THE GIST Early Earth may have had too much water for life to take hold. Conditions for life may have been better on Mars, which had dry spots. Cycles of water and drying may have been needed to give the molecular building blocks for life a chemical toehold. Given the same raw materials, Mars would have been a better host for life to arise than Earth, which some scientists believe was too flooded for the chemistry of life to gain a toehold. Without at least occasional dry land, the chemistry needed to get life started doesn’t work very well because the molecules to support genetics, such as RNA, are chemically unstable in many ways, particularly in water. PHOTOS: Weirdest Mars Craters That raises a problem, ... Continue reading →

Scientists have found two interstellar clouds of original gas, which -- unlike everything else in the universe -- has never mingled with elements forged later in stars. The existence of pristine gas that formed minutes after the Big Bang explosion some 13.7 billion years ago, had been predicted, but never before observed. The clouds, which are located about 12 billion light-years from Earth within the constellations Ursa Major and Leo, were found serendipitously during an ongoing study to characterize gas in distant galaxies. In analyzing the light coming from quasars (active nuclei of distant galaxies), astronomers realized the rays had passed through gas that contained only hydrogen and deuterium, elements that formed minutes after the Big Bang. The surprise was that the clouds contained nothing ... Continue reading →

It has been 15 years since Russia has attempted to send a spacecraft to another planet, but that dry spell is due to end next week with the launch of an ambitious mission to return soil samples from the Martian moon Phobos. The project, called Phobos-Grunt ("grunt" is Russian for "soil") also includes a small Chinese spacecraft called Yinghuo 1 that is designed to orbit Mars, as well as an astrobiology experiment from the California-based Planetary Society which will test a theory that living organisms could have arrived on Earth inside meteorites. "It's a very challenging mission. I know the Russians have gone to a lot of trouble to ensure success," Planetary Society projects director Bruce Betts told Discovery News. Russia hasn't attempted an interplanetary ... Continue reading →

SpaceShipTwo is no space shuttle. The six-passenger, two-pilot spacecraft, currently being tested in Mojave, Calif., can't even make it into orbit, let alone fly in space for weeks at a time. Yet the startup of the world's first commercial spaceliner has caught the eye of NASA's shuttle operations chief, Mike Moses. BIG PIC GALLERY: Introducing SpaceShipTwo The fast-talking, straight-shooting Moses, 43, is leaving government service to head up operations for Virgin Galactic, which plans to begin passenger suborbital spaceflights in the next year or so. At press conferences, Moses was legendary for his thorough and patent explanations of highly technical information about the shuttle and its myriad of systems. He talks with Discovery News about his move. ANALYSIS: How High Will Virgin Galactic Fly?Irene Klotz: ... Continue reading →

SpaceShipTwo is no space shuttle. The six-passenger, two-pilot spacecraft, currently being tested in Mojave, Calif., can't even make it into orbit, let alone fly in space for weeks at a time. Yet the startup of the world's first commercial spaceliner has caught the eye of NASA's shuttle operations chief, Mike Moses. BIG PIC GALLERY: Introducing SpaceShipTwo The fast-talking, straight-shooting Moses, 43, is leaving government service to head up operations for Virgin Galactic, which plans to begin passenger suborbital spaceflights in the next year or so. At press conferences, Moses was legendary for his thorough and patent explanations of highly technical information about the shuttle and its myriad of systems. He talks with Discovery News about his move. ANALYSIS: How High Will Virgin Galactic Fly?Irene Klotz: ... Continue reading →

News of the death of Steve Jobs traveled even to the International Space Station, where NASA astronaut Mike Fossum and two crewmates are living. LIke many of us on Earth, their music is stored on iPods. ANALYSIS: Steve Jobs: Dents in the Universe In an interview with CBS News this morning, Fossum had this to say about Jobs: "In every generation there are great thinkers and people that have the vision of what can be and then have the energy, the skill and the genius to make it happen. Steve Jobs is definitely one of those rare individuals and the world's gonna miss him a lot." (Amongst all the machines and equipment aboard the space station is one device that's familiar -- Apple's iPod, seen ... Continue reading →

A trio of relatively young astronomers won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Physics today, not for solving a problem, but for making an observation: our universe is expanding faster now than it did in the past. Whoever figures out why this is happening likely will get a Nobel of his or her own -- plus the one just awarded to 41-year-old astronomer Adam Riess, with Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. SLIDE SHOW: Top 10 Space Stories of the Decade "It's a very juicy problem," Riess told reporters on a conference call. "It's hard and you'll win a Nobel Prize if you figure it out. In fact, I’ll give you mine." The leading theory for the universe's accelerating girth is ... Continue reading →

There are many problems to solve before we can send a spaceship to another star system. About the only thing most folks agree on is that at some point we must make the journey or eventually humans will join the dinosaurs on the species extinction list. We don't know when that day will come, whether we will bring it on ourselves by nuclear or environmental disaster, or if Mother Nature pulls the trigger with an asteroid impact, a global natural disaster or just because the Earth is poorly positioned to outlive the eventual death of the sun. Project Icarus: Reaching for Interstellar Space The biggest challenge concerns interstellar travel itself. If we set off for Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, using today’s technology, we’d ... Continue reading →