FAWNSKIN - Astronomers at the Big Bear Solar Observatory are looking forward to the completion of a new telescope that could change the way mankind understands the sun. Observatory director Philip Goode says the new apparatus will feature the largest aperture of any solar telescope in the world. "We have sufficient aperture, three times the aperture we had before, so we've been able to see, but not quite see, how the sun's magnetic field is structured," Goode said.

The U.S. space agency has announced the third two-year extension of the mission of its unmanned Mars Odyssey spacecraft. And during the mission extension through September 2010, NASA said Odyssey will point its camera with more flexibility than ever before. Scientists said the orbit adjustment will allow Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System to look down at sites when it's mid-afternoon, rather than late afternoon.

U.S. space agency scientists say they've identified another way by which astronomers can identify exoplanets in their search for habitable planets. Christopher Stark of the University of Maryland, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration study's lead researcher, said supercomputer simulations of dusty disks around sun-like stars show planets nearly as small as Mars can create patterns that future telescopes might be able to detect. "It may be a while before we can directly image Earth-like planets around other stars, but before then we'll be able to detect the ornate and beautiful rings they carve in interplanetary dust," said Stark.

NASA plans to launch a new exploration rover to Mars next fall, despite budget and technical concerns, a NASA official said Friday. "All indications are that they're still on track for the '09 launch," Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program, said at a teleconference. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in charge of building the spacecraft, believes it needs an additional $100 million, on top of previous budget increases, to meet the current launch schedule.

Oct. 9--After decades of studying outer space, the Adler Planetarium has been sucked into the orbit of presidential politics. In McCain's view, the "overhead projector" was an example of Obama's approach to pork-barrel spending. But at a news conference Wednesday, Adler President Paul Knappenberger defended the request.

A German-led team of astrophysicists says observations of a special class of variable stars resolves a dispute about the rotation of the Milky Way galaxy. Led by Nicolas Nardetto of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, the team used observations by a spectrograph attached to a European Southern Observatory telescope in the mountains of Chile. The scientists made high-precision observations of eight bright, pulsating stars known as Cepheids.

U.S. astronomers using the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope have obtained the first direct measurement of a nascent galaxy's magnetic field. Astronomers led by Professor Arthur Wolfe of the University of California-San Diego said the measurement of the magnetic field was as it appeared 6.5 billion years ago and is at least 10 times greater than the average value in the Milky Way. The researchers made the discovery using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope at Green Bank, W.Va., operated by the National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

LOS ANGELES - Will NASA's flagship mission to Mars fly next year? NASA has already sunk $1.5 billion into the Mars Science Laboratory, which is pricier than expected. Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, told scientists in recent public meetings that he expects the mission's total cost to run over by more than 30 percent.

The U.S. space agency's Cassini spacecraft is to make two flyby's of Saturn's moon Enceladus this month, including the closest flyby yet of any Saturn moon. Scientists posit liquid water, perhaps even an ocean, might exist beneath the surface of Enceladus. Trace amounts of organics have also been detected, raising questions about the moon's habitability, NASA said.

The first U.S. spacecraft designed to explore the extreme outer solar system is ready for launch. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the Interstellar Boundary Explorer -- or IBEX -- spacecraft will image and map the dynamic interactions taking place where the hot solar wind reaches the cold expanse of space. The two-year mission will begin Oct. 19 when the spacecraft is launched from an aircraft flying above the Kwajalein Atoll, a part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has picked 10 U.S. teams to study the origins, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. Each interdisciplinary team receives a five-year grant averaging $7 million and becomes a member of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, located at NASA's Ames Research Center. Selected are teams from the University of Hawaii, Arizona State University, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Pennsylvania State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The U.S. space agency says its Messenger spacecraft will make the second of three flybys of Mercury next week to collect more science data. NASA said the flyby also will provide a critical gravity assist needed for the probe to become, in March 2011, the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury. "The results from Messenger's first flyby of Mercury resolved debates that are more than 30 years old," said Sean Solomon, the mission's principal investigator from the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Sep. 30--The UA-led Phoenix Mars Mission has discovered a substance nearly as alien to Tucson as the red planet itself: snow. A series of weather experiments made public on Monday shows that clouds recently formed above the spacecraft have been releasing snow into the Martian atmosphere, though Phoenix has yet to see any of it hit the ground. And while the latest discovery twists scientists' understanding of weather on Mars, another series of experiments has mission leaders believing that water frozen beneath the arctic soil once existed as a liquid on the surface of the region.

