NASA's Spirit Rover has just completed a long hard slog across difficult Martian terrain to reach the Columbia hills. The short journey of just a couple of kilometres has taken Spirit months. Imagine if it could thoroughly analyze an area and then just pick up and fly somewhere new? NASA has awarded a contract to a proprosal from Pioneer Astronautics, which envisions a vehicle that could land on Mars, refuel with local materials, and then fly hundreds of kilometres to explore; repeating this process over and over again - the Martian Gashopper Aircraft.

Protoplanetary discs surrounding new stars seem to have the building blocks for rocky planets right from the start, according to new research from an international team of researchers. The astronomers used the European Southern Observatory's VLT Interferometer to examine the discs around three young stars, which were similar to what our own Sun looked like more than 4.5 billion years ago. They found that the inner part of these discs is very rich in sand, ready to be clumped by gravity into larger and larger rocks until full planets form.

Cassini took this amazing photograph of Dione, one of Saturn's larger moons, on October 27 when it was 1.2 million km (746,000 miles) away. Voyager first saw the craters and bright, wispy streaks on its surface 24 years ago. Cassini is expected to do much much better, though, when it makes a close pass to the moon in mid-December, 2004.

NASA announced that the next crew of the International Space Station will be NASA astronaut John Phillips and Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev. The crew of Expedition 11 is expected to launch to the station on board a Russian Soyuz rocket in May 2005. Both crewmembers have already visited the station. Phillips came aboard during the 12-day STS-100 mission in 2001 when helped install the Canadarm2. Krikalev was a member of the first crew to man the station, Expedition 1.

This is an image of impact Crater Hale, which is located in the Argyle basin in the southern hemisphere of Mars. The photograph was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft in June 2004. The crater and surrounding region have been heavily eroded over millions of years by a combination of wind and water. There is even evidence at the bottom of the picture of a network of fluvial channels, which were probably caused by running water.

Cassini's image team has released two new photographs taken by the spacecraft that show two of Saturn's moons in unprecedented detail: Titan and Tethys. The picture of fog enshrouded Titan is actually a mosaic of 9 individual images stitched together that were taken as Cassini approached. The photograph of Tethys is actually in natural colour, and shows how neutral the moon looks. Tethys has a density similar to water, so scientists believe the moon is mainly composed of water ice. Cassini will make a much closer approach to Tethys in September 2005.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this image of Saturn and one of its moons, Tethys. This image was taken on Oct. 18, 2004 when the spacecraft was 3.9 million km (2.4 million miles) away from Tethys, which is only 1,060 km (659 miles) across.

You may think that digital cameras are a tad expensive. But place them onboard a satellite and the cost (and camera!) go through the roof. So what does half a billion buy you? Andrew Johnston in his book, Earth from Space, gives the layman's perspective on this by presenting views from remote sensing satellite. The stunning results give a whole new appreciation of the complexity and beauty of the Earth's surface. Whether wonderful works of art or detailed technical disseminations these images capture stunning views of our altogether small world.

Professor Colin Pillinger is Head of Planetary & Space Sciences, Open University, and the UK principal investigator on the Beagle-2 project. Colin gained his PhD from the Open University, Wales, in the late 1960s, and became one of the lucky few Britons to work on the lunar samples brought back by the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission in 1969. Recently Colin talked to Richard Pearson about Beagle 2, the potential for life on Mars, and the state of the Beagle program.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! For those of you who like observing challenges, this week will provide many interesting opportunities to view occultations of bright stars by asteroids as well as three observable comets. We will explore lunar features for both binoculars and telescopes and look into "The Eye of the Bull". Although the Moon goes full this week, we can still have fun by learning to observe satellite passes and even chase the ISS! We will begin an in-depth look at the constellation of Cassiopeia by viewing and discussing some of its bright double stars and a galactic cluster. Just as predictable as the morning planets, there's always something fun to do, a bit of history and things to learn. So open your eyes...

Because here's what's up!

After several days of delays, NASA's Swift observatory was finally launched Saturday at 1716 UTC (12:16 pm EST) atop a Boeing Delta II rocket. Swift's job will be to scan the heavens for elusive Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), which astronomers think could be the birth cries of new black holes. GRBs are short-lived, lasting only seconds - a few minutes at most. Swift can locate an explosion, and turn the entire spacecraft in about a minute to focus sensitive instruments on the fading afterglow. If everything works as planned, the spacecraft should be able to find more than 100 of these explosions every year.

