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

• Light-Toned Rocks in Terra Meridiani
  This observation shows part of a broad expanse of bare rock in Terra Meridiani.


• Dunes in Abalos Undae
  This enhanced-color close-up (1.2 kilometer across, 0.75 miles) shows an example of dunes in Abalos Undae.


• Reading the Rock Record at Nili Fossae
  This image captures a record of changing environments on ancient Mars, as recorded in the rock record at Nili Fossae.


• Stratigraphy of the North Polar Deposits
  This image shows an example of layers in the Martian north polar deposits.


• Colorful Ancient Rocks Near Mawrth Vallis
  This image covers part of a proposed rover landing site in the Mawrth Vallis region of Mars.


• Barchan Dunes in Chasma Boreale
  This image shows dark sand dunes in Chasma Boreale.


• Western Rim Region of Korolev Crater
  This image was originally suggested by Ehsan Sanaei's high school astronomy club in Yazd, Iran.

Out of more than 30 sites considered as possible landing targets for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, by November 2008 four of the most intriguing places on Mars rose to the final round of the site-selection process.

The four finalists are, alphabetically:

• Eberswalde - where an ancient river deposited a delta in a possible lake.
• Gale - with a mountain of stacked layers including clays and sulfates.
• Holden - a crater containing alluvial fans, flood deposits, possible lake beds and clay-rich deposits.
• Mawrth - which shows exposed layers containing at least two types of clay.

For more than a year, Opportunity's miniature thermal emission spectrometer, which identifies minerals from a distance based on thermal radiation, has not been able to take successful measurements. Scientists suspect that dust on one of the instrument's mirrors, likely deposited by the dust storms of summer 2007, is interfering with measurements.

After giving the problem a great deal of thought, engineers decided it might be possible to shake off the dust by running motors in the panoramic-camera mast assembly at a setting that would vibrate the mirror. (The mirror in question is inside the mast that carries the panoramic and navigation cameras, along with related optical equipment.) When the first attempt did not produce a noticeable improvement, engineers decided to perform the shake multiple times. On sol 1705 (Nov. 9, 2008), they performed the shake twice. So as not to interfere with driving or other rover activities, they waited until sol 1708 (Nov. 12, 2008) to take follow-up measurements to see if the shake test had improved the performance of the miniature thermal emission spectrometer. They are analyzing the results.

The Akari infrared surveyor, a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency mission with ESA participation, has returned a host of new results. From splashes in cosmic rivers of dust and gas to supernova remnants, the mission has been uncovering secrets of the cold and dusty Universe. Akari was launched on 21 February 2006 and began its scientific observations in May 2006.

Its on-board supply of liquid helium ran out on 26 August 2007, and the spacecraft entered a new mission phase. The liquid helium was required to keep Akari cold enough to observe in the far-infrared. The warm phase now uses the surviving instrument, the near-infrared mode of the infrared camera, which can operate under the warmer conditions provided by the on-board mechanical cooler for near-infrared observations.

Akari achieved its planned 'cold' lifetime of 550 days. During this time, it conducted an all-sky survey in the infrared, covering about 94% of the entire sky, with larger wavelength coverage and better spatial resolution than its predecessor, IRAS.

NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.

Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about more than 32 million kilometers (20 million miles) from Earth.

An international team of scientists who analyzed data from the Gamma Ray Spectrometer onboard NASA's Mars Odyssey reports new evidence for the controversial idea that oceans once covered about a third of ancient Mars.

"We compared Gamma Ray Spectrometer data on potassium, thorium and iron above and below a shoreline believed to mark an ancient ocean that covered a third of Mars' surface, and an inner shoreline believed to mark a younger, smaller ocean," said University of Arizona planetary geologist James M. Dohm, who led the international investigation.

Firefly, it's called, this new small satellite mission sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). It's designed to help solve the mystery of the most powerful natural particle accelerator in Earth's atmosphere: TGFs, or terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. TGFs likely result from thunderstorms.

