[Wednesday, January 2, 2008] The shallow habitable region of cratonal crust deforms with a strain rate on the order of 1019 s1. This is rapid enough that small seismic events are expected on one-kilometer spatial scales and one-million-year timescales.

[Wednesday, January 2, 2008] Dissolved H2 concentrations up to the mM range and H2 levels up to 9-58% by volume in the free gas phase are reported for groundwaters at sites in the Precambrian shields of Canada and Finland.

[Wednesday, January 2, 2008] Models are employed to investigate sources of chemical energy for autotrophic microbial metabolism that develop during mixing of oxidized seawater with strongly reduced fluids discharged from ultramafic-hosted hydrothermal systems on the seafloor.

[Wednesday, January 2, 2008] In June 2003, the geochemical composition of geothermal fluids was determined at 9 sites in the Vulcano hydrothermal system, including sediment seeps, geothermal wells, and submarine vents.

[Wednesday, January 2, 2008] Radiolysis of water may provide a continuous flux of an electron donor (molecular hydrogen) to subsurface microbial communities.

[Thursday, January 3, 2008] DigitalGlobe, provider of the world's highest-resolution commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information products, today announced that WorldView-1 has reached Full Operating Capability (FOC) for all customers.

[Thursday, January 3, 2008] A Bill: To formulate situation and decision analyses, and to select procedures and systems, for deflecting and mitigating potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.

[Friday, January 4, 2008] A new 11-year cycle of heightened solar activity showed signs it was on its way late yesterday when the cycle's first sunspot appeared in the sun's Northern Hemisphere, NOAA scientists said.

[Saturday, January 5, 2008] NASA and the National Science Foundation have achieved a new milestone in conducting scientific observations from balloons, by launching and operating three long-duration flights within a single Antarctic summer.

[Sunday, January 6, 2008] Tyndall Glacier, located in the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile, is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 16 crewmember on the International Space Station.

[Monday, January 7, 2008] Cosiguina Volcano, Nicaragua is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 16 crewmember on the International Space Station.

[Tuesday, January 8, 2008] Dust plumes, Baja California, Mexico are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 16 crewmember on the International Space Station.

[Wednesday, January 9, 2008] Thousands of enthusiastic fans of Cassini have chosen a color picture of a tiny, dot-like planet Earth, cradled by Saturn's rings during a total solar eclipse, as the most popular image of all those so far returned by the Cassini mission.

[Wednesday, January 9, 2008] Sao Simao Reservoir, Brazil is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 16 crewmember on the International Space Station (ISS).

[Friday, January 11, 2008] New work shows that if Earth had been slightly smaller and less massive, it would not have plate tectonics -- the forces that move continents and build mountains. And without plate tectonics, life might never have gained a foothold on our world.

[Friday, January 11, 2008] Detecting pollution, like catching criminals, requires evidence and witnesses; but on the scale of countries, continents and oceans, having enough detectors is easier said than done.

[Saturday, January 12, 2008] A section of Dinosaur National Monument along the Yampa River in Colorado, which straddles the Colorado/Utah border, is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 15 crewmember on the International Space Station.

[Saturday, January 12, 2008] Zigzagging some 60,000 kilometers across the ocean floor, Earth's system of mid-ocean ridges plays a pivotal role in many workings of the planet: in plate-tectonic movements, heat flow from the interior, and the chemistry of rock, water and air.

[Saturday, January 12, 2008] Only plants can take nitrogen gas from the air and use it to make the protein they need to grow. Or so biologists thought.

[Monday, January 14, 2008] Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand's favorite and most famous son, died Jan. 11 (local time) at the age of 88 in an Auckland hospital.

[Monday, January 14, 2008] The Bingham Canyon Mine (center) located approximately 32 kilometers to the southeast of Salt Lake City, UT is one of the largest open-pit mines in the world, measuring over 4 kilometers wide and 1,200 meters deep.

[Monday, January 14, 2008] The appearance of a very special solar spot on the sun surface a few days ago, signalled to scientists around the world that a new solar cycle had begun. This solar spot also produced two solar blasts.

[Monday, January 14, 2008] A new study by University of Colorado at Boulder researchers indicates older, multi-year sea ice in the Arctic is giving way to younger, thinner ice, making it more susceptible to record summer sea-ice lows like the one that occurred in 2007.

[Monday, January 14, 2008] Increasing amounts of ice mass have been lost from West Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula over the past ten years, according to research from the University of Bristol and published online this week in Nature Geoscience.

[Tuesday, January 15, 2008] The Ulysses spacecraft today is making a rare flyby of the sun's north pole. Unlike any other spacecraft, Ulysses is able to sample winds at the sun's poles, which are difficult to study from Earth.

[Tuesday, January 15, 2008] Isla San Lorenzo and Isla Las Animas are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 15 crewmember on the International Space Station.

[Wednesday, January 16, 2008] Climatologists have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth's second warmest year in a century. They used temperature data from weather stations on land, satellite measurements of sea ice temperature since 1982 and data from ships for earlier years.

[Wednesday, January 16, 2008] In recognition of the 10th anniversary of the first scientific results from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, media are invited to a media roundtable on Wednesday, Jan. 23 at 11 a.m. EST (10 a.m. CST).

[Wednesday, January 16, 2008] Weekly update from the NASA Earth Observatory website.

[Wednesday, January 16, 2008] Weekly update from the NASA Earth Observatory website.