Astronomers now believe that all large galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their centre, but it was believed that these black holes formed after the galaxy. The evidence is starting to point the other way, that these black holes formed soon after the Big Bang, and then the galaxies built up around them. New observations from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory show a distant quasar that formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang, and was already producing the same amount of energy as twenty trillion Suns.

Cassini took this image of Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon, on October 24, 2004 when it was about 1.7 million km (1 million miles) away. The photo clearly shows a bright bright impact crater near its eastern limb. Cassini will get another view of Rhea in January 2005 - but with 10 times better resolution - just after it releases the Huygens probe which will land on Titan.

This is a satellite photograph of one of the driest places on Earth: Chile's Atacama Desert, which only sees rain two to four times a century. The picture was taken by the European Space Agency's Envisat Earth observation satellite, using its Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS). There are even some spots in the desert where rainfall has never been recorded. Plants and animals and even people are forced to harvest water from the air itself, which sometimes forms a light fog. The European Southern Observatory is located in this desert, because of its high altitude and clear, dry air.

This image of Saturn and its tiny moon Mimas was taken on Sept. 25, 2004 by NASA's Cassini spacecraft when it was 7.8 million kilometers (4.8 million miles) from the planet. The photo shows a huge white storm which has formed in a band of clouds.

Japanese researchers using the Subaru Telescope have found a large galaxy caught in the act of consuming a smaller companion galaxy. It's a messy eater; there's a wispy trail of stars over 500,000 light-years long, which is the longest astronomers have ever seen. Examples of this kind of galactic destruction are hard to find because the consumed are usually dim dwarf galaxies. We have only indirect evidence of digested galaxies in our own Milky Way, like groups of stars traveling in an unusual trajectory.

Scientists believed they'd finally reached the limits of microbial life with the heart of the Atacama desert in Chile. This desert is so dry, parts of it only receive one rainfall every decade or so, and NASA uses it as a model for the search for life on Mars. But researchers from the University of Arizona have discovered that life's here too. They dug up soil samples from 20 to 30 cm (8 to 12 inches) below ground, and then added completely sterile water and let the samples sit for 10 days. They were then able to grow unusual bacteria from the samples and analyze their DNA.

Early star formation is a bit of a puzzle for astronomers, since all the stars that we can see formed out of molecular gas and dust, which are produced in stars. How did the first ones form without any gas and dust? One class of galaxies, called Blue Dwarf Galaxies may offer some clues. They contain interstellar clouds which are similar to the material that would have been present in the early Universe. And these galaxies can have active regions of furious star formation. New research from the European Southern Observatory has targeted one of these Blue Dwarfs to try and understand the process better.

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously predicted that we'd see space elevators 50 years after people stopped laughing at the idea. Jerome Pearson has been thinking about space elevators since the early 1970s, and he's been watching the growing enthusiasm (and fading chuckles) with great interest. But he knows there are significant challenges in engineering and materials that still need to be overcome, so he's suggesting NASA build an elevator on the Moon first. And the agency is taking the idea seriously.

It?s the year 2027 and NASA?s Vision for Space Exploration is progressing right on schedule. The first interplanetary spacecraft with humans aboard is on course for Mars. However, halfway into the trip, a gigantic solar flare erupts, spewing lethal radioactive protons directly at the spacecraft. But, not to worry. Research by former astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman and a group of MIT colleagues back in the year 2004 ensured that this vehicle has a state-of-the-art superconducting magnetic shielding system that protects the human occupants from any deadly solar emissions.

The X-43A scramjet broke its own world record for air breathing engines on Tuesday, when it traveled at nearly 10 times the speed of sound. The prototype scramjet aircraft was dropped from a B-52 aircraft, and then boosted to Mach 4 by a Pegasus rocket. The aircraft detached from the rocket and then accelerated up to Mach 9.8 (11,265 kph or 7,000 mph). This flight was the last in a series of three test flights by NASA in the development of its Hyper-X program, which explores alternatives to rocket power for access to space.

