[Tuesday, June 01, 2004] Courted for its support during development, the public is now being shut out of the post-mission report. This is ostensibly on the grounds of commercial confidentiality and an ongoing legal spat between two of the program participants.

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[Tuesday, June 01, 2004] NASA researchers are developing microarray diagnostic chips to test for genes and DNA to determine traits of a particular organism, detect specific types of organisms, or use biosensor-like probes such as antibodies to detect molecules of interest.

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[Tuesday, June 01, 2004] NASA has decided to pursue the feasibility of a robotic servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA released a Request for Proposals today. The due date for proposal submissions is July 16, 2004.

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[Wednesday, June 02, 2004] "The saddest part is that some in NASA had simply not absorbed, or had forgotten, these lessons; the result was the deaths of seven astronauts and two helicopter search team members, as well as the intense scrutiny of a formerly exalted agency."

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[Wednesday, June 02, 2004] A privately-developed rocket plane will launch into history on June 21 on a mission to become the world's first commercial manned space vehicle.

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[Wednesday, June 02, 2004] Peering into the "gut" of the galaxy Centaurus A, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured in unprecedented detail this massive galaxy's last big meal: a spiral galaxy twisted into a parallelogram-shaped structure of dust.

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[Wednesday, June 02, 2004] About 50,000 light-years across, the spiral galaxy M33 is half the diameter of the Milky Way. It lies 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, which places it among the Local Group of galaxies.

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[Wednesday, June 02, 2004] New images from Spitzer Space Telescope allow the detection of distant objects - including several supermassive black holes - that are nearly invisible in even the deepest images from telescopes operating at other wavelengths.

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[Wednesday, June 02, 2004] Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have helped settle a mystery that has puzzled scientists concerning the exact distance to the famous nearby star cluster known as the Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters.

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[Wednesday, June 02, 2004] In deep outer space, and on the surface of the Moon and Mars, astronauts are vulnerable to solar eruptions. Predicting such eruptions and how they affect interplanetary space would help mitigate their effects, but currently is impossible.

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[Wednesday, June 02, 2004] Data from Chandra X-ray the Palomar 200-inch telescope have uncovered evidence that a gamma-ray burst occurred in our Galaxy. The supernova remnant, W49B, may also be the first remnant of a gamma-ray burst discovered in the Milky Way.

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[Wednesday, June 02, 2004] Boeing is preparing to deliver a proposal to NASA JPL for what could become the first nuclear-fission powered exploration spacecraft, the company also is using its unique expertise to propel robotic solar system exploration farther than Jupiter.

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[Thursday, June 03, 2004] This is Venus's first transit in front of the Sun since quantitative astronomical spectroscopy was invented so it's our first chance to use the technology to observe close up the transit of a planet with an atmosphere.

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[Thursday, June 03, 2004] In this narrow angle camera image from May 21, 2004, the ringed planet displays subtle, multi-hued atmospheric bands, colored by yet undetermined compounds. Cassini mission scientists hope to determine the exact composition of this material.

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[Thursday, June 03, 2004] More than a month into bonus time after a successful primary mission on Mars, Spirit has sighted possibly layered rock in hills just ahead, while Opportunity has extended its arm to pockmarked stones on a crater rim to gather clues of a watery past.

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[Thursday, June 03, 2004] Using telescopes on the ground and in space, a team of astronomers is studying Sun-like stars in their waning formative years, within clusters older than previously explored.

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[Thursday, June 03, 2004] NASA's FY2005 budget request is $16.2 billion, a 5.6% increase over its FY2004 appropriation of $15.4 billion. The increase is primarily for fulfilling new exploration goals that were announced by President Bush on January 14, 2004.

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[Friday, June 04, 2004] On June 8, Venus will cross in front of the sun as viewed from Earth. The last "Venus transit" occurred in 1882. The next two Venus transits are on June 6, 2012, and Dec. 11, 2117.

