[Sunday, January 29, 2012] The largest solar particle event since 2005 hit the Earth, Mars and MSL travelling in-between, allowing the onboard Radiation Assessment Detector to measure the radiation a human astronaut could be exposed to en route to the Red Planet.

[Sunday, January 29, 2012] By the time it's fully awake in about 20 months, the team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., charged with researching and tracking solar activity, will have at their disposal a greatly enhanced forecasting capability.

[Friday, January 27, 2012] Alexander Kumar, the next ESA-sponsored crewmember to stay in Concordia, has arrived safely at the research base in Antarctica. The voyage to one of the remotest places on Earth takes even longer than the voyage to the International Space Station.

[Thursday, January 26, 2012] Suomi NPP's VIIRS instrument returned this hi-resolution full-disc image of the Earth from several passes made Jan. 4, 2012.

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] NASA has renamed its newest Earth-observing satellite in honor of the late Verner E. Suomi, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin who is recognized widely as "the father of satellite meteorology."

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] Organic chemists at the University of York have made a significant advance towards establishing the origin of the carbohydrates (sugars) that form the building blocks of life.

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.'s Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) onboard the NPP satellite began collecting Earthview image science and solar calibration data on January 24, 2012.

[Tuesday, January 24, 2012] A large solar flare yesterday triggered a coronal mass ejection travelling at 1400 km/s that will reach Earth today. An energetic eruption of this level can disrupt satellites, so operation teams at ESA and other organisations are closely monitoring the s

[Monday, January 23, 2012] As the strongest Solar Radiation Storm (S3) since May, 2005 continues, the associated Earthward-directed Coronal Mass Ejection is expected to arrive about 1400 UT (9am EST) Jan 24.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] Scientists from NAI's New York Center for Astrobiology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have used the oldest minerals on Earth to reconstruct the atmospheric conditions present on Earth very soon after its birth.

   »» More top stories from December.