The mission is the second project under the new NSF CubeSat program. A CubeSat satellite, about the size of a loaf of bread, consists of three cubes attached end to end in a rectangular shape.

After assessing data received from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit on Thursday, mission controllers laid out plans for the rover to conserve its modest energy during the next few weeks.

Spirit's solar panels produced 161 watt hours of energy on the Martian day that ended Thursday, under a sky that had cleared appreciably from four days earlier, when a dust storm slashed energy output to 89 watt hours. However, the dust buildup on the panels themselves has worsened. Only 30 percent of the light hitting them gets through the dust and is usable by the photovoltaic cells, down from 33 percent before the storm.

In a historic event, the Indian space programme achieved a unique feat today with the placing of Indian tricolour on the Moon's surface on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday. The Indian flag was painted on the sides of Moon Impact Probe (MIP), one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, that successfully hit the lunar surface today at 15:01 UTC.

This is the first Indian built object to reach the surface of the moon. The point of MIP's impact was near the Moon's South Polar Region. It may be recalled that the modern Indian space programme was initiated in 1962 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India.

The following new images taken by the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) on the Cassini spacecraft are now available:

• Streamer Channel (Released 10 November 2008)
  The Cassini spacecraft focuses on a streamer-channel feature in Saturn's F ring.
  


• Features Distorted (Released 11 November 2008)
  Mimas emerges from behind hazy Saturn. The rings appear distorted near the planet as their image passes through the upper atmosphere.
  


• Titan's Northern Streaks (Released 12 November 2008)
  Bright clouds circumscribe Titan's north polar region -- a frigid land of methane seas.
  


• Moon Spot (Released 13 November 2008)
  The shadow of Tethys drifts across the face of Saturn.
  


• Wrapped in Ribbons (Released 14 November 2008)
  Long streamers of cloud encircle the south polar region of Saturn.

X-ray and gamma-ray data from ESA's XMM-Newton and Integral orbiting observatories has been used to test, for the first time, the physical processes that make magnetars, an atypical class of neutron stars, shine in X-rays.

Neutron stars are remnants of massive stars (10-50 times as massive as our Sun) that have collapsed on to themselves under their own weight. Made almost entirely of neutrons (subatomic particles with no electric charge), these stellar corpses concentrate more than the mass of our Sun within a sphere about 20 km in diameter.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit communicated via the Mars Odyssey orbiter today right at the time when ground controllers had told it to, prompting shouts of "She's talking!" among the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

"This means Spirit has not gone into a fault condition and is still being controlled by sequences we send from the ground," said John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity.

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish).

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by the US- UK-Dutch Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS).

This composite image shows M84, a massive elliptical galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, about 55 million light years from Earth. Hot gas around M84 is shown in a Chandra X-ray Observatory image in blue and a radio image from the Very Large Array is shown in red. A background image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is shown in yellow and white.

A number of bubbles are visible in the hot gas, outlined with blue X-ray emission. These bubbles were blown by relativistic particles generated by the central supermassive black hole in M84. These particles travel outwards in the form of a two-sided jet. Because smaller bubbles are found inside large bubbles, the impression given by the image is that of Russian dolls, where smaller dolls can be found inside large ones. These nested bubbles provide clear evidence for repeated outbursts from the central black hole.

NASA has concluded nearly two weeks of testing equipment and lunar rover concepts on Hawaii's volcanic soil. The agency's In Situ Resource Utilization Project, which studies ways astronauts can use resources found at landing sites, demonstrated how people might prospect for resources on the moon and make their own oxygen from lunar rocks and soil.

The tests helped NASA gain valuable information about systems that could enable a sustainable and affordable lunar outpost by minimizing the amount of water and oxygen that must be transported from Earth. The Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems, known as PISCES and based at the University of Hawaii, Hilo, hosted the tests. Research teams and NASA experts held the tests of several NASA-developed systems in Hawaii because its volcanic soil is very similar to regolith, the moon's soil.