[Friday, August 1, 2008] The White House has been alerted by NASA about plans to make an announcement soon on major new Phoenix lander discoveries concerning the "potential for life" on Mars, scientists tell Aviation Week & Space Technology.

[Monday, August 4, 2008] NASA will announce today that new data from the Phoenix Mars lander indicate that it is looking less conclusive that soil analyzed by the lander's soil chemistry experiment is Earth-like and can support life.

[Monday, August 4, 2008] Scientists are analyzing results from soil samples delivered several weeks ago to science instruments on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander to understand the landing site's soil chemistry and mineralogy.

[Thursday, August 7, 2008] Fractures, or "tiger stripes," where icy jets erupt on Saturn's moon Enceladus will be the target of a close flyby by the Cassini spacecraft on Monday, Aug. 11.

[Thursday, August 7, 2008] Almost all the AMASE team with their boxes of instruments and gear and tools and such assembled in Longyearbyen in a big conference room at the Radisson and unpacked equipment and started assembling the instruments and running tests.

[Friday, August 8, 2008] We don't have spacecraft to take us outside our solar system--not yet, at least. Still, astronomers thought they had a pretty good understanding of how our solar system formed and in turn, how others formed.

[Friday, August 8, 2008] Layers of clay-rich rock have been found in Mars' Mawrth Vallis, a potential landing site for future rovers. This work suggests that abundant water was once present on Mars and that hydrothermal activity may have occurred.

[Monday, August 11, 2008] "Svalbard is one of my most favorite places to be in the world.so it came to the point where I made the decision to concentrate my research project for my dissertation on Svalbard."

[Tuesday, August 12, 2008] A critical component of NASA's Mars exploration program involves bringing planetary samples back to Earth for in-depth analysis, plans for which are detailed in the latest issue of Astrobiology.

[Tuesday, August 12, 2008] Vibration of the screen above a laboratory oven on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander on Saturday, Aug. 9, succeeded in getting enough soil into the oven to begin analysis.

[Thursday, August 14, 2008] For almost thirty years, scientists have known that complex carbon compounds called tholins exist on comets and in the atmospheres of the outer planets.

[Thursday, August 14, 2008] In a feat of interplanetary sharpshooting, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has pinpointed precisely where the icy jets erupt from the surface of Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus.

[Friday, August 15, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first-ever image of a single particle of Mars' ubiquitous dust, using its atomic force microscope.

[Saturday, August 16, 2008] Scientists have discovered ancient bacteria that rely on arsenic, rather than water, to grow during photosynthesis. Analysis indicates that this process probably dates back a few billion years.

[Saturday, August 16, 2008] Questions about the origin and nature of Earth and the life on it have long preoccupied human thought and the scientific endeavor.

[Saturday, August 16, 2008] Water frost appears in an image the SSI took on Aug. 14, 2008, at 6 a.m. local Mars time on Sol 79, the 79th Martian day after landing. The frost begins to disappear shortly after 6 a.m. as the sun rises on the landing site.

[Monday, August 18, 2008] We are finished with the day's "rover operations". We got in three Sols' worth of operations, looked at many a rock and drove the rover a whiplash-inducing, NASCAR-ish 1.5 meters!

[Tuesday, August 19, 2008] Cataclysms have occurred in the history of the universe and the Solar System. The Symposium will review those that had a critical influence on the evolution of habitable worlds and on the emergence and survival of life on Earth, and possibly elsewhere.

[Wednesday, August 20, 2008] With average temperatures of minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, an almost nonexistent atmosphere and a complex web of cracks in a layer of ice encompassing the entire surface, the environment on Jupiter's moon Europa is about as alien as they come.

[Thursday, August 21, 2008] This is a scientific strategy for the detection and characterization of extrasolar planets; that is, planets orbiting other stars.

[Thursday, August 21, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has scooped up a soil sample from an intermediate depth between the ground surface and a subsurface icy layer. The sample was delivered it to a laboratory oven on the spacecraft.

[Friday, August 22, 2008] Tune in for the all new 'Astrobiology Rap', written by Jonathan Chase for the latest Astrobiology Magazine European Edition (AMEE) -- the Nordic Invasion.

[Wednesday, August 27, 2008] Astrobiology Science and Technology Instrument Development (ASTID) Program this summer approved 15 proposals for funding, including mission concept studies and concept studies for small payloads and satellites.

[Friday, August 29, 2008] The next sample of Martian soil being grabbed for analysis is coming from a trench about three times deeper than any other trench NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has dug.

[Friday, August 29, 2008] Researchers examining images of gullies on the flanks of craters on Mars say they formed in sites once occupied by glaciers. The features are eerily reminiscent of gullies formed in Antarctica's mars-like McMurdo Dry Valleys.

[Friday, August 29, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, having completed its 90-day primary mission, is continuing its science collection activities. Science and engineering teams are looking forward to at least another month of Martian exploration.