China, hailing its astronauts' successful spacewalk, has set its sights on a manned lunar landing when its current three-stage space program ends in 2020. "When the three-phased strategy in our manned space program is completed, we will travel even further terrestrially," Wang Zhaoyao, deputy head of China's manned space program and spokesman for the spacewalk mission, told reporters after the latest mission ended Sunday with the return of the astronauts after their 20-minute spacewalk, China Daily reported. "After comprehensively analyzing the general trend in international manned space developments, as well as Chinese realities, we see a manned lunar landing as both a very challenging and tactical field in global hi-tech," he said.

Sep. 29--Reacquainting Pittsburgh's youngsters with "Uncle John" Brashear will begin in the same North Side factory where the renowned optics expert toiled over precision mirrors and lenses for Gilded Age telescopes. Historian and musician Lisa A. Miles wants to transform Brashear's vacant Perrysville Avenue factory into a temporary classroom to teach about the scientific achievements of Brashear, who died in 1920, and contemporaries such as astrophysicist Samuel Pierpont Langley. Brashear was acting chancellor of Western University of Pennsylvania -- now the University of Pittsburgh -- from 1900 to 1904.

To some, Irvine-based telescope maker Meade Instruments Corp. has lost its focus. The maker of telescopes, binoculars and microscopes has been dogged by supply issues since moving the last of its manufacturing from Irvine to Mexico earlier this year. Last month, Meade reported a 32% drop in sales from a year earlier to $12 million for the three months through May.

Scientists using data from the U.S. space agency's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe have identified an unexpected motion in distant galaxy clusters. National Aeronautics and Space Administration researchers say the cause of the motion might be the gravitational attraction of matter that lies beyond the observable universe. "The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe's expansion and does not change as distances increase," said lead researcher Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We never expected to find anything like this."

The U.S. space agency says the Kepler spacecraft, scheduled to be launched next year, has survived a thermal vacuum test. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration test simulates the vacuum of space, and the extreme temperatures Kepler will face. "The goal is to make sure the spacecraft and its detectors operate properly in the space-like environment," NASA said, noting an electromagnetic compatibility test, to ensure Kepler's electronics are sound, will soon begin.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says its Swift satellite has found the most distant gamma-ray burst ever detected. The burst occurred less than 825 million years after the universe began, when the universe was less than one-seventh its current age. "This is the most amazing burst Swift has seen," said scientist Neil Gehrels at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's coming to us from near the edge of the visible universe."

WHEN the first man landed on the moon, he found an enterprising Indian welcoming him to dine at his eatery. Chandrayaan-I, India's maiden unmanned mooncraft, the size of a table, is all ready to take off in a rocket 50 metres tall, weighing 400 kilogrammes. Indeed, it is a cooperative and a global scientific endeavour, with European and American instruments hitching a ride on a satellite and rocket designed and launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).

Sep. 17--NASA officials gave the UA-led Phoenix Mars lander another two months to live this week, buying scientists even more time to conduct the final experiments on the red planet's arctic surface. In August, NASA gave Phoenix an extra month to finish several experiments, drawing on previously earmarked funds to continue operations. Given the extra time, it appears that the mission will continue until there either isn't enough solar power to keep the lander alive or wind storms and dry ice cause it severe damage, said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.