[Thursday, July 2, 2009] Favorable chemistry and episodes with thin films of liquid water during ongoing, long-term climate cycles may sometimes make the area where NASA's Phoenix Mars mission landed last year a favorable environment for microbes.

[Sunday, July 5, 2009] When glaciers advanced over much of the Earth's surface during the last ice age, what kept the planet from freezing over entirely?

[Tuesday, July 7, 2009] According to findings from the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, snow and water-ice clouds play a crucial role in the exchange of water between the atmosphere and surface of Mars, which suggests that Mars is even more like Earth than previously thought.

[Thursday, July 9, 2009] Earth's 4.5-billion-year history is filled with several turning points when temperatures changed dramatically, asteroids bombarded the planet and life forms came and disappeared

[Thursday, July 9, 2009] Iron and manganese compounds, in addition to sulfate, may play an important role in converting methane to carbon dioxide and eventually carbonates in the Earth's oceans, according to a team of researchers looking at anaerobic sediments.

[Monday, July 13, 2009] From March 31 to July 14, a six-man international crew called an isolation chamber in Moscow their home. The crew simulated a 105-day Mars mission full of experiments and realistic mission scenarios.

[Tuesday, July 14, 2009] A team of researchers from the CSIC-INTA Astrobiology Centre in Madrid has confirmed that the type of mineralogical composition on the surface of Mars influences the measuring of its temperature.

[Tuesday, July 14, 2009] An unmapped reservoir of briny liquid chemically similar to sea water, but buried under an inland Antarctic glacier, appears to support unusual microbial life .

[Wednesday, July 15, 2009] A new study has revealed the origins of tiger stripes and a subsurface ocean on Enceladus- one of Saturn's many moons.

[Wednesday, July 22, 2009] Data collected during two close flybys of Saturn's moon Enceladus by NASA's Cassini spacecraft add more fuel to the fire about the Saturnian ice world containing sub-surface liquid water.

[Thursday, July 23, 2009] "If we discover intelligent life beyond Earth, should we reply, and if so, what should we say?"

[Sunday, July 26, 2009] Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle --the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core.

[Friday, July 31, 2009] Scientists have debated how many mass extinction events in Earth's history were triggered by a space body crashing into the planet's surface.

[Friday, July 31, 2009] Comments are being solicited from members of the astrobiology community on the following paper(s) that will be submitted to the 2009-2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey.

[Friday, July 31, 2009] For long-duration space missions, astronauts someday will grow plants for food and the air they breathe, while transforming inedible parts of the plants into useful resources, such as biofuels, food, and chemicals.