[Saturday, December 1, 2007] So what happens when you turn off the lights in Antarctica? John Priscu and his team of polar scientists plan to stay until April to find out.

[Monday, December 3, 2007] "Q: Looking for signs of life outside the Earth is one the most exciting ventures mankind is undertaking. However, most planets in the Solar System seem pretty inhospitable. What make you think that Mars is - or was - hosting life?"

[Wednesday, December 5, 2007] Earth's first life may have developed between the layers of a chunk of layered mica sitting like a multilayered sandwich in the primordial soup, according to a new hypothesis.

[Wednesday, December 5, 2007] University of Texas at Austin astronomer and Hubble Fellow Seth Redfield has used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory to make the first ground-based detection of the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system.

[Thursday, December 6, 2007] This National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Research Announcement (NRA) solicits research proposals to conduct studies utilizing rodents flown onboard the Russian Bion-M1 spacecraft.

[Thursday, December 6, 2007] Martian clouds may contain less water than previously thought, according to a new NASA study. New laboratory measurements of simulated martian clouds reveal that scientists may have been overestimating the amount of water in the planet's atmosphere.

[Sunday, December 9, 2007] Two engineers at the University of California, Riverside are part of a binational team that has found semiconducting nanotubes produced by living bacteria - a discovery that could help in the creation of a new generation of nanoelectronic devices.

[Sunday, December 9, 2007] "We report observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST) regarding the frequency of 24 micron excess emission toward sun-like stars ...The results suggest that many, perhaps most, sun-like stars might form terrestrial planets."

[Monday, December 10, 2007] All conceivable life forms, whether earthly or extraterrestrial, require an energy source, and scientists are increasingly employing a "Follow the Energy" approach in the search for signs of habitability and life beyond Earth.

[Monday, December 10, 2007] The ability to study soil from Mars here on Earth will contribute significantly to answering questions about the possibility of life on the Red Planet.

[Monday, December 10, 2007] Scientists have gathered more evidence that suggests flowing water on Mars -- by comparing images of the red planet to an otherworldly landscape on Earth.

[Monday, December 10, 2007] Researchers using NASA's twin Mars rovers are sorting out two possible origins for one of Spirit's most important discoveries, while also getting Spirit to a favorable spot for surviving the next Martian winter.

[Tuesday, December 11, 2007] A team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to detect, for the first time, strong evidence of hazes in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star.

[Wednesday, December 12, 2007] Measures to protect astronauts from health risks caused by space radiation will be important during extended missions to the moon or Mars, say researchers in a paper currently online in Experimental Neurology

[Friday, December 14, 2007] This amendment announces a proposal opportunity in Appendix C.20 of ROSES-2007 entitled "Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets" (ASTEP).

[Friday, December 14, 2007] NASA intends to release a Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN, Cycle-5) soliciting new institutional members to the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI). The CAN will be released early in 2008, and proposals will be due approximately 90 days later.

[Friday, December 14, 2007] Jupiter's moon Europa is just as far away as ever, but new research is bringing scientists closer to being able to explore its tantalizing ice-covered ocean and determine its potential for harboring life.

[Sunday, December 16, 2007] In April astronomers announced the discovery of two possibly habitable planets. A&A is now publishing detailed studies of this system, which confirm that one of the planets might indeed be located within the habitable zone around the star Gliese 581.

[Monday, December 17, 2007] Enceladus is colder than ice, but data gathered by Cassini has detected a hot spot that could mean there is life in the old moon after all. In fact, for researchers of the outer planets, Enceladus is so intellectually hot, it's smokin'

[Tuesday, December 18, 2007] The stunning amount of forest devastation at Tunguska a century ago in Siberia may have been caused by an asteroid only a fraction as large as previously published estimates, Sandia National Laboratories supercomputer simulations suggest.

[Tuesday, December 18, 2007] Saturn's moons Tethys and Dione are flinging great streams of particles into space, according to data from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini mission to Saturn. The discovery suggests the possibility of some sort of geological activity, perhaps even volcanic, on th

[Thursday, December 20, 2007] The space-borne telescope, COROT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits), has just completed its first year in orbit. The observatory has brought in surprises after over 300 days of scientific observations.

[Thursday, December 20, 2007] ESA, NASA and an international team are developing plans and seeking recommendations to launch the first Mars mission to bring soil samples back to Earth.

[Thursday, December 20, 2007] As astronomers become more adept at searching for, and finding, planets orbiting other stars, it's natural to wonder if anybody is looking back.

[Thursday, December 20, 2007] Astronomers have at last found definitive evidence that the universe's first dust - the celestial stuff that seeded future generations of stars and planets - was forged in the explosions of massive stars.

[Friday, December 21, 2007] Astrobiology is a scientific discipline devoted to the study of life in the universe-its origin, evolution, distribution, and future. It brings together physical and biological sciences to address some of the most fundamental questions of the world.

[Friday, December 21, 2007] Abundant evidence points to an early warm, wet climate on the red planet, but there's no sign of the widespread carbonate rocks, such as limestone, that should have formed in such a climate.

[Sunday, December 23, 2007] UC Davis researchers have dated the earliest step in the formation of the solar system -- when microscopic interstellar dust coalesced into mountain-sized chunks of rock -- to 4,568 million years ago, within a range of about 2,080,000 years.

[Thursday, December 27, 2007] "We report 18 years of Doppler shift measurements of a nearby star, 55 Cancri, that exhibit strong evidence for five orbiting planets. The four previously reported planets are strongly confirmed here."

[Thursday, December 27, 2007] A team of biologists have developed a model mapping the control circuit governing a whole free living organism. This is an important milestone for the new field of systems biology.

[Thursday, December 27, 2007] Sulfur dioxide (SO2) may have played a key role in the climate and geochemistry of early Mars. The hypothesis may resolve longstanding questions about evidence that the climate of the Red Planet was once much warmer than it is today.