NASA's Swift spacecraft is sitting on top of a Boeing Delta II rocket at Florida's Cape Canaveral, waiting for technical difficulties to be resolved with a piece of electronic equipment on the rocket. If everything goes well, Swift will lift off on Thursday, and head into space to search for the most powerful explosions in the Universe: Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), which could be the birth cries of new black holes. The observatory's gamma ray detector scans the sky looking for these explosions. When it finds them, the whole spacecraft will turn to focus on the source within 70 to 100 seconds, and analyze it with a suite of other instruments.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft took this photograph of a series of canyon systems on the surface of the Red Planet. The canyons are part of the Coprates Catena, which are at the southern end of the enormous Valles Marineris rift. Sections of the structures appear to have collapsed in on themselves at various points; a few landslides are visible. Scientists theorize that underlying ice or water was removed, which then caused the rock and soil to collapse.

NASA has pushed back the launch of its X-43A because of instrument trouble used up most of their launch window on Monday. Although they were go for launch at the end of the window, launch controllers decided to push the launch back until Tuesday. If all goes well, the innovative "scramjet" prototype will detach from a flying B-52 aircraft, and then accelerate to Mach 10 - 10 times the speed of sound, or 11,300 kph (7,000 mph).

The European Space Agency's SMART-1 spacecraft is no longer orbiting the Earth... it's orbiting the Moon! The spacecraft has been slowly raising its orbit using its efficient ion engine, and yesterday it passed within 5,000 km (3,100 miles) of the Moon, using its gravity to shift the spacecraft's trajectory. Its engine will now fire for 4 days straight to complete the orbital maneuver. It will continue lowering its orbit around the Moon until mid-January, when it'll get as close as 300 km (186 miles) and begin a scientific study.

TV host Sir Patrick Moore has popularized astronomy for almost half a century in the United Kingdom and around the world by presenting his monthly Sky at Night program without a break - a slight episode of food-poisoning earlier this year that meant Patrick missed a program, but he made a full recovery. Patrick has also written over a hundred books and thousands of papers on the subject, and was working on a new project when Richard Pearson caught up with him at his East Grinstead home.

Welcome back, fellow skywatchers! The "hot" news for this week is, of course, the Leonid Meteor Shower. Where will it happen, when will it happen and how many can we expect to see? The answers to that are all matters of calculation and a whole lot of luck! The predictions for 2004 look best for the early hours of November 19, but why wait? The random rate (thanks to a little help from the Andromedids) has been outstanding! We will also locate and explore globular cluster M30 and a beautiful asterism known as the "Coathanger". Want some color in your stars? Then come along as we locate and view Omicron 1 Cygni! We head south for the "Lonely Star" - Formalhaut, and salute Southern Hemisphere viewers with the finest "double" in the sky, Rigel Kentauris. We will examine lunar features and use the Moon to guide you to the outer planets. You'll find a bit of space history here as well as a lot of fun for the naked-eye, binocular and telescope observer. For now? Hope for clear skies and mark your calendars...

Because here's what's up!

In June, researchers from the University of Rochester discovered a planet around a star so young that it shouldn't exist according to existing theories of planetary formation. Further observations have backed up the discovery; there's definitely a planet there which is only 100,000 to 500,000 years old. This is much too young for either of the established theories of planetary formation. In the "core accretion" model, larger and larger chunks of rock smash together for 10 million years until a large planet is formed. In the "gravitational instability" model, a cloud of material pulls together into a planet by its own gravity; this is faster, but still not fast enough to explain how the planet got there.

Engineers at NASA knew they were taking a risk when they piloted the Opportunity rover into the stadium-sized Endurance crater because it has fairly steep walls. It looks like the planned eastward exit out of the crater isn't going to work; one part of the slope is too steep, and the other is covered in sand that the rover might not be able to cross. Opportunity will have to backtrack, and search out a new exit to the south, and maybe even go back out by retracing its entry path.

Although they were using the Hubble Space Telescope to analyze the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, an international team of astronomers were also able to discover a new asteroid that happened to drift through Hubble's field of view. The asteroid is 270 million km (169 million miles) from Earth, which probably puts it into the main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter - it's only 2.4 km (1.5 miles) across. The asteroid's path is wavy because Hubble was orbiting the Earth as it took a series of long exposures, and the gaps come from times that Hubble's shutter was closed.

