Space shuttle Endeavour and its seven-member crew are scheduled to return to Earth on Friday after a 16-day mission. There are two landing opportunities at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:48 a.m. and 12:23 p.m. EDT.

The Japanese Experiment Module Kibo laboratory and Exposed Facility are featured in this image photographed by a crew member on the International Space Station while Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-127) was docked with the station the other day. high res (1.2 M) low res (93 K)

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is introducing a new Web site that will provide a centralized resource for information on near-Earth objects – those asteroids and comets that can approach Earth. The "Asteroid Watch" site also contains links for the interested public to sign up for NASA's new asteroid widget and Twitter account.

The Lunar Exploration Roadmap: Exploring the Moon in the 21st Century: Themes, Goals, Objectives, Investigations, and Priorities, 2009 - A Community Endeavor Coordinated by the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) VERSION 1.0 DRAFT

The Lunar Exploration Roadmap Version 1.0 is the first version of a living document that will be updated and further developed over time as more data becomes available from current missions, as further analyses by LEAG Specific Action Teams impact the roadmap, and as other relevant analyses are reported.

Using different state-of-the-art techniques on ESO's Very Large Telescope, two independent teams of astronomers have obtained the sharpest ever views of the supergiant star Betelgeuse. They show that the star has a vast plume of gas almost as large as our Solar System and a gigantic bubble boiling on its surface. These discoveries provide important clues to help explain how these mammoths shed material at such a tremendous rate.

Photo Caption: A Falcon 9 first stage (green) and interstage (black) during structural qualification testing at SpaceX's Texas Test Site.

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) announces the successful completion of qualification testing for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle first stage tank and interstage. Testing took place at SpaceX's Texas Test Site, a 300 acre structural and propulsion testing facility, located just outside of Waco, Texas.