Now that it's completed flybys past several of Saturn's moons, Cassini will spend the next five months analyzing the planet's great system of rings. It'll view the rings from a position inclined 24-degrees, and orbit the planet 7 times, from now until September. This perspective will allow Cassini to analyze the rings in various wavelengths of light, from infrared to visible to ultraviolet. Cassini will also be in the perfect position to watch several occultations, where the rings pass in front of stars, and help scientists precisely measure their thickness and opacity.

Gravitational lensing happens when the gravity of a relatively close galaxy acts as a telescope lens to focus the light from a more distant galaxy. It allows astronomers to see distant objects they could never have a hope of observing with current instruments, essentially looking back to moments after the Big Bang (cosmically speaking). The galaxies are never perfectly lined up, though, and the "natural telescope" is a bit blurry. But now astronomer Remi Cabanac has found one of the most complete lenses ever discovered: a near perfect Einstein Ring, magnifying a distant galaxy with incredible clarity.

Before the first human steps foot on the Moon again, robots will have already done the ground work, searching out sources of water ice that could be used for fuel, air, and growing plants. The first will be the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, scheduled for launch in 2008. It will carry 6 different instruments, and map out the surface of the Moon in high detail. Approximately one new mission will launch each year after that, until humans arrive on the Moon, no later than 2020.

Mission controllers at the European Space Agency are now planning to deploy the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument (MARSIS) on Mars Express in the first half of May. They delayed deploying the two 20-metre (65 foot) booms (and another, smaller boom) because simulations predicted that they could swing back and actually hit the spacecraft. They will put the spacecraft in a mode that will allow it to tumble freely while the deployment is performed to minimize risk to Mars Express.

This image, taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, shows the Tithonium Chasma region of the Valles Marineris canyon on Mars. It ranges from 10 to 110 km (6 to 68 miles) in width, and has a maximum depth of 4 km (2.5 miles). The edges of the canyon have gone through significant erosion, and it's possible to see several landslides. Since Valles Marineris cuts so deep into Mars' surface, it gives geologists a unique view back in time through Mars' geologic history.

NASA's Deep Impact took its first photograph of its cometary target, Comet Temple 1, which it will smash into in just 10 weeks. Deep Impact took this image when it was 64 million kilometers (39.7 million miles) away. While it's just a few grainy pixels today, it will be the best view ever taken of a comet when the spacecraft streaks past on July 4. It will release the 1-m impactor shortly before reaching the comet, which will smash into it and carve out a crater the size of a football field.

European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter from Germany will become the first from the agency to spend several months on board the International Space Station. Although ESA astronauts have visited the station several times before, they usually only stick around for about a week, perform a bunch of experiments, and then join the returning crew for the Soyuz flight home. Reiter will be launched with the Space Shuttle flight STS-121, currently planned for July 2006.

Astronomers have theorized that Mira AB is a binary star system consisting of an evolved red giant star and a white dwarf star, and now the Chandra X-Ray Observatory has been able to resolve their relationship. Chandra can actually resolve the stream of matter flowing off the red giant, which is then captured by the white dwarf. This matter heats up as it bunches up around the white dwarf, and blazes in the X-ray spectrum. Mira AB is only 450 light-years away, and the stars are separated by approximately twice the distance of the Sun and Pluto.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has taken the best image so far of Saturn's small, irregular moon Epimetheus. Cassini took this photograph when it was only 74,600 kilometers (46,350 miles) away from the rocky moon. Clearly visible in the image is a large crater called Hilairea, which has a diameter of about 33 kilometers (21 miles). It takes up a large chunk of Epimetheus' surface, considering the moon is only 116 kilometers (72 miles) across.

Still rolling along across the surface of Mars, NASA's Spirit rover recently spotted a dust devil whirling across the Martian landscape. Spirit first turned up dust devils on Mars mainly by accident a few months ago, but controllers have refined their strategy to use the rover's navigation camera to regularly take a series of photos in the hopes of catching one in action. By watching them blow past, controllers can get an idea of local wind patterns.