This photograph of Phobos, one of Mars' two tiny moons, was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft when it was less than 200 km (125 miles) away during a recent flyby. The picture shows the strange parallel grooves that run around moon, and researchers might be able to tell whether they formed before or after the larger impact craters. Phobos is locked in a "death spiral" around Mars, and it'll eventually crash into the planet, or be torn apart and turned into a short-lived ring.

American and Australian researchers are working on a method to develop a 3-dimensional map that will show how the Universe evolved during its first billion years. Unlike the map of cosmic background radiation, which is our current first look at the Universe, their method uses the radiation from early clouds of neutral hydrogen atoms. The first stars to ignite should have blown out bubbles of open space inside these clouds, and it's these bubbles that the astronomers should be able to see in the radio spectrum.

Researchers have used the Cassini spacecraft to make observations of Saturn's rings with tremendous clarity, resolving images down to the size of a football field. A team from the University of Colorado at Boulder have used a technique called "stellar occultation" to look through the rings at a distant star, and then watch how the ring particles obscure it. The ring material bunches up into denser areas, with gaps between them as small as 50 metres (160 feet). This is unusual, because they should be spreading out in the vacuum of space - this means that small objects, like moons, are stirring up the material in the rings like ripples in a pond.

Is Pluto a planet or just a really large Kuiper Belt Object (KBO)? Those arguing that it doesn't deserve planetary status will have to reconsider because of new research from the Spitzer Space Telescope. It was previously believed that KBOs were fairly dark, with a similar reflectivity to comets. From the reflectivity, astronomers guessed that KBOs are quite large, some getting as big as 700 km (434 miles) across. But new observations from Spitzer show that they're probably more reflective than previously thought, and therefore much smaller. This means that Pluto is probably still significantly larger than other objects in the Kuiper Belt.

The countdown has begun for the launch of the Planetary Society's Cosmos 1 spacecraft; the first ever to be powered by a solar sail. The privately built spacecraft will be lofted into orbit atop a Volna rocket on March 1, 2005. Once Cosmos 1 is in orbit, it will unfurl 8 triangular solar sails, and then use the sails to propel the spacecraft through the pressure of light from the Sun. Cosmos 1 wasn't designed for a long-term trip into space, so it's likely not to last too much longer than a few weeks, or months at the most, but it should serve as a working concept to help designers plan future spacecraft.

NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory took this image of red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, our closest stellar neighbour (after the Sun, of course). The image shows that its surface is in a constant state of turmoil, with flares occurring almost continuously. Proxima Centauri has only 1/10th the mass of our own Sun, and the conversion of hydrogen to helium happens much more slowly. This creates turbulent, convective motion throughout its interior, which stores up magnetic energy - the energy is what creates all the flares.

New images released from the Spitzer space telescope are helping scientists understand how clouds of gas and dust come together to form new solar systems. One image shows a dim object at the heart of an icy cloud, which resembles our own early solar system. This object isn't a star... yet, but it could be a young failed star, a brown dwarf, a star which has yet to ignite, or something else entirely. In another image, Spitzer looked at the centre of a dusty disc around a young star and found icy building blocks that will eventually form into planets - similar to how our planets looked when they were only a few hundred thousand years old.

Cassini's close flyby to Titan in October has only added to the mystery of what the Huygens probe will find on the moon's surface when it tries to land in January. It could land on a hard surface of rock and ice, or maybe it'll land with a squelch into a slurry of organic materials, or maybe it'll splash down into a hydrocarbon lake. Fortunately, the probe is designed to handle all three landing surfaces, and it should be able to transmit details about Titan as long as it survives.

Since supermassive black holes were first discovered, astronomers have been wondering if the hole was created first, and then the galaxy formed around it, or if these monsters tend to form at the heart of galaxies over time. Astronomers using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array have discovered a distant galaxy that's less than a billion years old, but seems to have a supermassive black hole - but no massive bulge of stars. The black hole is 1 billion solar masses, so it should be surrounded by several trillion solar masses in stars. This provides evidence that it's the black hole that forms first, then the galaxy.

