[Thursday, May 5, 2011] Over 100 million years ago, the understory of late Mesozoic forests was dominated by a diverse group of plants of the class Equisetopsida. Today, only one genus from this group, Equisetum (also known as horsetail or scouring rush), exists.

[Friday, May 6, 2011] During a regularly scheduled science data download on Tuesday, April 26, the project team reoriented the Kepler spacecraft to downlink data from its solid-state recorder (SSR). All data collected since March 20 was returned successfully.

[Saturday, May 7, 2011] The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., is managing a project to explore the organic seas of Saturn's moon Titan, one of three proposals selected by NASA this week as candidates for the agency's next Discovery Program

[Saturday, May 7, 2011] NASA has made available for the public a new online collection of images of our solar system and locations on Earth where astrobiology researchers travel to conduct field research.

[Sunday, May 8, 2011] The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) is accepting proposals to the 2011 NAI Director's Discretionary Fund (DDF).

[Sunday, May 8, 2011] The second issue of the Astrobiology Graphic Novel is now available. This time the novel chronicles the history of our exploration of Mars.

[Friday, May 13, 2011] As Star Trek is so fond of reminding us, we're carbon-based life forms. But the event that jump-started the universe, the Big Bang, didn't actually produce any carbon, so where the heck did it - and we - come from?

[Monday, May 16, 2011] Shuttle LIFE will add a host of microscopic space travelers to Endeavour's passenger manifest when the Planetary Society experiment launches aboard the space shuttle on May 16.

[Monday, May 16, 2011] NASA's Kepler has identified 1,235 possible planets around stars in our galaxy, astronomers at UC Berkeley, are aiming a radio telescope at the most Earth-like of these worlds to see if they can detect signals from an advanced civilization.

[Wednesday, May 18, 2011] Astronomers have discovered a new class of Jupiter-sized planets floating alone in the dark of space, away from the light of a star. The team believes these lone worlds were probably ejected from developing planetary systems.

[Thursday, May 19, 2011] New research in the FASEB Journal suggests that flawed antibody production could potentially compromise resistance to infections during long-term missions and jeopardize the outcome of a space mission.

[Thursday, May 19, 2011] This artist's concept illustrates a red dwarf star surrounded by three planets. Such stars are dimmer and smaller than yellow stars like our sun, which makes them ideal targets for astronomers wishing to take images of planets outside our solar system.

[Saturday, May 21, 2011] The change in Titan's haze layer is illustrated in this figure, derived from data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

[Saturday, May 21, 2011] Two golden orb spiders are delivered by the STS-134 crew to the International Space Station so researchers can observe the arachnids' habits in microgravity.

[Monday, May 23, 2011] The planetary system around the red dwarf Gliese 581, one of the closest stars to the Sun in the galaxy, has been the subject of several studies aiming to detect the first potentially habitable exoplanet.

[Monday, May 23, 2011] The First Kepler Science Conference will be held 5-9 December 2011, hosted by the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.

[Monday, May 23, 2011] A new planetary member of the Kepler-10 solar system was announced today. Using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, members of the Kepler science team confirmed a new planet, dubbed Kepler-10c.

[Monday, May 23, 2011] NASA's Kepler spacecraft is proving itself to be a prolific planet hunter. Within just the first four months of data, astronomers have found evidence for more than 1,200 planetary candidates.

[Wednesday, May 25, 2011] Today the Kepler team is announcing another member of the Kepler-10 family, called Kepler-10c . It has a radius of 2.2 times that of Earth's, and it orbits the star every 45 days. Both Kepler-10b and 10c would be blistering hot worlds.

[Wednesday, May 25, 2011] This year's recipient of the prestigious Darwin-Wallace Medal is James A. Lake, professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a researcher with NASA's Astrobiology Program.

[Wednesday, May 25, 2011] Space scientists working to solve one cosmic mystery at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. now have the capability to better understand unidentified matter in deep space.

[Thursday, May 26, 2011] Marine scientists have a new view of the giant kelp in the Pacific Ocean--through a scuba mask and a satellite's "eye." Forests of giant kelp, or Macrocystis pyrifera, are found in temperate coastal regions and are among the most productive ecosystems on

[Thursday, May 26, 2011] The planet is about 2 times the size of Earth, and is very close to the Sun-like star Kepler-10, completing an orbit in only 45 days. Being so close to its sun, the blazing-hot new planet is not expected to have any liquid water or life as we know it.

[Friday, May 27, 2011] Thirty-eight million years ago, tropical jungles thrived in what are now the cornfields of the American Midwest and furry marsupials wandered temperate forests in what is now the frozen Antarctic.

[Friday, May 27, 2011] Concerns have been raised about our recent study suggesting that arsenic (As) substitutes for phosphorus (P) in major biomolecules of a bacterium that tolerates extreme As concentrations.