The Liftport Group of space elevator companies has announced that it will be building a carbon nanotubes manufacturing plant in Millville, New Jersey, to supply various glass, plastic and metal companies with these strong materials. Although Liftport hopes to eventually use carbon nanotubes in the construction of a 100,000 km (62,000 mile) space elevator, this move will allow it to make money in the short term and conduct research and development into new production methods.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered an unusual cloud of particles around Enceladus, one of Saturn's many moons. They could be stray particles from Saturn's outermost E-ring or a previously unseen dust cloud. The discovery is so interesting to researchers that they'll have Cassini change its altitude on its next flyby - scheduled for July 14 - lowering the spacecraft so that it passes only 175 km (108 miles) above the surface of the moon.

Since arriving at the Columbia Hills, Spirit, one of the Mars Exploration Rovers, has encountered some mysterious phenomena. The rover?s right front ?arthritic? wheel that plagued Spirit?s 2-mile trek across the plains is now suddenly working perfectly and the once dust-covered solar panels whose power output was cut in half have now been miraculously wiped clean. But the biggest mystery of the Columbia Hills may lie in the angled rock outcrops that Spirit has found in the vicinity of ?Larry?s Lookout? on Husband Hill.

An international team of astronomers have performed a robust survey of quasars to confirm a prediction from Albert Einstein about how gravity should magnify the light traveling from distant objects. The study showed how the light from 200,000 quasars is being tugged by the gravity of 13 million galaxies as it travels from the quasars to the Earth. The researchers used the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to uncover thousands of new quasars which could then fine-tune their observations.

During its recent Titan flyby, NASA's Cassini spacecraft discovered that the outer layer of the moon's thick atmosphere is filled with complex hydrocarbons. Titan is very cold, so scientists expected that these hydrocarbons would condense out of the atmosphere and rain down on the moon's surface. Instead, some process of interaction between Titan's atmosphere, sunlight, and Saturn's magnetic field are keeping them aloft and cycling them through the atmosphere.

A Zenit-3SL rocket lifted off from the floating Sea Launch platform today, placing the Spaceway F1 broadcast satellite into orbit for DIRECTV. The rocket launched at 0731 UTC (3:31 am EDT) and placed the 6,080 kg (13,376 lb) satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. The Spaceway F1 will provide HD broadcast services to North America. It's the heaviest commercial communications satellite ever launched.

Since they're orbiting hundreds of kilometres above the Earth's surface, satellites should be safe from climate change, right? Well... maybe not. According to researchers from the University of Southampton, rising levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is actually decreasing the density of the thermosphere (where low-Earth orbiting satellites and the International Space Station are traveling). This will allow space debris in this region to orbit more quickly, and impact satellites and space stations more frequently.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! This week we'll learn how to observe the Hubble Space telescope, locate and study the M3, and be on hand for three minor meteor showers. There will be plenty of deep sky to explore as we locate the M101, M67, and the Large Magellanic Cloud. Mercury and Venus both return this week, and Mars leads the way to Neptune. The Moon provides some excitement as it occults Antares for Europe - as well as two bright stars for other observers - and tilts its north our way for some extreme craters. Had enough yet? Good. There's history to learn and I'm not about to let you go before you've located comet 9P/Temple 1. So grab those telescopes and binoculars, and head out under the dark skies...

Because here's what's up!

The Soyuz capsule carrying the crew of Expedition 10 and ESA astronaut Roberto Vittori landed safely in north-central Kazakhstan early Monday, approximately 85 km (53 miles) from the town of Arkalyk. Recovery personnel reached the spacecraft within minutes of their touchdown, and the crew was airlifted out safely. Leroy Chiao and Salizhan Sharipov spent a total of 192 days in space, and completed two spacewalks.

A cross-organizational team of astronomers headed by Arjun Dey of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) has pulled together optical, infrared, and radio-frequency data to probe what may be an expansive galaxy forming region located 11.3 BLY's distant in the direction of the constellation Bootes. The gaseous object (SST24 J1434110+331733), extending some 800 KLYs across space, could significantly advance our understanding of galaxy groups formation in the early universe.