[Friday, June 2, 2006] Last night at 02:08 (UT) the giant balloon borne scientific instrument AESOP was successfully launched from SSC launch facility at Esrange Space Center. The 300 m long balloon and flight train rose up like a gigantic golden bubble lightened by the midnigh

[Friday, June 2, 2006] Planetary scientists have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs -- an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history.

[Monday, June 5, 2006] Researchers have found evidence low-temperature archaea might have evolved from a moderate-temperature environment rather than from their high-temperature counterparts - as most scientists had believed.

[Tuesday, June 6, 2006] It has been 2.3 billion years since Earth's atmosphere became infused with enough oxygen to support life as we know it. About the same time, the planet became encased in ice that some scientists speculate was more than a half-mile deep.

[Tuesday, June 6, 2006] Mission managers tested the flight and ground system performance of the satellite's Cloud-Profiling Radar in late May, and found it to be working perfectly.

[Wednesday, June 7, 2006] A new explanation for forming "super-Earths" suggests that they are more likely to be found orbiting red dwarf stars--the most abundant type of star--than gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

[Wednesday, June 7, 2006] NASA is congressionally mandated to plan, develop, and implement a program to detect, track, catalogue, and characterize NEOs, and to study alternatives to carry out the survey program and to divert an object on a likely collision course with Earth.

[Wednesday, June 7, 2006] The key program to build new weather satellites for both military and civilian forecasting has just undergone a statutorily required review because the program was more than 25 percent over budget.

[Thursday, June 8, 2006] Hurricane season began on June 1, and forecasters predict another active hurricane season for 2006, with an estimated 8-10 hurricanes expected. Of these, they predict 4- 6 will escalate to "major" hurricanes of Category Three strength or higher.

[Thursday, June 8, 2006] Rapid climate changes over the past several decades have led to heritable, genetic changes in animals as diverse as squirrels, birds and mosquitoes, according to University of Oregon evolutionary geneticists.

[Thursday, June 8, 2006] Swedish drilling vessel, Vidar Viking, led the Arctic Coring Expedition, when scientists set out to retrieve subseafloor sediment records to support their investigations into climate change. Click here for more information.

[Friday, June 9, 2006] A new study appearing in the upcoming issue of the journal Science suggests that, except for regions of the North Atlantic, most of the Earth did, in fact, begin warming at the same time roughly 17,500 years ago.

[Sunday, June 11, 2006] Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) have received written confirmation from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that a media request to interview a top official on his climate change views was wrongly denied.

[Tuesday, June 13, 2006] Chile is currently the world's largest producer of farmed salmon and has a burgeoning mussel culture industry that is supplying a growing world market. However, the country's marine aquaculture sector is vulnerable to Harmful Algal Blooms.

[Tuesday, June 13, 2006] A scientific expedition to a remote glacier field in Canada's High Arctic may help researchers unlock the secrets about the beginning of life and provide insights for future exploration of our solar system.

[Tuesday, June 13, 2006] A new satellite that last week began gathering data from the Earth's atmosphere could be a key tool in unraveling just how much effect the reflectivity of clouds and tiny particles called aerosols are having on the planet's changing climate.

[Wednesday, June 14, 2006] John Barentine and Gilbert A. Esquerdo believe an early rock carving, or petroglyph, found in the White Tanks Regional Park in Arizona depicts the well-known supernova of A.D. 1006.

[Thursday, June 22, 2006] OOSA is holding a five-day Regional Workshop on the Applications of Global Navigation Satellite System Technologies in Sub-Saharan Africa in Lusaka, Zambia, from 26 to 30 June

[Tuesday, June 27, 2006] The European Space Agency today donated a composite satellite image of global land cover provided by its Envisat satellite to the United Nations in Geneva, as a testimony to the current state of our planet, to be handed down to future generations.

[Tuesday, June 27, 2006] MetOp-A has successfully completed the first phase of testing at the Baikonur Space Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, confirming the launch date of the first European polar-orbiting satellite dedicated to operational meteorology for 17 July 2006.

[Wednesday, June 28, 2006] University scientists using GPS software, developed by NASA, have shown GPS can determine, within minutes, whether an earthquake is big enough to generate an ocean-wide tsunami. This NASA-funded technology can be used to provide faster tsunami warnings.

[Wednesday, June 28, 2006] Half-million-year-old Antarctic ice, avalanche triggers, frost heaves in roads and the possibility of life in Martian ice caps are just a few of the research projects expected to find a home in a new cluster of labs planned for Montana State University.

[Wednesday, June 28, 2006] New technologies are enabling scientists to determine precisely the extent and causes of Earth's short-term wobbling. Earth wobbles as it rotates on its axis and displays many different motions, ranging in period from a few minutes to billions of years.

[Wednesday, June 28, 2006] Through dated geological records scientists have known for decades that variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun - subtle changes in the distance between the two - control ice ages.

[Wednesday, June 28, 2006] The Mount McKinley Project, funded by the IARC, has endured its share of horrific blizzards, heart-stopping ridge ascents and the unrelenting burn of a blazing sun during the past four seasons of weather station installation.

[Thursday, June 29, 2006] The microbial composition of ancient permafrost sediments from the Kolyma lowland of Northeast Eurasia was examined through culture and culture-independent approaches. These sediments have been continuously frozen for 5,000 to 2–3 million years.

[Thursday, June 29, 2006] In the driest parts of the Atacama Desert there are no visible life forms. The soil in this region contains only minute traces of bacteria distributed in patches, and conditions are too dry for cyanobacteria that live under translucent stones.

[Thursday, June 29, 2006] Scientists from NASA and other agencies have concluded that the ozone hole over the Antarctic will recover around 2068, nearly 20 years later than previously believed.

[Friday, June 30, 2006] This edition of NEO News briefly discusses asteroid 2004 XP14, which on July 3 will be the best NEO radar target ever and the NASA NEO Workshop held this week in Colorado.

[Friday, June 30, 2006] A mysterious shiny coating found on rocks in many of Earth's arid environments could reveal whether there was once life on Mars, according to new research.

[Friday, June 30, 2006] Transparent jellyfish-like creatures known as salps, considered by many a low member in the ocean food web, may be more important to the fate of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the ocean than previously thought.