[Saturday, April 2, 2011] 'Lost' samples from famous origin of life researcher could send the search for Earth's first life in a new direction

[Tuesday, April 5, 2011] An orrery is a moving model of a planetary system. Daniel Fabrycky, University of California at Santa Cruz, created two animated orrerys to display the 1,235 Kepler planet candidates.

[Tuesday, April 5, 2011] A new study reveals that a group of ancient enzymes adapted to substantial changes in ocean temperature and acidity during the last four billion years.

[Tuesday, April 5, 2011] ... Material was not only similar to that found in carbonaceous chondrites, but also similar to organic material found in a comet named 81P/Wild 2, pieces of which were collected in space by NASA's Stardust mission ...

[Tuesday, April 5, 2011] The study may shed new light on the origin of these formations and the search for water on the red planet.

[Wednesday, April 6, 2011] I learned with profound sadness last night that Baruch Blumberg died suddenly yesterday. He was in a small meeting focused upon how to move humanity off this world onto others.

[Friday, April 8, 2011] Astronomers have come up with a new way of identifying close, faint stars with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite.

[Friday, April 8, 2011] NASA and co-researchers from the United States, South Korea and Japan have found a new mineral named "Wassonite" in one of the most historically significant meteorites recovered in Antarctica in December 1969.

[Friday, April 8, 2011] Baruch S. Blumberg died on April 5, 2011 at the age of 85. At the time, he was visiting the NASA Ames Research Center in California as a featured speaker at the International Lunar Research Park Exploratory Workshop.

[Friday, April 8, 2011] Have the surface and belly of Saturn's smog-shrouded moon, Titan, recently simmered like a chilly, bubbling cauldron with ice volcanoes, or has this distant moon gone cold?

[Saturday, April 9, 2011] The discovery of minerals requiring liquid water for their formation challenges the paradigm of comets as 'dirty snowballs' frozen in time

[Monday, April 11, 2011] NASA's Kepler Mission has detected changes in brightness in 500 sun-like stars, giving astronomers a much better idea about the nature and evolution of the stars.

[Wednesday, April 13, 2011] We are entering a golden era for "stellar physics" - a term coined to describe research about the formation, evolution, interior and the atmospheres of stars.

[Thursday, April 14, 2011] One trillion years from now, alien astronomers in our galaxy will have a difficult time figuring out how the universe began. They won't have the evidence that we enjoy today.

[Friday, April 15, 2011] Photosynthetic microbial mats forming large conical structures up to half a meter tall have been discovered by astrobiologists in Lake Untersee, Antarctica. This research is described in a forthcoming article in the journal Geobiology.

[Sunday, April 17, 2011] This Envisat image features the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches beyond the Antarctic Circle to within 1050 km to the southern tip of South America.

[Monday, April 18, 2011] We investigate the possibility of habitable Trojan planets in the HD 23079 star-planet system. This system consists of a solar-type star and a Jupiter-type planet, which orbits the star near the outer edge of the stellar habitable zone.

[Monday, April 18, 2011] We propose a new Cassini state model for Titan in which we assume the presence of a liquid water ocean beneath an ice shell and consider the gravitational and pressure torques arising between the different layers of the satellite.

[Tuesday, April 19, 2011] Scientists at the University of Leicester have shown that emissions from the radio aurora of planets like Jupiter should be detectable by radio telescopes such as LOFAR.

[Tuesday, April 19, 2011] A sky with two suns is a favorite image for science fiction films, but how would a binary star system affect life evolving on an orbiting planet?

[Tuesday, April 19, 2011] A computer modeling study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that at deep Earth pressures and temperatures, longer hydrocarbons may be formed from the simplest one, the methane molecule.

[Thursday, April 21, 2011] NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has discovered the total amount of atmosphere on Mars changes dramatically as the tilt of the planet's axis varies.

[Friday, April 22, 2011] NASA will hold a special Science Update at 1 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 28, to discuss the unprecedented journey of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft to the edge of our solar system.

[Tuesday, April 26, 2011] Thousands of K-12 students will be paying close attention when NASA's space shuttle Endeavour rumbles off the launch pad April 29 from Florida on its final flight, which will be toting a payload containing spiders, flies and seeds.

[Wednesday, April 27, 2011] Exotic bacteria that do not rely on oxygen may have played an important role in determining the composition of Earth's early atmosphere.

[Wednesday, April 27, 2011] In addition to astronauts, Endeavour will carry a legion of microscopic passengers in the Planetary Society's Shuttle LIFE experiment when the space shuttle launches on its last flight on April 29.

[Thursday, April 28, 2011] More than 30 years after they left Earth, NASA's Voyager probes are now at the edge of the solar system - and they're still working. And with each passing day they are beaming back a message that, to scientists, is both unsettling and thrilling.

[Thursday, April 28, 2011] A two-day workshop using NAI remote communications tools will be held on May 12th and 13th, 2011. Real-time participation requires only an internet connection and is available to interested scientists from around the world.

[Thursday, April 28, 2011] Final text for Appendix C.16: Planetary Instrument Definition and Development (PIDD) and notice of co-review with proposals to Appendix C.19 Astrobiology Science and Technology for Instrument Development (ASTID).

[Friday, April 29, 2011] An international team of astronomers today revealed details of a "super-exotic" exoplanet that would make the planet Pandora in the movie Avatar pale in comparison.