On June 25, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) discovered its 1,500th comet. This tally tops all other comet discoverers throughout history combined. From ESA: When it comes to comet catching, the SOHO has one big advantage over everybody else: its location. Situated between the Sun and Earth, it has a privileged view of a region of space that can rarely be seen from Earth. From the surface, we can see regions close to the Sun clearly only...

A Delta II rocket carrying satellite USA-193 takes off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, December 14, 2006. USAF Tonight, the United States Navy may make its first attempt to shoot down failing spy satellite USA-193 . The Pentagon released notification, but conditions must be ideal for the rocket launch. Without planned removal, the satellite would come back down in early March. The satellite, which failed immediately after its December...

This morning, I was looking through images of the current shuttle mission on NASA’s site . I came across the photograph posted to the right. In it, STS-122 Commander Steven Frick is writing on a tablet in front of a control panel. I’m a gadget freak, so although the operations portion of the image is beyond my comprehension, I noticed what adorns Frick’s wrist: a Yes Watch . For me, this is cooler than noticing a “Roman centurion” wearing a wristwatch...

In 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin captured the famous footage of what many cryptozooligists and kooks believe is Bigfoot. Perhaps sick of urban sprawl, the Patterson-Gimin Sasquatch relocated to the Red Planet. In a panoramic image captured by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in November 2007, a Bigfoot-like figure appears among the surface formations. The Internet grabbed hold of this photo around the beginning of 2008, and bloggers have...

With President Bush’s call for a return to the lunar surface, dozens of titles about the Moon have hit bookstores. From the volumes that have crossed my desk, most are nostalgic or historic accounts that showcase the people behind earlier lunar missions. Robert Godwin has assembled one of the more original books from this genre. The Lunar Exploration Scrapbook: A Pictorial History of Lunar Vehicles (Apogee, 2007) shows readers the designs for rovers...