Heat from the oceans is a driving force of climate, and the best place to watch ocean heat circulate is from space. Now Internet users can access these data by using the Sea Level Viewer, an interactive visualization tool developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite are set to lift off together aboard an Atlas V rocket today at 5:12 p.m. EDT. Two additional launch opportunities also are available at 5:22 p.m. and 5:32 p.m.

A University of Colorado at Boulder research team has discovered the first definitive evidence of shorelines on Mars, an indication of a deep, ancient lake there and a finding with implications for the discovery of past life on the Red Planet.

Layar is derived from location based services and works on mobile phones that include a camera, GPS and a compass. Layar is first avaliable for handsets with the Android operating system (the G1 and HTC Magic). It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers. This makes Layar a new type of browser which combines digital and reality, which offers an augmented view of the world.

Several weeks ago, my friend Wayne Hale asked his Tweet community: "Space Policy forum is debating the definition of exploration. Is Scott Parazynski climbing Mt Everest "exploration"?"

An excellent, thought-provoking question that I hadn't had time to properly address while on the mountain. Here is my take on the matter, having recently taken journeys to both space and Everest's top...

On Aug. 22, 2008, NASA's Swift satellite reported multiple blasts of radiation from a rare object known as a soft gamma repeater, or SGR. Now, astronomers report an in-depth study of these eruptions using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) satellites.