In a world first an international team of researchers, led by Dr Michael Bunce of Murdoch University, have successfully isolated ancient DNA from fossil eggshell remains of extinct birds

(European Space Agency) Specialists from various Earth system science disciplines recently gathered to address a major question: what will our environment look like in the future?

Take a bunch of fast-moving electrons, place them in orbit and then hit them with the shock waves from a solar storm. What do you get? Killer electrons. That's the shocking recipe revealed by ESA's Cluster mission.

Discovery News - Space News: A new infrared telescope has found 16 previously unknown asteroids that swing close to Earth.

13.7: From time immemorial, faced with the complexity of Nature, man has searched for repetitive patterns, for some kind of order. This approach makes a lot of sense. All we have to do is look at the skies to see periodic motions, defining natural cycles to which we are deeply connected: the setting and rising of the Sun, the phases of the Moon, the four seasons, the planetary orbits. With Pythagoras and his followers, some 2500 hundred years ago, the search for ordered patterns was transformed into a search for a mathematical order: the patterns that we see in Nature reflect an underlying mathematical order, the mathematics of Creation. The philosopher's goal is to decipher these patterns, to reveal Nature's hidden code.

Google has just released what appears to be another substantial batch of StreetView imagery. Thanks to a few tips (thanks 'Duncan' and 'Munden'), we know about a lot of areas already.

Updated areas include: [UPDATED 8:51am EST, 11-March]

• Hong Kong and Macau: Details
• Northern Ireland
• Japan
• Netherlands
• UK: Leicester and Leicestershire, among others.

A Babe in the Universe: February 24, 2010. This is the Lunar Sample Return Facility at Johnson Space Center. Apollo 14 landed in the Fra Mauro formation, the intended site of Apollo 13. Sample 14003,96 was a contingency sample collected by the crew at the beginning of their first EVA in February 5, 1971. This is a pristine sample, unopened by anyone in 39 years! Today is the great honour of touching the Moon, seeing what no one has seen before.Apollo samples are beyond priceless. Only by many months of applying and experimenting can one get a piece. 14003,96 is the largest pristine sample released to researchers in memory. The sample is handled here in the clean room, within a glovebox pressurised with nitrogen.The sample is kept within this flying saucer-shaped container, sealed with many bolts. No one knows exactly what we will find within. Working within a glovebox is tricky, much like being on EVA.

ESA PR 2010-04 The heads of the International Space Station (ISS) agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States met in Tokyo, Japan, on 11 March 2010, to review ISS cooperation. With the assembly of the ISS nearing completion and the capability to support a full-time crew of six established, they noted the outstanding opportunities now offered by the ISS for on-orbit research and for discovery including the operation and management of the world’s largest international space complex.

Is our Sun part of a binary star system? Some have suggested an unseen companion star, nicknamed "Nemesis," is sending comets towards Earth.

Take a bunch of fast-moving electrons, place them in orbit and then hit them with the shock waves from a solar storm. What do you get? Killer electrons. That’s the shocking recipe revealed by ESA’s Cluster mission.

Space Fellowship: Distant galaxy clusters mysteriously stream at a million miles per hour along a path roughly centered on the southern constellations Centaurus and Hydra. A new study led by Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., tracks this collective motion -- dubbed the "dark flow" -- to twice the distance originally reported. "It takes, on average, about an hour of telescope time to measure the distance to each cluster we work with, not to mention the years required [...]

The Night Sky Guy: Check out this short video on what’s up in the night sky for the rest of this month, courtesy of NASA… Bookmark

NASA Astrobiology Institute: Artist concept of the NASA WISE mission. Image: NASA/JPLIs our Sun part of a binary star system? An unseen companion star, nicknamed “Nemesis,” may be sending comets towards Earth. Throughout history, such impacts could have had a profound effect on the evolution of the biosphere by causing regular mass extinctions. If Nemesis exists, NASA’s new WISE telescope should be able to spot it.

Space Fellowship: (NASA) - The Kepler spacecraft has been performing well since the Safe Mode event of Feb. 2, 2010. Engineers on the anomaly response team are continuing to analyze the telemetry from the event to develop root cause and mitigations. Several mitigations are under consideration and are being prepared for implementation. The mitigations should minimize impact to science activities, should a similar event occur that caused the Feb. 2, 2010 Safe Mode entry. The project team continues to prepare fo [...]