[Thursday, June 2, 2011] Commercial food growth chambers (a.k.a., greenhouses) are optimized to favor the growth of one particular crop. But the SPFGC instead provides a large variety of crops by using a generalized mix of nutrients, humidity, temperature and light.

[Thursday, June 2, 2011] A space flight by millions of microscopic worms could help us overcome the numerous threats posed to human health by space travel.

[Thursday, June 2, 2011] The Planetary Society welcomes home Endeavour and the microscopic passengers it carried in Shuttle LIFE, an experiment designed to test aspects of the transpermia hypothesis -- the ability of microbial life to survive an interplanetary voyage.

[Saturday, June 4, 2011] USRA is part of a multi-organization team led by SRI International that has been awarded a five-year cooperative agreement by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to manage, operate and maintain the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

[Sunday, June 5, 2011] There's a theory about how the Marinoan ice age--also known as the "Snowball Earth" ice age because of its extreme low temperatures--came to an abrupt end some 600 million years ago.

[Sunday, June 5, 2011] We show that, even with the strongest plausible assumptions, reducing cloud and surface albedos falls short by a factor of two of resolving the paradox.

[Thursday, June 9, 2011] Some asteroids may have been like "molecular factories" cranking out life's ingredients and shipping them to Earth via meteorite impacts.

[Friday, June 10, 2011] The due dates for Notices of Intent (NOIs) to Appendix C.16: Planetary Instrument Definition and Development (PIDD) and Appendix C.19 Astrobiology Science and Technology for Instrument Development (ASTID) have been changed to 7/1/2011.

[Saturday, June 18, 2011] News media are invited to attend a tribute celebrating the life of Baruch "Barry" Blumberg, the first director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute and winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

[Sunday, June 19, 2011] The first organisms to emerge after an ancient worldwide glaciation likely evolved hardy survival skills, arming themselves with tough exteriors to weather a frozen climate.

[Monday, June 20, 2011] This Mission Manager Update will focus on flight segment performance of the Kepler spacecraft. In other words, how is Kepler performing while trailing Earth around the sun?

[Monday, June 20, 2011] I had hoped by now to have selection recommendations complete. However, as I was working through the reviews, a budget reduction to Exobiology was unexpectedly announced.

[Wednesday, June 22, 2011] We are discovering more Earth-like planets every day, so now is more critical than ever to look for extraterrestrial life. A contribution from you, today, will fund telescope scans for signs of intelligence beyond our solar system.

[Wednesday, June 22, 2011] Cassini has discovered the best evidence yet for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft's direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon.

[Thursday, June 23, 2011] NASA's next Mars rover has completed the journey from its California birthplace to Florida in preparation for launch this fall.

[Saturday, June 25, 2011] This 11-minute animation depicts key events of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will launch in late 2011 and land a rover, Curiosity, on Mars in August 2012.