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[Friday, June 04, 2004] A devastating meteorite collision caused part of the Earth's crust to flip inside out billions of years ago and left a dusting of a rare metal scattered on the top of the crater, says new U of T research.

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[Friday, June 04, 2004] Eight decades ago, the famous astronomer Edwin Hubble developed the standard visual method of classifying galaxies. In his scheme, galaxies were divided according to their appearance in blue-light photographs.

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[Friday, June 04, 2004] Most galaxies, including the Milky Way, are filled with giant clouds of gas and dust called nebulae that appear as dark silhouettes against the starry background. Nebulae shine only when illuminated or excited by nearby energy sources.

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[Friday, June 04, 2004] The very first stars that formed early in the history of the universe were smaller than the massive giants implied by the results of a NASA research satellite, but still larger than the typical stars found in our galaxy today.

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[Friday, June 04, 2004] Solar physicists have analyzed the highest resolution images ever taken near the solar disk center and found surprising new small-scale magnetic field structures.

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[Friday, June 04, 2004] On the evening of June 30, 2004, PDT Cassini will pass from its southerly approach to Saturn into the northern hemisphere by crossing the planet's ring plane at a distance of about 19,000 km outside the F ring.

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[Friday, June 04, 2004] This new image from the Hubble Space Telescope offers a close-up view of the center of the Trifid Nebula, near the intersection of the dust bands, where a group of recently formed, massive, bright stars is easily visible.

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[Friday, June 04, 2004] NASA has decided the potential science value gained by sending Opportunity into a martian impact crater likely outweighs the risk of the intrepid explorer not being able to get back out.

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[Tuesday, June 08, 2004]

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[Tuesday, June 08, 2004] The 37th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign started last week in France, with preparation and training for the experimenters involved. Today the specially strengthened 'Zero-G' Airbus A300 aircraft will take off for the first of three consecutive flight days.

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[Tuesday, June 08, 2004] In Africa, Asia, Eruope and parts of North America people gathered to witness what no living human has seen, the transit of Venus in front of the Sun. The transit began at 0513 GMT (1:13 AM EDT) and ended at 1126 GMT (7:26 AM EDT).

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[Tuesday, June 08, 2004] Media are invited to watch as members of NASA's new class of astronaut candidates report for duty at JSC on Monday, June 14. Afterward, the astronaut candidates will be available for interviews in person and by phone.

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[Tuesday, June 08, 2004] The high clouds of Saturn's bright equatorial band appear in this image taken by the Cassini narrow angle camera on May 11, 2004. The icy moon Enceladus is faintly visible below and to the right of the South Pole.

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[Wednesday, June 09, 2004] By summer 2005, researchers at Virginia Tech will be able to look for evidence of water on Mars by examining submicroscopic bubbles in martian meteorites.

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[Wednesday, June 09, 2004] The Cassini spacecraft is closing in fast on its first target of observation in the Saturn system: the small, mysterious moon Phoebe, only 220 kilometers (137 miles) across.

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[Thursday, June 10, 2004] The new coating - the first of its kind ever to line the surface of a very large astronomical mirror - is among the final steps in making Gemini the most powerful infrared telescope on our planet.

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[Thursday, June 10, 2004] Media are invited to attend a briefing on 18 June for industry representatives by NASA's Office of Exploration Systems. The briefing is on recent and upcoming acquisition activities related to the Vision for Space Exploration.

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[Thursday, June 10, 2004] NASA successfully fired a full-scale Reusable Solid Rocket Motor at a Promontory, Utah, test facility today, testing modifications that will enhance the safety and integrity of the Space Shuttle.

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[Thursday, June 10, 2004] NASA Astronaut Mike Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka paid tribute to President Ronald Reagan during a video downlink message from the International Space Station.

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[Thursday, June 10, 2004] As Cassini sails toward its rendezvous with Phoebe, details on the small, dark moon are coming into view at a dizzying pace. The images shown here were taken 13 hours apart on June 10, 2004, just one day prior to closest approach.

