This image was taken by Lunar Orbiter IV in May 1967 and shows the south pole of the Moon. Figure 1 shows the region without labels. Figure 2 shows major features plus notation regarding processing artifacts from the spacecraft's film processing system. The moon's south pole is located near the rim of Shackleton Crater. [Larger images at moonviews.com]

There are currently three scientific balloons aloft aroudn the world - AESOP, Sunrise, and 597N FIREBall. Below is a short summary (courtesy of NASA GSFC) of each mission.

Roughly a billion years from now, the ever-increasing radiation from the sun will have heated Earth into inhabitability; the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that serves as food for plant life will disappear, pulled out by the weathering of rocks; the oceans will evaporate; and all living things will disappear.

A team of Scripps Research scientists has created a new analog to DNA that assembles and disassembles itself without the need for enzymes. Because the new system comprises components that might reasonably be expected in a primordial world, the new chemical system could answer questions about how life could emerge.

The test launch of the Max Launch Abort System, or MLAS from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility has been delayed to no earlier than 20 June due to weather issues. Here's a look at the vehicle itself courtesy of NASA and what it is supposed to accomplish - plus some pictures you have probaby never seen before.

In images made possible only as Saturn nears equinox, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has uncovered for the first time towering vertical structures in the planet's otherwise flat rings that are attributable to the gravitational effects of a small nearby moon.

The new findings are presented in a paper authored by Cassini imaging scientists and published today online in the Astronomical Journal.