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.

Editor's note: There was a lot of discussion today at the Augustine Committee's public hearing in Houston about NASA's current plan to de-orbit the International Space Station in 2016. No one on the committee seems to think that this is a good idea. That said, NASA has always been required to have a way to bring the ISS back to Earth once its mission is completed. This briefing first appeared online at NASAWatch.com in April 1999. The Propulsion Module mentioned in this proposal was never built. It was being considered when Russia's delays on delivering the Service Module to orbit began to mount. The rest of this presentation is below:

The crews of Endeavour and the International Space Station parted company today, with all of the docked mission's objectives complete. Space shuttle Endeavour undocked from the International Space Station at 1:26 p.m. EDT. After completing a fly-around of the space station, shuttle Endeavour will perform a maneuver to separate from the station. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Astronaut Koichi Wakata will be returning home on Endeavour after four months as a member of the Expedition 18, 19 and 20 crews. The station's newest NASA flight engineer, Tim Kopra, arrived aboard Endeavour.