ESA: Mars may not be as dormant as scientists once thought. The 2004 discovery of methane means that either there is life on Mars, or that volcanic activity continues to generate heat below the martian surface. ESA plans to find out which it is. Either outcome is big news for a planet once thought to be biologically and geologically inactive.

ESO: One of the hottest topics at this year's XXVIIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil involves the study of the astrophysical conditions favourable for the development and survival of primordial life. New research shows that compared to middle-aged stars like the Sun, newly formed stars spin faster generating strong magnetic fields that result in emission of more intense levels of X-rays, ultraviolet rays and charged particles

Adrienne Kish: The simple explanation for why there was no blog entry for yesterday is that yesterday rather bled into today....it's all a bit of a blur. Science being what it is, we were processing samples until the wee hours of the morning and headed to bed for a quick one hour nap before rising from the dead to meet the Lance at is arrived at the NyAlesund harbor.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star.

This is a re-release of Life Magazine's "Image of the Century" from 1966. The performance of our hardware and software image processing methods has been significantly enhanced to remove some of the banding artifacts that are derived from imperfections in the spacecraft image scanning hardware. This image of Copernicus crater was taken from a spacecraft altitude of 45 km (27.1 miles) and is approximately 207.7 km (~125 miles) to the center of the image.

Full story plus additional restored Copernicus image subframes previously unreleased by LOIRP.

The South Pole Traverse crosses the polar plateau in December 2008. Using tractors and sleds to transport material and fuel overland has returned in full force, with the NSF purchasing an entire second train of vehicles and equipment with stimulus money. Photo Credit: Paul Thur/Antarctic Photo Library

Peter Rejcek, Antarctic Sun Editor: McMurdo to South Pole. South Pole to AGAP South. Byrd Surface Camp to Pine Island Glacier. WAIS Divide field camp to McMurdo. McMurdo to Whillans Ice Stream.