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Astrophysics

A team of astronomers, using data from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey, have studied a region known as the "WMAP Cold Spot", because it stood out in maps of the cosmic microwave background made by NASA's WMAP mission. They have found the enourmous region, nearly a billion light-years across, to be empty of both normal matter (stars, galaxies, etc.) and of dark matter. More...

Heliophysics

NASA's THEMIS mission, five identical spacecraft dedicating to tracking the causes of magnetospheric substorms, was successfully launched at 18:01 EST on 17 February. More...

Lunar and Planetary Science

The Phoenix lander will touch down on the polar plains of Mars on Sunday, May 25 at about 23:53 UT Earth received time (7:53 p.m. EDT). A press release from the 13 May media briefing has more detail.

NASA has announced plans for a Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) satellite and two small landers to be launched to the Moon by 2014 and an outer solar system mission to Europa, Ganymede, or Titan to launch in 2016 or 2017.

The Deep Impact / EPOXI mission has started the EPOCh (Extrasolar Planets Observation and Characterization) portion of its campaign. It will continue observing extrasolar planets until 28 May and then await its encounter with Comet Hartley 2 on 11 October 2010.