I have some exciting news! The Space Tweep Society's birdonaut mascot, Meco, is scheduled to travel to the International Space Station this coming March- courtesy of @Astro_Ron! Meco (in the form of one of our Space Tweep Society patches) will be launching on Soyuz and will be on a very long duration expedition. Thanks, @Astro_Ron for taking him along!

Now Meco needs a patch design for his very long duration expedition. In fact, since he is so special, he needs a whole collection of different designs and it is up to you to make them. This isn't a contest; it is just a fun activity for members who want to participate. Patch designs should be your original artwork, ideally produced in a digital format. A drawing that is scanned or photographed is acceptable as well. The designs submitted* will be posted on our website for everyone to enjoy. Kids are also encouraged to participate.

Like proud parents, mission team members gathered in a gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the Mars Curiosity rover roll for the first time.  Watch the Video of Curiosity's first Rove!

Since it doesn't look like the Rosetta mission is going to be releasing any color versions of their Lutetia close-encounter images any time soon, I figured it was time to make one. The data was out there, in the form of two close-approach images that were black-and-white, and one more distant shot in color, but the assembly effort was beyond my skill. Thankfully, Ted Stryk was willing to take a crack at it, and I think he did a great job!Click ....

NASA-funded researchers searching for extreme environments for life have discovered the world's deepest hydrothermal vent, 5,000 meters below the surface of the Caribbean.[What do the depths of the Caribbean and Jupiter's moon Europa have in common? Hopefully life which uses hydrothermal reactions instead of sunlight for energy.]

The brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen in X-rays temporarily blinded Swift's X-ray Telescope on 21 June 2010. A record-breaking gamma ray burst from beyond the Milky Way temporarily blinded the X-ray eye on NASA's Swift space observatory on June 21, 2010. The X-rays traveled through space for 5-billion years before slamming into and overwhelming the space-based telescope. "This gamma-ray burst is by far the brightest light source ever seen in X-ray wavelengths at cosmological distances," said David Burrows, senior scientist and professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and the lead scientist for Swift's X-ray Telescope (XRT).

Carolyn Porco just tweeted about a beautiful image from Cassini, showing the icy moon Tethys hanging in space: How forbidding and lovely!

Tethys is big, about 1100 km (660 miles) across (about 1/3 the diameter as our own Moon). Its density is actually a bit less than that of water, so it’s most likely predominantly composed of water ice. The surface is bombarded with craters, including the big one at the bottom called Melanthius. It’s 250 km across (150 miles!) and sports a massive central peak, common in larger craters. The crater itself is from a gigantic impact on the moon, and the central mountain forms when material is first displaced by the impact, then flows back. Under those titanic stresses, solid material can actually flow as the impact shock wave passes through, so these peaks are seen on lots of big objects in the solar system.

What's happened to that moon of Saturn? -- Saturn's moon Rhea is just partly hidden behind Saturn's rings. In April, the robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn took this narrow-angle view looking across the Solar System's most famous rings.

Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: NASA partners with the WorldWide Telescope to offer half a billion high-resolution images of Red Planet sights, ranging from rover tracks to future landing sites for Mars-bound astronauts.

A total solar eclipse drew an 11,000 kilometer (6,800 mile) arc over the Pacific Sunday, plunging remote islands into darkness in a heavenly display climaxing on mysterious Easter Island.

Five of the sky's brightest and most dazzling lights will make appearances in the western sky on several nights this month in a promising celestial show for skywatchers with clear skies.

The so-called Galaxy 15 zombie satellite that lost contact with ground controllers on Earth in April is still adrift in space, with engineers keeping a close eye on the wayward satellite as it approaches two other spacecraft this month

A view of a very steep side of a plateau, part of the northern limit of the Kasei Valles system.

Scientists were "totally surprised" to find the proton smaller than thought—a "significant shake-up" that may change the laws of physics.

As promised last week, Cassini has delivered its best photos yet of the tiny moon Daphnis, the ringmoon that is responsible for carving out the skinny Keeler gap at the outer edge of Saturn's A ring. In addition to carving out the gap, its slight up-and-down motions, coupled with the fact that the particles in the ring that are closer to Saturn move faster in their orbits than Daphnis does, Daphnis excites vertical wave structures in the edge ....

Progress 38 docking issues and far, far away flags on your SpacePod for July 6th, 2010 On July 2nd, 2010 an automated docking of the Progress 38 resupply vehicle to the International Space Station failed. The Progress vehicle launched aboard a Soyuz rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010. 

[Watch SpacePod Now]

Like an Independence Day fireworks display, a young, glittering collection of stars looks like an aerial burst. The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust -- the raw material for new star formation. The nebula, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, contains a central cluster of huge, hot stars, called NGC 3603. This environment is not as peaceful as it looks.

NASA has selected the winners in the 2010 Life and Work on the Moon Art and Design Contest from more than 200 international student entries.