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[Saturday, June 12, 2004] NASA's Deep Space Network received confirmation of the phoebe flyby at 7:52 a.m. PDT today. The spacecraft is operating normally and is in excellent health.

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[Saturday, June 12, 2004] First images from the Cassini flyby of Phoebe reveal it to be a scarred, cratered outpost with a very old surface and a mysterious past, and a great deal of variation in surface brightness across its surface.

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[Sunday, June 13, 2004] Phoebe delivers on its promise to reveal new wonders to Cassini by showing probable evidence of an ice-rich body overlain with a thin layer of dark material.

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[Monday, June 14, 2004] Two years ago, the NRC laid out 11 key scientific questions at the intersection of physics and astronomy in a report "Connecting Quarks to the Cosmos"Earlier this year, in response, an interagency working group released a prioritized strategic plan.

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[Monday, June 14, 2004] The hottest spot in the solar system is neither Mercury, Venus, nor St. Louis in the summer. Io, one of the four satellites that the Italian astronomer Galileo discovered orbiting Jupiter almost 400 years ago, takes that prize.

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[Tuesday, June 15, 2004] If a time machine could take us back 4.6 billion years we'd see our sun shining 20 to 25 percent less brightly than today. Without an earthly greenhouse to trap the sun's energy and warm the atmosphere, our world would be a spinning ball of ice.

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[Tuesday, June 15, 2004] NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe will share the findings of the Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy Wednesday afternoon during a special agency wide broadcast available on both NASA Television and www.nasa.gov.

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[Tuesday, June 15, 2004] At a recent meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, the Associate Administrator for the Office of Biological and Physical Research refered to substantial changes in the research aboard ISS. However NASA will not identify which payloads are being affected.

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[Tuesday, June 15, 2004] NASA's Mars rovers are delighting scientists with their extra credit assignments. Both rovers successfully completed their primary three-month missions in April.

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[Wednesday, June 16, 2004] SpaceRef now has the complete report online and available for downloading.

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[Wednesday, June 16, 2004] Findings from the historic encounter between NASA's Stardust spacecraft and a comet will be discussed during the next Space Science Update on Thursday 17 June 2004.

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[Thursday, June 17, 2004] The Expedition 9 crew, cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and astronaut Mike Fincke, will perform a spacewalk next week to restore power to a gyroscope that helps control the Station's orientation in orbit.

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[Thursday, June 17, 2004] Even before marble-shaped pebbles nicknamed "blueberries" were discovered on Mars by the Opportunity rover, University of Utah geologists studied similar rocks in Utah's national parks and predicted such stones would be found on the Red Planet.

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[Thursday, June 17, 2004] The Space Shuttle Program is making solid progress in meeting the milestones required for Return to Flight. NASA remains confident March 2005, is a reasonable planning window for resuming Space Shuttle missions.

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[Friday, June 18, 2004] Findings from Stardust and a comet have revealed a much stranger world than previously believed. The comet's rigid surface, dotted with towering pinnacles, plunging craters, steep cliffs, and dozens of jets spewing violently, has surprised scientists.

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[Monday, June 21, 2004] SpaceShipOne has completed its historic flight and has safely landed. SpaceShipOne reached its projected altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) even though its engine cut off early. This is the first private manned space flight.

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[Monday, June 21, 2004] Scientists have discovered two new molecules in an interstellar cloud near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. This discovery is already helping astronomers better understand the complex processes by which large molecules form in space.

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[Monday, June 21, 2004] Scientists have discovered a striking similarity between certain ocean currents on Earth and the bands that characterize the surface of large, gaseous planets like Jupiter.

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[Tuesday, June 22, 2004] This Thursday NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe will outline the next step in the Agency's transformation now that the final report from the Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy has been released.

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[Tuesday, June 22, 2004] A long look by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed new evidence that extremely hot gas exists in a large region at the center of the Milky Way.

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[Wednesday, June 23, 2004] A University of Arizona astronomer and his collaborators are using a novel camera to hunt for extrasolar planets. Their camera has already made stunning images of Saturn's moon, Titan, and discovered an object just 27 times the mass of Jupiter.

