[Monday, June 2, 2008] Astronomers have discovered an extrasolar planet only three times more massive than our own, the smallest yet observed orbiting a normal star. The star itself is not large, perhaps as little as one twentieth the mass of our Sun.

[Tuesday, June 3, 2008] A team of Penn State scientists has discovered a new ultra-small species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles.

[Tuesday, June 3, 2008] A glint of bright material appears in the scooped-up soil and in the hole from which it came. "That bright material might be ice or salt. We're eager to do testing of the next three surface samples collected nearby to learn more about it," said Ray Arvids

[Tuesday, June 3, 2008] A planet-searching satellite planned by scientists from MIT, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and NASA-Ames is one of six proposed spacecraft concepts that NASA has picked for further study as part of its Small Explorer satellite program.

[Wednesday, June 4, 2008] The mission which uses the Deep Impact spacecraft has begun its search for "super Earth" planets. The EPOXI team has focused its attention on the star GJ436.

[Thursday, June 5, 2008] A Johns Hopkins astronomer is a member of a team briefing fellow scientists about plans to use new technology to take advantage of recent, promising ideas on where to search for possible extraterrestrial intelligence in our galaxy.

[Thursday, June 5, 2008] A microscope on NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander has taken images of dust and sand particles with the greatest resolution ever returned from another planet.

[Friday, June 6, 2008] A team of researchers at Harvard University have modeled in the laboratory a primitive cell, or protocell, that is capable of building, copying and containing DNA.

[Saturday, June 7, 2008] The arm of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander released a handful of clumpy Martian soil onto a screened opening of a laboratory instrument on the spacecraft Friday, but the instrument did not confirm that any of the sample passed through the screen.

[Tuesday, June 10, 2008] Engineers operating the Robotic Arm on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander are testing a revised method for delivering soil samples to laboratory instruments on Phoenix's deck now that researchers appreciate how clumpy the soil is at the landing site.

[Friday, June 13, 2008] NASA researchers and scientists from the United States, Germany and Japan have found a new mineral in material that likely came from a comet. NASA performed stratospheric dust collections, using an ER-2 high-altitude aircraft.

[Saturday, June 14, 2008] New observations from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander provide the most magnified view ever seen of Martian soil, showing particles clumping together even at the smallest visible scale.

[Monday, June 16, 2008] Scientists looking for evidence of life on Mars have turned to technology invented by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers to help with their mission.

[Monday, June 16, 2008] Today, at an international conference, a team of European astronomers announced a remarkable breakthrough in the field of extra-solar planets.

[Monday, June 16, 2008] News media are invited to share the excitement on Friday, June 27, 2008, as scientists and astronauts dive more than 200 feet deep in single-person submarines into the clear, blue depths of Pavilion Lake, in British Columbia, Canada.

[Tuesday, June 17, 2008] A new study suggests that it is the ocean, and in particular the epic ebbs and flows of sea level and sediment over the course of geologic time, that is the primary cause of the world's periodic mass extinctions over the past 500 million years.

[Wednesday, June 18, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander began digging in an area called "Wonderland" early Tuesday, taking its first scoop of soil from a polygonal surface feature within the "national park" region that mission scientists have been preserving for science.

[Thursday, June 19, 2008] Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.

[Thursday, June 19, 2008] A precision analysis of lava samples taken from the crater is giving scientists a new tool for reconstructing planetary origins. The results of the analysis will be published in the June 20 issue of the journal Science.

[Saturday, June 21, 2008] Scientists relishing confirmation of water ice near the surface beside NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander anticipate even bigger discoveries from the robotic mission in the weeks ahead.

[Tuesday, June 24, 2008] This spring Challenger Center for Space Science Education invited students to use their creativity to design an original piece of art for a student mission patch for private space explorer, Richard Garriott.

[Tuesday, June 24, 2008] A team of scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom has developed a technique using ultraviolet light to identify organic matter in soils that they say could be used to document the existence of life on Mars.

[Tuesday, June 24, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has delivered a scoop of Martian soil from the "Snow White" trenches to the optical microscope for analysis tomorrow, June 24, the 29th Martian day of the mission, or Sol 29.

[Wednesday, June 25, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander placed a sample of Martian soil in the spacecraft's wet chemistry laboratory today for the first time.

[Thursday, June 26, 2008] Work by a team of English scientists reinforces an earlier suggestion that evidence of life on the early Earth might be found in meteorites on the moon.

[Thursday, June 26, 2008] A new analysis of Martian soil data suggests that there was once enough water in the planet's atmosphere for a light drizzle or dew to hit the ground, leaving tell-tale signs of its interaction with the planet's surface.

[Thursday, June 26, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander performed its first wet chemistry on Martian soil flawlessly yesterday, returning a wealth of data that for Phoenix scientists was like winning the lottery.

[Saturday, June 28, 2008] A new analysis of ancient minerals called zircons suggests that a harsh climate may have scoured and possibly even destroyed the surface of the Earth's earliest continents.

[Saturday, June 28, 2008] Scientists have confirmed for the first time that an important component of early genetic material which has been found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin, in a paper published on June 15, 2008

[Saturday, June 28, 2008] NASA's Cassini mission is closing one chapter of its journey at Saturn and embarking on a new one with a two-year mission that will address new questions and bring it closer to two of its most intriguing targets--Titan and Enceladus.

[Saturday, June 28, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander scraped to icy soil in the "Wonderland" area on June 26, confirming that surface soil, subsurface soil and icy soil can be sampled at a single trench.