A Soyuz 2-1a rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia yesterday, completing a test of this modernized version of the launcher. It was carrying a mock-up of an unspecified satellite called Oblik. The Soyuz 2 is more powerful that the earlier model, and equipped with a digital control system, requiring less people to oversee its launch and monitor its flight.

Greetings fellow skywatchers! We're in for more excitement this week as the Moon occults not one, not two, but three observable planets! But that's not all the action, while we're in a "planetary" frame of mind, we'll also study two planetary nebulae, the M57 and M27, as well as seek out a "planetary" located inside a globular cluster. Other studies for both telescopes and binoculars will include instructions for "visiting with Vesta" as we explore one of our Solar System's brightest asteroids. We'll learn about easily observed variable stars and double your pleasure - double your fun as we explore two open clusters instead of just one! This week will also include a minor meteor shower and things for the Southern Hemisphere skywatchers to do. There are challenges here, as well as a bit of history and a lot of fun! So mark your calendars - because here's "What's Up"!

The early explorers sailed into a void not knowing what beasts, storms or cliffs might await their travels. Their shear audacity and pluck carried them through their adventures. The Gemini program is the equivalent for space travel and David Harland gives a great recount in his book ,How NASA Learned to Fly in Space. He takes the reader on a rollicking good drama of the pilots and support crew as their space vessels sail through the uncharted realms toward the stars.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this image of Titan as it sped past the moon on Oct. 26, 2004. It was taken from an altitude of 2,500 km (1,553 miles) using the spacecraft's aperture radar, which can penetrate thick clouds and reveal the texture of the ground underneath. The dark regions are areas which are smooth, and the bright areas are more bumpy. It could be that the smooth areas are cryovolcanic flows, where water-rich liquid has welled up from inside Titan's warmer interior and spread out on the surface.

Futures: 50 Years in Space, The Challenge of the Stars, a superb new art book/astronomy guide by David A Hardy and Sir Patrick Moore was published in May 2004 (read the Universe Today review here). David took some time out of his busy schedule to talk with Richard Pearson about his passion for both art and space, and his long-lasting friendship and working relationship with Sir Patrick Moore.

It's been 10 months since the Mars Exploration Rovers arrived at the Red Planet, and their full suite of scientific tools are still working perfectly. Spirit is now discovering further evidence of past water on a slope of layered bedrock, which was once layers of volcanic ash altered by water over a long period. Opportunity is heading towards the base of "Burns Cliff", a tall exposure of layered rock in wall of Endurance Crater. The rover is taking advantage of a mysterious power boost that happened about a month ago to get more scientific work done.

A French/US team of astronomers have discovered a second black hole is lurking at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, completely separate from the supermassive black hole that we've known about for years. This new object, IRS 13E, contains only 1,400 stellar masses, which is much less that the 4 million stellar masses of our supermassive black hole. IRS 13E probably used to be located far away from the galactic centre, where a cluster of stars could safely form. All that's left now are a few massive stars whipping around the black hole as it spirals towards the centre of our galaxy.

The Hubble Space Telescope took this rare picture of a triple eclipse on Jupiter, an event that only happens once or twice a decade. Io is near the middle, Ganymede on the planet's left edge, and Callisto is near the right edge. Astronomers tested a new technique with Hubble when taking this picture. They sped up Hubble's tracking system so that Jupiter passed through its field of view more quickly than normal. This allowed them to take rapid-fire snapshots of the planet and its moons to build into a single image that shows more detail than one single image.

European astronomers have produced the first image of an object using high energy gamma rays - the most penetrating form of radiation known. The image is of a supernova remnant called RX J1713.7-3946, which exploded 1,000 years ago. Over time, a ring of material has expanded to twice the diameter of the Moon in the sky. If you had gamma ray eyes, you would be able to see a large ring in the sky every night. This also helps solve a 100 year mystery about the origin of cosmic rays; the remnant seems to be acting as a particle accelerator.

As the ESA's Huygens probe makes its descent into Titan's thick atmosphere in January, telescopes here on Earth will be watching carefully to help understand the global condition of the moon's atmosphere. Cassini's job will be to communicate with Huygens, so it won't actually be able to take pictures of the moon while it's performing this vital task, so it's up to the Earth-based telescopes. There's a remote possibility that Hubble or the giant 10-metre Keck observatory will see a tiny fireball as Huygens enters Titan's atmosphere.