[Thursday, January 17, 2008] In May, researchers successfully conducted the third and final field test of the autonomous underwater robot, DEPTHX. Their objective was to explore Cenote Zacaton, the world's deepest water-filled sinkhole.

[Thursday, January 17, 2008] The U.S. has dedicated a new scientific station at the geographic South Pole officially ushering in a new support system for sophisticated large-scale experiments in disciplines ranging from astrophysics to environmental chemistry and seismology.

[Thursday, January 17, 2008] A wave of new NASA research on tsunamis has yielded an innovative method to improve existing tsunami warning systems, and a potentially groundbreaking new theory on the source of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

[Friday, January 18, 2008] The full recovery of ecological systems, following the most devastating extinction event of all time, took at least 30 million years, according to new research from the University of Bristol.

[Sunday, January 20, 2008] NASA will hold a media briefing on Thursday, Jan. 24, at 12:30 p.m. EST, to discuss the agency's Earth science program and preview major activities planned for 2008, including the launch of two new Earth-observing missions and a weather satellite.

[Monday, January 21, 2008] Armed with personal locator beacons to send a distress signal, 353 people were rescued in the United States and its surrounding waters in 2007 from potentially life-threatening emergencies.

[Monday, January 21, 2008] TerraSAR-X, went into operation on 7 January 2008. DLR and Infoterra GmbH, the company responsible for commercial marketing, decided on this date following the successful outcome of the operational readiness review in December.

[Monday, January 21, 2008] Last Thursday, the second to last Global Positioning System block IIR-M satellites to be launched arrived at Cape Canaveral AFS.

[Monday, January 21, 2008] A four-man science team led by British Antarctic Survey has begun exploring an ancient lake hidden deep beneath Antarctica's ice sheet. The lake could yield vital clues to life on Earth, climate change and future sea-level rise.

[Monday, January 21, 2008] This image highlights a portion of the Saskatchewan River delta extending into Cedar Lake in the Province of Manitoba.

[Wednesday, January 23, 2008] NOAA's top official today expressed concern that a contractor's slow development of a critical new sensor will delay its delivery for a scheduled launch of a precursor mission for the National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).

[Wednesday, January 23, 2008] Scientists from NASA and organizations around the world will convene physically and electronically in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost U.S. city, during the first week of Arctic sunrise at Barrow January 23 - 29.

[Wednesday, January 23, 2008] Weekly update from the NASA Earth Observatory website.

[Wednesday, January 23, 2008] Raven Industries, Inc. In its annual scientific campaign to McMurdo Station in Antarctica, the NASA Balloon Program has established a new record by simultaneously flying three scientific payloads in the stratosphere around the Antarctic continent.

[Wednesday, January 23, 2008] The Global Positioning System Block IIR and IIR-M satellite constellation, designed to provide significantly improved navigation capabilities for military and civilian users worldwide, has accumulated over 75 years of successful on-orbit operations.

[Wednesday, January 23, 2008] The most detailed three-dimensional seismic images yet of the Chicxulub crater, a mostly submerged and buried impact crater on the Mexico coast, may modify a theory explaining the extinction of 70 percent of life on Earth 65 million years ago.

[Thursday, January 24, 2008] Ice loss in Antarctica increased by 75 percent in the last 10 years due to a speed-up in the flow of its glaciers and is now nearly as great as that observed in Greenland, according to a new, comprehensive study by UC Irvine and NASA scientists.

[Thursday, January 24, 2008] Scientists are monitoring the orbit of asteroid 2007 TU24. The asteroid, believed to be between 150 meters (500 feet) and 610 meters (2,000 feet) in size, is expected to fly past Earth on Jan. 29

[Saturday, January 26, 2008] Marsh Island, located along the southwestern coastline of Louisiana, is a remnant of an abandoned lobe of the Mississippi River Delta formed approximately 5000-7500 years before the present day, according to scientists.

[Saturday, January 26, 2008] Ocean surface currents have long been the focus of research due to the role they play in weather, climate and transportation of pollutants, yet essential aspects of these currents remain unknown.

[Sunday, January 27, 2008] ESA's Cluster mission has, for the first time, observed the extent of the region that triggers magnetic reconnection, and it is much larger than previously thought. This gives future space missions a much better chance of studying it.

[Tuesday, January 29, 2008] Earth dodged a bullet today, when asteroid TU24 passed within 540,000 kilometers of our planet, which is just down the street on a galactic scale. Tomorrow, another asteroid - 2007 WD5 - will zip past Mars at a distance of only 26,000 kilometers away.

[Tuesday, January 29, 2008] Weekly update from the NASA Earth Observatory website.

[Tuesday, January 29, 2008] A major dust storm (center right) along the east side of the Aral Sea, Kazakhstan, is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 15 crewmember on the International Space Station while passing over central Asia.

[Wednesday, January 30, 2008] The next time you have to raise your umbrella against torrents of cold winter rain, you may have a remote weather phenomenon to thank that many may know by name as El Nino, but may not well understand.

[Wednesday, January 30, 2008] Ice loss in Antarctica increased by 75 percent in the last 10 years due to a speed-up in the flow of its glaciers and is now nearly as great as that observed in Greenland, according to a new, comprehensive study by NASA and university scientists.

[Wednesday, January 30, 2008] Scientists studying microbial communities and the growth of sedimentary rock at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park have made a surprising discovery about the geological record of life and the environment.

[Wednesday, January 30, 2008] Beirut Metropolitan Area, Lebanon is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 16 crewmember on the International Space Station.