[Tuesday, October 3, 2006] A star must live in a relatively tranquil cosmic neighborhood to foster planet formation, say astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

[Wednesday, October 4, 2006] NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered 16 extrasolar planet candidates orbiting a variety of distant stars in the central region of our Milky Way galaxy.

[Friday, October 6, 2006] Long periods of total darkness and poor soil needn't stop an avid gardener. Lettuce is growing in cylinders designed by Texas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers to mimic conditions on the moon and Mars.

[Monday, October 9, 2006] NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, in collaboration with ground-based observatories, has provided definitive evidence for the existence of the nearest extrasolar planet to our solar system.

[Tuesday, October 10, 2006] Could all of the asteroids, comets, and planets in our Milky Way galaxy be made of a similar mix of dusty components?

[Wednesday, October 11, 2006] The 200 known planets that orbit other stars exhibit incredible variety. Among them are a handful of worlds that weigh between 5 and 15 times Earth. Astronomers believe these "super-Earths" are rocky iceballs rather than gas giants like Jupiter.

[Wednesday, October 11, 2006] Astronomers are seeking the public's help to find and understand planets outside our solar system. But you don't need an advanced degree or even a telescope to participate--just a computer, access to the Internet, and an interest in astronomy.

[Friday, October 13, 2006] For 65 million years dinosaurs ruled the Earth until a deadly asteroid forced their extinction. But what accounts for the incredible longevity of dinosaurs?

[Monday, October 16, 2006] For a number of decades now, astronomers have wondered about water on Mars. Thanks to ESA's Mars Express, much of the speculation has been replaced with facts. Launched on 2 June 2003, Mars Express has changed the way we think of Mars.

[Tuesday, October 17, 2006] SETI is akin to discovery science, despite its obvious presumption that the extraterrestrials exist, because that hypothesis is not falsifiable.

[Tuesday, October 17, 2006] The Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe is being established at the SETI Institute in Silicon Valley to sustain a long-term commitment for research into age-old questions such as, "Are we Alone?"

[Wednesday, October 18, 2006] Growing evidence shows that the dinosaurs and their contemporaries were not wiped out by the famed Chicxulub meteor impact alone. Multiple meteor impacts, massive volcanism in India and climate changes culminated in the end of the Cretaceous Period.

[Wednesday, October 18, 2006] ".. my pitch to Mike Griffin was "yes, the questions of astrobiology have been vaguer than those in some older disciplines, but we've spent a decade defining the questions and we've made a lot of progress."

[Thursday, October 19, 2006] Not lava, but muds and methane are emitted from the Arctic deep-water mud volcano Haakon Mosby. When it reaches the atmosphere, methane is an aggressive greenhouse gas, 25-times more potent than carbon dioxide.

[Thursday, October 19, 2006] Astronomers have detected a new faint companion to the star HD 3651, already known to host a planet. This companion, a brown dwarf, is the faintest known companion of an exoplanet host star imaged directly.

[Thursday, October 19, 2006] A class of especially hardy microbes that live in some of the harshest Earthly environments could flourish on cold Mars and other chilly planets, according to a research team of astronomers and microbiologists.

[Thursday, October 19, 2006] NASA's GeneSat-1 satellite is scheduled to ride aboard an Air Force rocket on Dec. 11, 2006. The small satellite will carry bacteria that researchers will analyze to determine the effects of space flight on microscopic living things.

[Friday, October 20, 2006] "We conducted research with the chip while we were flying in parabolas, going from two times Earth's gravity to zero gravity again and again. There is absolutely no way this experiment could have been done without this chip."

[Friday, October 20, 2006] Researchers have discovered bacteria nearly two miles underground that derives all of its energy from the decay of radioactive rocks rather than from sunlight. The finding suggests life might exist in similarly extreme conditions even on other worlds.

[Friday, October 20, 2006] Researchers have discovered an isolated, self-sustaining, bacterial community living under extreme conditions almost two miles deep beneath the surface in a South African gold mine.

[Tuesday, October 24, 2006] The new Press/Pulse theory gets around the controversy by rejecting the all-or-nothing approach to mass extinction, calling instead on a combination of deadly sudden catastrophes - "pulses" - with longer, steadier pressures on species - "presses."

[Tuesday, October 24, 2006] There is consternation these days between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its external science community. In August, three senior science advisors were dismissed from the NASA Advisory Council (NAC).

[Tuesday, October 24, 2006] A new study should force renewed attention on one of the most intractable dangers of space travel: radiation. The review identified major radiation hazards that must be solved before the safe completion of a human Mars mission.

[Thursday, October 26, 2006] The COROT space telescope is proceeding smoothly towards its launch in December 2006. Once in orbit, COROT will become the first spacecraft devoted to the search for rocky planets, similar to our own Earth.

[Thursday, October 26, 2006] A better understanding of solar storms and how best to protect astronauts from space radiation is needed as NASA pushes toward manned missions to the moon and Mars in the coming decades, according to a new National Research Council report.

[Friday, October 27, 2006] The full family tree of the species known as social amoebas has been plotted for the first time – a breakthrough which will provide important clues to the evolution of life on earth.

[Sunday, October 29, 2006] To go where few people have gone before, a team of expert scientists, mountain-climbers, and divers will explore the ecosystems of three high-altitude summit lakes to understand microbial life's adaptation to these challenging environments.

[Sunday, October 29, 2006] Based on the lovely green rock, olivine, also known as the gemstone, peridot, a Virginia Tech graduate student has created a mineral lifetime diagram that provides the a clue to when and for how long there might have been water on Mars.

[Sunday, October 29, 2006] The findings of a recent study to determine the potential for terrestrial life to propagate on Mars will be considered when NASA revises its policies and plans for future missions to Mars to ensure that areas of the planet designated as "special regions".

[Sunday, October 29, 2006] The Astrobiology Primer has been created as a reference tool for those who are interested in the interdisciplinary field of astrobiology.