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Feast your eyes on some of the latest vistas of Vesta, the second-most massive object in our solar system's main asteroid belt. More »
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NASA has released a map charting the movement of massive ice sheets on the continent of Antarctica. By compiling these maps into animations like the one shown above, researchers can, for the very first time, examine how the outward flow of the continent's ice sheets could help us predict future rises in sea level. More »
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This stunning infrared image of Saturn's northern region shows a luminous aurora with the planet's mottled rings below. The aurora appeared in an area that the Hubble Space Telescope can't see, so no one knew it was there until Cassini spotted it recently. What's really weird is that astronomers aren't really sure what's causing it, since this aurora doesn't conform to known models of aurora formation. More »
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With all the hullabaloo about giant asteroids that could destroy us, we tend to forget the little guy. Luckily, NASA's Catalina Sky Survey has it covered. Last Monday, CSS astronomers caught sight of an incoming object zooming toward the Earth, and by the time of the asteroid's impact on Tuesday, NASA engineers had mapped out its trajectory almost exactly. This is "the first time we were able to discover and predict an impact before the event," announced Donald Yeomans, the manager of NASA/JPL's Near-Earth Object program — and I'm guessing he did it with no small amount of glee. More »
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NASA may have failed to prove there's an underground ocean on Saturn's moon Enceladus, but now scientists claim they've found outstanding new evidence that there may be a vast ocean under the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. In this newly released image, Titan peeks out from behind Saturn while another moon, Tethys, streaks past the planet's shadowy rings. Click through for a gorgeous Titan gallery. More »
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Carbon nano-tubes aren't just gorgeous, they might also save your brain one day. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is teaming up with a cancer center, City Of Hope, to develop a new minimally invasive type of brain surgery using carbon nanotubes. Researchers hope that these sharp-tipped tubes, 50,000 times narrower than a human hair, can deliver cancer-fighting agents directly to the brain. Tests in mice found the nanotubes were non-toxic and could deliver actual genetic information to the brain. Here's an image of the first "nanoknife," developed by NIST and University of Colorado in 2006. [ScienceDaily] More »
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Do these water jets come from an underground ocean orbiting Saturn? If so, it could nurture the only extraterrestrial life-forms in our solar system. But one scientist says that water is too pure to come from a buried ocean on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. More »
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