Bringing the Universe to Earth

NASA announced today that the additional funding made available in the latest budget review will allow them to extend the Cassini mission around Saturn through to 2017.

Scientists working with the Herschel HIFI (Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared) instrument are apparently delighted with its performance following its recent reactivations. Last summer scientists were confronted by a problem after the instrument shut down following a problem with power distribution.

The NASA-ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the comet-like object P/2010 A2, which was first discovered by the LINEAR (Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program) sky survey on January 6. The object appears so unusual in ground-based telescopic images that discretionary time on Hubble was used to take a close-up look. The picture, from the January 29 observation, shows a bizarre X-pattern of filamentary structures near the point-like nucleus of the object and trailing streamers of dust.

The NASA space programme took another sharp change in direction today when President Obama killed of the Constellation programme and Ares 1 rocket development. Opinion at the time was sharply divided as to whether this was the right step and, unsurprisingly, the split mirrored political opinion in the US - as will today's announcement.

NASA's astronauts onboard the International Space Station are now sending regular twitter posting live from space. This includes both text updates and images from the planet as the circle the globe once every 90 or so minutes.

You can follow them at: twitter.com/NASA_Astronauts

Here is a sample of the images returned.