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[Wednesday, June 23, 2004] Like a woolly mammoth trapped in Arctic ice, Saturn's small moon Phoebe may be a frozen artifact of a bygone era, some four billion years ago. The finding is suggested by new data from the Cassini spacecraft.

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[Wednesday, June 23, 2004] "We just confirmed that the Russian State Medical Commission determined (last night) that Gregory Olsen will not make his planned April 2005 spaceflight because of health reasons."

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[Thursday, June 24, 2004] At approximately 10:36 p.m. EDT, June 30, 2004, the Cassini- Huygens spacecraft arrives at Saturn. After nearly a seven-year journey, it will be the first mission to orbit Saturn.

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[Thursday, June 24, 2004] The Space Telescope Science Institute and IMAX have teamed up to provide the public with a new IMAX film that takes them on a virtual ride to the outer reaches of the universe to explore 10 billion years of galactic history.

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[Thursday, June 24, 2004] In the latest of what will be ongoing briefings, Administrator Sean O'Keefe today announced a transformation of NASA's organization structure designed to streamline the agency and position it to better implement the Vision for Space Exploration.

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[Thursday, June 24, 2004] A series of organizational changes were announced today at NASA Headquarters. These changes are the beginning of a process of 'transformation' whereby the agency will be realigned to better meet the challenge outlined by President Bush in January.

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[Thursday, June 24, 2004] A spacewalk intended to replace a faulty circuit breaker on the exterior of the International Space Station was cut short when the primary oxygen bottle on Astronaut Mike Fincke's Russian space suit began losing pressure faster than expected.

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[Friday, June 25, 2004] The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., is unveiling a powerful new version of a supercomputer-based system to model Earth's climate and to project global temperature rise in coming decades.

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[Friday, June 25, 2004] On challenging slopes that NASA's Mars rovers began exploring this month, both Spirit and Opportunity have found new surprises for the folks back home.

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[Friday, June 25, 2004] This digitally rendered shape model of Phoebe was constructed using Cassini imaging data obtained before and after the spacecraft's close flyby of the Saturnian moon on June 11, 2004.

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[Monday, June 28, 2004] On approach to Saturn, data obtained by the Cassini spacecraft are already posing a puzzling question: How long is the day on Saturn?

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[Monday, June 28, 2004] Astronomers have found a remarkable object where the nuclear reactor that once powered it has only just shut down. This star, the hottest known white dwarf, H1504+65, seems to have been stripped of its entire outer regions during its death throes.

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[Monday, June 28, 2004] What would our Milky Way galaxy look like if we could travel outside it and snap a picture? It might look a lot like a new image by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of a spiral galaxy called NGC 7331 - a virtual twin of our Milky Way.

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[Tuesday, June 29, 2004] A NASA instrument attached to the Japanese Subaru telescope measured distant winds raging on Titan to help the robotic Huygens probe as it descends through Titan's murky atmosphere next January.

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[Tuesday, June 29, 2004] NASA today gave a green light to proceed on Wednesday with a second spacewalk to attempt to repair a circuit breaker on the International Space Station. The repair is planned to restore power to one of four gyroscopes that help orient the complex.

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[Tuesday, June 29, 2004] This External Tank is being transferred by barge to the Michoud Space Systems Assembly Facility near New Orleans where redesign of the external tank is underway for Return to Flight.

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[Wednesday, June 30, 2004] Saturn's peaceful beauty invites the Cassini spacecraft for a closer look in this natural color view, taken during the spacecraft's approach to the planet.

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[Wednesday, June 30, 2004] After nearly seven years of space travel, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft has settled into orbit around Saturn.

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[Wednesday, June 30, 2004] The Expedition 9 spacewalkers successfully replaced a Remote Power Controller Module (RPCM) in the International Space Station's S0 Truss and are making their way back to the Pirs Docking Compartment.

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