Which came first, galaxies or the supermassive black holes at their centre? Most cosmologists now think the two are inextricably linked, each depending on the other. And according to researchers, including famed astronomer Sir Martin J Rees, these supermassive black holes got big, fast. By reviewing quasar data in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the team has calculated that many supermassive black holes had reached 1 billion times the mass of our Sun in a very short period of time. Even for the largest, most voracious black holes in the Universe, that's an amazing feat.

The reentry module of the European Space Agency's unmanned Foton-M2 mission has returned to Earth, landing in Kazakhstan, close to the Russian border. The Foton-M2 contained 39 space experiments, including fluid physics, biology, crystal growth, meteoritics, radiation and exobiology. It remained in space for 16 days, and then was de-orbited and landed safely. The spacecraft is being returned to Europe so the various experiments can be returned to the investigators.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has successfully deployed its second MARSIS 20-metre (66 foot) radar boom; without a hitch this time. Learning their lesson from the first boom, which partially locked up during deployment, ESA controllers put Mars Express into a slow spin so that the boom and its hinges would be evenly warmed by the Sun as it extended. The shorter third and final boom will be deployed on June 17. Once the three booms are extended, Mars Express will be able to scan underneath the surface of Mars for deposits of water and ice.

The space shuttle Discovery has returned to launch pad 39B at Florida's Cape Canaveral to continue preparations for its July launch. The shuttle recently had its external fuel tank replaced with one that would minimize ice buildup. NASA is planning to launch Discovery during its July 15 - 31 flight window. During the 12-day mission, seven astronauts will test new hardware and techniques designed to improve the safety of the space shuttles, and they will also dock with the International Space Station and deliver supplies.

Many of the Earth's volcanic rocks might have come from melted asteroids, according to researchers from the UK's Open University. The scientists have discovered that many early asteroids were quite volcanic and would have had large magma oceans. These asteroids would have become layered with lighter rock forming near the surface while denser rocks were deeper inside. The Earth probably grew from the accumulation of these melted asteroids.

When the recent discovery of a planet orbiting Gliese 876 was announced by astronomers, much of the interest focused on how "Earthlike" it is. So, just how like our home planet is it? Well... not very. For starters, the planet orbits only .021 the distance from the Earth to the Sun, and whips around its star once every 2 days. It has 6-8 times the mass of the Earth, so the gravity would be crushing for any potential life, not to mention the terrible radiation exposure from being so close to its parent star.

Jets of material seem common in the Universe; blasting away from black holes, neutron stars, the hearts of galaxies, and even newborn stars. Unfortunately, the source of these jets are usually obscured by thick dust. Astronomers using the submillimeter array have been able to peer through this dust and see right down the throat of a nearby jet in a young star system called Herbig-Haro 211. It will eventually become a low mass star similar to our Sun, and help explain the stages stars go through in early life.

Astronomers have built up a map of neutrinos that existed when the Universe was very young, and have found that ripples in the distribution of these particles match predictions about the Standard Model of the Big Bang. Neutrinos are particles that are difficult to measure because they have little mass, and barely interact with anything else. The discovery was made by combining data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

July 4th is Independence Day In the United States, and Americans typically enjoy their holiday with a few fireworks. But up in space, 133 million kilometres away, there's going to be an even more spectacular show... Deep Impact. On July 4th, a washing machine-sized spacecraft is going to smash into Comet Tempel 1, carve out a crater, and eject tonnes of ice and rock into space. The flyby spacecraft will watch the collision from a safe distance, and send us the most spectacular pictures ever taken of a comet - and its fresh bruise. Dr. Lucy McFadden is on the science team for Deep Impact, and speaks to me from the University of Maryland.

In the brutal environment of the Orion Nebula, where temperatures soar to 10,000-degrees C (18,000-degrees F), and the stellar winds blow at 3.2 million kph (2 million mph) you'd think that newly forming planetary systems would just get torn apart. But according to new research using the Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, astronomers have found that protoplanetary systems can actually hold onto their dust and form planets, despite their stormy environments.

Astronomers have found the most Earthlike extrasolar planet discovered so far. This new planet is about 7.5 times the mass of the Earth, and has twice the radius of our own planet. It whips every two days around a nearby star called Gliese 876, which is only 15 light years away - this star also possesses two additional giant, Jupiter-class planets. This is the first time that a rocky (or terrestrial) planet has been discovered around another star.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! The week starts with the zero equation of time, but there's still time for you to locate Comet 9/P Tempel 1. We'll explore lunar features, try for Pluto, view colorful double stars, watch as Jupiter and the Moon pair up, chase meteors and follow our planetary trio as they move closer together. Open your eyes to the night skies, because...

Here's what's up!

The Jeopardy TV game show challenges people to answer trivia questions about minutia. Being successful requires a contestant to fill their brains with facts and figures. For someone less inclined to memorization, books are the answer. The Apogee book Deep Space - The NASA Mission Reports edited by Robert Godwin and Steve Whitfield is just the one for facts and figures of NASA's missions to explore the depths of space.

French chefs are helping the European Space Agency develop recipes that could be used to make food grown in space tasty as well as nutritious. How about a tasty snack of Martian bread and green tomato jam or potato and tomato mille-feuilles? The menus were based on nine main ingredients that could be grown in future space-based greenhouses. The dishes could be made with 40% of these ingredients, and the remaining 60% could come from Earth-based ingredients.

All the planets in our solar system have been visited by a spacecraft, except one... Pluto. The spacecraft that will complete the collection, New Horizons, arrived at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for pre-flight testing. If all goes well, New Horizons will launch atop a Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket in January 2006, and reach Pluto and its moon Charon in 2015. The spacecraft will remain at Goddard for the next three months, where technicians will put it through a range of tests to make sure it's ready to ride a rocket.

In 1572, astronomer Tycho Brahe witnessed the supernova that created the stellar remnant Cassiopeia A. All that remains from this powerful explosion is a cloud of debris expanding away from a neutron star. New images from NASA's Spitzer space telescope show that this neutron star isn't out of action yet, though, in fact, it might have fired out a blast of energy 50 years ago, which is now lighting up the surrounding material. This recent activity might mean that the neutron star is actually an exotic magnetar, which regularly release bursts of gamma rays.

This image, taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft shows a region of Mars' Valles Marineris canyon system called Coprates Catena and Coprates Chasma - roughly at the centre of the gigantic gash. This photograph is a perspective view, calculated by the terrain imaged by Mars Express. Scientists are sure what caused the Valles Marineris, but some believe that the formation of the Tharsis uplift and volcanoes, west of the canyon caused this area to fracture.

A new high-speed camera has been mounted to the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. This ultra fast camera is called ULTRACAM, and it's capable of recording some of the most rapid astronomical events. It's capable of taking 500 pictures a second, so it will be used to watch any object that can change quite rapidly, like black holes, gamma ray bursts, white dwarfs or cataclysmic variables.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has discovered an aurora in the Martian atmosphere. In addition to Earth, auroras have been discovered on Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, but not Mars... until now. Mars has no intrinsic planetary magnetic field, so the aurora formed above a pocket of rock that was still magnetic. This aurora was only 30 km (19 miles) long, and very faint. An astronaut on Mars would probably see the aurora as very faint and blue, if at all.