[Monday, February 1, 2010] In announcing its $19.0 billion FY 2011 NASA budget today, the Obama Administration has made it very clear that it intends to attempt a paradigm shift in the way that America explores and utilizes space.

[Tuesday, February 2, 2010] Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life.

[Wednesday, February 3, 2010] Astronomers have discovered a new ground-based technique to study the atmospheres of planets outside our Solar System, accelerating our search for Earth-like planets with life-related molecules.

[Thursday, February 4, 2010] Space is a hostile environment for living things, but small organisms on the Expose-E experiment unit outside Europe's Columbus ISS laboratory module have resisted the solar UV radiation, cosmic rays, vacuum and varying temperatures for 18 months.

[Thursday, February 4, 2010] James Cameron, the writer and director of "Avatar" and "Titanic" has published an op-ed in The Washington Post endorsing commercial human spaceflight and President Obama's new plan for NASA.

[Sunday, February 7, 2010] NASA scientists hope to better understand exactly how and why plants grow differently in space in an experiment named, Tropi. Future astronauts may be able to grow plants as part of life support systems on long-duration space missions.

[Sunday, February 7, 2010] Life on Earth hit a particularly rough patch about 250 million years ago, when about 90 percent of marine species went extinct along with about 70 percent of land organisms, including the only large-scale extinction of insects.

[Monday, February 8, 2010] In dives through the water ice plume of Enceladus, the Cassini plasma spectrometer has found unexpected populations of charged molecules and dust that strengthen arguments for the presence of liquid water and the ingredients for life inside the moon.

[Saturday, February 13, 2010] The NASA Astrobiology Institute is offering funding for students and postdocs to attend the Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) 2010 in League City, Texas, on April 26-29, 2010.

[Monday, February 15, 2010] Twenty years ago NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft had sailed beyond the outermost planet in our solar system and turned its camera inward to snap a series of final images that would be its parting valentine to the string of planets it called home.

[Sunday, February 21, 2010] Veteran space journalist and NASA Advisory Council member Miles O'Brien will testify on Capitol Hill. What do you think? We appreciate your participation in this short survey.

[Tuesday, February 23, 2010] Newly released images from last November's swoop over Enceladus by Cassini reveal a forest of new jets spraying from prominent fractures crossing the south polar region and yield the most detailed temperature map to date of one fracture.