlantis and its six-member crew began an 11-day delivery flight to the International Space Station on Monday with a 2:28 p.m. EST launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The shuttle will transport spare hardware to the outpost and return a station crew member who spent more than two months in space. http://www.physorg.com/news177615671.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:41:47 EST news177615671 (PhysOrg.com) -- Massive, bright clouds of tiny ice particles hover above the darkened rings of Saturn in an image captured by the Cassini spacecraft on Sept. 22, 2009, around the time of Saturn's equinox. http://www.physorg.com/news177615491.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:40:13 EST news177615491 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA has successfully completed a series of autonomous "drop" tests of a robotic lander test article - in a record 10 months - to demonstrate the ability to perform a controlled landing on the moon or other airless planetary bodies. http://www.physorg.com/news177614572.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:23:23 EST news177614572 (PhysOrg.com) -- The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water. Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike. http://www.physorg.com/news177337293.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:22:09 EST news177337293 (PhysOrg.com) -- This morning, mission controllers confirmed that ESA`s comet chaser Rosetta had swung by Earth at 8:45 CET as planned, skimming past our planet to pick up a gravitational boost for an epic journey to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. http://www.physorg.com/news177313479.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:48:20 EST news177313479 (PhysOrg.com) -- This spectacular image of our home planet was captured by the OSIRIS instrument on ESA's Rosetta comet chaser earlier today as the spacecraft approached Earth for the third and final swingby. Closest approach is due at 08:45 CET, 13 November 2009. http://www.physorg.com/news177262843.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:50:01 EST news177262843 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA will begin transmitting commands to its Mars exploration rover Spirit on Monday as part of an escape plan to free the venerable robot from its Martian sand trap. http://www.physorg.com/news177260630.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:40:03 EST news177260630 Once upon a time - roughly four billion years ago - Mars was warm and wet, much like Earth. Liquid water flowed on the Martian surface in long rivers that emptied into shallow seas. A thick atmosphere blanketed the planet and kept it warm. Living microbes might have even arisen, some scientists believe, starting Mars down the path toward becoming a second life-filled planet next door to our own. http://www.physorg.com/news177179617.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:34:12 EST news177179617 Sunspots, which rotate around the sun's surface, tell us a great deal about our own planet. Scientists rely on them, for instance, to measure the sun's rotation or to prepare long-range forecasts of the Earth's health. http://www.physorg.com/news177169609.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:50:01 EST news177169609 The Sun is a bubbling mass. Packages of gas rise and sink, lending the sun its grainy surface structure, its granulation. Dark spots appear and disappear, clouds of matter dart up - and behind the whole thing are the magnetic fields, the engines of it all. The SUNRISE balloon-borne telescope, a collaborative project between the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau and partners in Germany, Spain and the USA, has now delivered images that show the complex interplay on the solar surface to a level of detail never before achieved. http://www.physorg.com/news177164239.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:17:58 EST news177164239 This year's Leonid meteor shower peaks on Tuesday, Nov. 17th. If forecasters are correct, the shower should produce a mild but pretty sprinkling of meteors over North America followed by a more intense outburst over Asia. The phase of the Moon will be new, setting the stage for what could be one of the best Leonid showers in years. http://www.physorg.com/news177093817.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:46:47 EST news177093817 The Voyager spacecraft are now in the outermost layer of the heliosphere, traveling toward interstellar space - the first man-made spacecraft to travel such a vast distance from Earth. http://www.physorg.com/news177092513.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:40:01 EST news177092513 A Soyuz rocket carrying a new Russian-made module for the International Space Station blasted off on Tuesday from the Baikonur space base in Kazakhstan, television pictures showed. http://www.physorg.com/news177083298.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:49:54 EST news177083298 (AP) -- Four years after its first solar sail ended up in the ocean instead of orbit, The Planetary Society announced Monday that by the end of 2010 it will try again to launch a spacecraft that will be propelled by the subtle pressure of sunlight. http://www.physorg.com/news177020675.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:00:01 EST news177020675 (AP) -- A Seattle team has collected a $900,000 prize in a NASA-backed competition to develop the concept of an elevator to space - an idea spurred by science fiction novels. http://www.physorg.com/news176809468.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:45:52 EST news176809468 The station crew prepared Friday for the arrival of the Russian Mini-Research Module 2 (MRM2) which is scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on Nov. 10. The MRM2 will arrive at the station on Nov. 12 docking to the top port of the Zvezda service module. http://www.physorg.com/news176739140.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:40:01 EST news176739140 (PhysOrg.com) -- Kepler completed another science data download over October 18-19. In this download, a month's worth of science data was transmitted through the NASA Deep Space Network and into the Science Operations Center at Ames Research Center. After the download was complete, the Kepler spacecraft was returned to its science collection attitude and another cycle of science data collection began. http://www.physorg.com/news176728311.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:02 EST news176728311