Moon-Venus-Mars grouping to dazzle weekend sky show

September 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Observations by the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Venus Express mission have provided strong new evidence that the solar wind has stripped away significant quantities of water from Venus, which means the planet was more humid and Earth-like in the distant past. The SPICAV and VIRTIS instruments carried by the spacecraft have been used to measure concentrations of water vapor in the Venusian atmosphere at altitudes ranging from the lowest 10 km up to 110 km, high above the cloud tops.

September 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Observations by the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Venus Express mission have provided strong new evidence that the solar wind has stripped away significant quantities of water from Earth's twin planet Venus. The SPICAV and VIRTIS instruments carried by the spacecraft have been used to measure concentrations of water vapor in the Venusian atmosphere at altitudes ranging from the lowest 10 km up to 110 km, high above the cloud tops.

September 8th, 2009 LONDON - A British defence manufacturer has designed a laser gun that can be used to dazzle pirates, leaving them incapacitated, thus becoming the perfect weapon to fight Somali pirates. According to a report in the Telegraph, known as the 'Laser Dazzle System, the device is powerful enough to incapacitate pirates up to 1,000 yards away, while leaving them physically unscathed.

August 31st, 2009 PANAJI - India will undertake Mission Mars between 2013 to 2015, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief G. Madhavan Nair said here Monday.

August 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astronomers have confirmed that an email promising a "Mars spectacular" event on August 27, when the Red Planet will look as large as the full moon, is nothing but a hoax. According to a report in National Geographic News, the anonymous message from an unknown part of the globe says that the red planet "will look as large as the full moon" in the night sky, and that "no one alive today will ever see this again." The claim has been bombarding people's inboxes worldwide every summer for five years.

August 12th, 2009 LONDON - A committee appointed by the White House to review NASA's aims has put forward the idea to send astronauts on progressively longer space trips to asteroids, in order to prepare them for a landing on Mars. According to a report in New Scientist, committee member Edward Crawley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the first mission would fly by the moon.

August 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists, using images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, have reported direct evidence of lake shorelines in the Shalbatana Vallis in Mars. Scientists generally believe that warm, wet conditions existed on Mars until only about 3.7 billion years ago.

July 21st, 2009 New NASA boss: Astronauts on Mars in his lifetimeWASHINGTON — NASA's new boss said Tuesday he will be "incredibly disappointed" if people aren't on Mars — or venturing somewhere beyond it — in his lifetime. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr., who's 62, said his ultimate goal isn't just Mars — it's anywhere far from Earth.

July 20th, 2009 Apollo 11 astronauts look beyond moon, toward MarsWASHINGTON — The astronauts who first landed on the moon aren't dwelling on their small lunar steps. Instead, two of them on Sunday urged mankind to take a giant leap to Mars.

July 20th, 2009 CANBERRA - Edwin "buzz" Aldrin, the second man on the moon, has said that it doesn't matter who was the first on the Moon, as the landing was more important than walking on the lunar surface. According to a report in The News, Aldrin made the statement at a book-signing recently, arguing that being second man on the moon behind Neil Armstrong was "just as significant".

July 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - It's been decades since they set foot on the moon, but the pioneers of the Apollo programme remain committed to exploring space with the goal of sending a human to Mars. Seven astronauts from the Apollo programme talked with journalists Monday to mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

July 20th, 2009 Apollo 11 crew: Moon less interesting than MarsWASHINGTON — The first astronauts to walk on the moon want President Barack Obama to aim for a new destination: Mars. On Monday, the Apollo 11 crewmen, fresh from a Washington lecture Sunday in which two of them expressed concerns about NASA getting bogged down on the moon, are meeting with Obama at the White House.

July 20th, 2009 LONDON - Captain Alan Bean, the fourth person to walk on the moon, says that it's time of the U.S. to forget about going back, and to join forces with the international community to focus on a mission to Mars instead.

July 19th, 2009 Aldrin: NASA should work to put people on MarsWASHINGTON — Former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin says NASA should set its sights on a bigger target in the future: Mars. Aldrin made the comments on the eve of the 40th anniversary of his landing on the moon on the Apollo 11 mission.

March 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An international team of scientists is studying cyclones on Earth to help them better understand 'superrotating' vortices on the planet Venus. At cloud top level, the entire atmosphere of Venus circles the planet in just about four Earth days, much faster than the solid planet does.