This month there is news from only one week, July 3 - 10, but next time there will be news from July 10 - August 10. ;-)
July 10 - Shuttle team attempts to recover Atlas 5 boosters
The odds of a successful catch are somewhere between slim and none, but a space shuttle solid rocket motor retrieval team will sail into the Atlantic Ocean next week in hopes of snaring the spent boosters from Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 rocket.
July 10 - Farthest and oldest known planet confirmed
Long before the Earth and sun existed, a Jupiter-sized planet formed around a sun-like star. Now, 13 billion years later, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has precisely measured the mass of this farthest and oldest known planet, and an international team of scientists has determined the age and mass of a companion helium white dwarf.
July 10 - Helios investigators issue interim mishap report
The NASA Mishap Investigation Board that is probing the causes of the in-flight mishap that led to the loss of the Helios Prototype solar-electric aircraft June 26 has completed the on-site portion of their task at the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, and will now turn towards coming up with a probable cause of the accident.
Europe's first lunar adventure will begin on 28 August when the Smart 1 probe blasts off from Kourou in French Guiana. The move was rubber stamped on Wednesday at a flight review at the European Space Agency's research centre in the Netherlands (Estec).
July 9 - Pluto's atmosphere is expanding, researchers say
Pluto's atmosphere is expanding even as it continues on its long orbit away from the sun, a team of astronomers report. Scientists said the new results seem counterintuitive, because observers assumed Pluto's atmosphere would begin to collapse as it cooled. In fact, the temperature of Pluto's mostly nitrogen atmosphere has increased around 1 degree Celsius since it was closest to the sun in 1989.
July 9 - Opportunity sees Mars as it navigates through space
NASA's Opportunity spacecraft, the second of twin Mars Exploration Rovers, has successfully reduced its spin rate as planned and switched to celestial navigation using a star scanner.
July 9 - Cosmic evolution: How the Owl Nebula got its shape
Astronomers have assembled the first effective model for both the shape and evolutionary history of the Owl Nebula, the well-known planetary nebula in the constellation Ursa Major. Named for its ghostly similarity to the face of the carnivorous bird of prey, the Owl Nebula has a complex structure consisting of three concentric shells.
July 8 - Mars Express power glitch a minor annoyance, ESA says
Europe's Mars Express orbiter is now over one month into its marathon cruise to the Red Planet, and although the ground team has discovered a few of the probe's quirks in testing, project officials contend the spacecraft is performing well.
The Beagle 2 lander has passed its first routine "health check" on the journey to Mars. Engineers made contact with the module at the weekend to test various systems as it hurtled towards the Red Planet onboard Mars Express.
July 7 - Foam impact test blows hole in shuttle wing panel
In a dramatic test that drew startled gasps from onlookers, engineers fired a chunk of foam insulation at a mockup of a shuttle wing leading edge Monday, blowing a gaping 16-inch-wide hole in the carbon composite structure and putting to rest any lingering doubts a launch-day foam strike was responsible for the Columbia disaster.
July 7 - Earth's Opportunity rover launched to Mars
Recovering from a last-second cliffhanger delay, NASA finally launched its second state-of-the-art rover to Mars late Monday, sending the $400 million "Opportunity" spacecraft on its way atop a hot-rod Delta 2 rocket that lighted the night sky for dozens of miles around.
July 7 - Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket fitted with Rainbow
Fueled and ready to fly, the Rainbow 1 direct-to-home TV broadcasting satellite was delivered to Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 assembly building and mounted atop its rocket launcher Monday for next week's liftoff from Cape Canaveral.
July 6 - Space sailing test could launch within months
The Planetary Society's efforts to build and operate the world's first solar sail are pressing onward for what officials hope will be a launch before the end of this year.
July 6 - 'Spacewalk squad' joins humans and robots
Humans and robots worked side-by-side this summer at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to evaluate the concept of using human-robotic teams to improve the productivity of astronauts working outside the International Space Station, other space vehicles, or on the surface of other planets.
July 5 - Mars Global Surveyor catches autumn dust storm
Autumn on the martian northern plains means clouds and dust storms. As autumn got underway in early May, large dust storms began to form on the northern plains and sweep their way eastward -- and sometimes southward -- bringing colder air down from the north polar cap, now shrouded in darkness and clouds.
Resembling the puffs of smoke and sparks from a summer fireworks display in this image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, these delicate filaments are actually sheets of debris from a stellar explosion in a neighboring galaxy.
July 3 - Solar system 'most similar' to our own discovered
Astronomers looking for planetary systems that resemble our own solar system have found the most similar formation so far. A team has discovered a planet like Jupiter in orbit round a nearby star that is very like our own Sun. Among the hundred found so far, this system is the one most similar to our Solar System.
July 3 - Minimal data loss expected from SOHO problem
Despite what at first appeared to be a serious problem with the SOHO solar observatory, engineers have now discovered a way to save the vast majority of science data that was once believed to have been lost.
