After its crash landing, NASA scientists weren't too hopeful that they'd turn up much science in the wreckage of Genesis' sample capsule, but the results so far have been a pleasant surprise. Even though the capsule smashed into the ground at nearly 320 km (200 miles) per hour, the samples aren't smashed up too badly, and scientists are able to extract fairly large pieces for further analysis. Genesis' purpose was to gather particles from the Sun's solar wind, which would be returned to Earth and then distributed to scientists around the world.

This is a 1024x768 desktop wallpaper of a beautiful image of Saturn's rings, taken by Cassini on July 30. This image shows a view looking through the planet's C ring, which is closest to Saturn. It also shows the Cassini division, which separates the A and B rings by a 4,800 km (2,980 mile) gap.

Mira stars are a special class of variable red giants which pulsate. Over the course of 80-1,000 days, a Mira star can vary in brightness by a factor of 10 times or more during the cycle. An international team of astronomers has observed the environments of five Mira stars, and found that they're surrounded by a shell of water vapour and carbon monoxide; this makes them seem larger than they actually are. These new observations bring the size of Mira stars in line with mathematical models that predict their size and composition. By observing Mira stars, astronomers will get a preview of the fate that could befall our own Sun when it bloats up to become a red giant in a few billion years.

Although Hurricane Ivan spared NASA's Kennedy Space Center, several of the agencies other facilities weren't so lucky. The Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans were much closer to the point where the enormous storm came ashore on the US Gulf Coast. Stennis is where the space shuttle's engines are tested, so they were secured for the storm; one was returned to its container, another was wrapped in plastic, and two development engines were secured on their test stands. Michoud is where the shuttle's external fuel tanks are manufactured and assembled; these were secured, and assembly equipment was moved inside. NASA will get an idea of the damage later today or tomorrow, when its employees begin returning to work.

Researchers from Australia have demonstrated that an observatory in Antarctica can produce images of the sky several times better than telescopes at mid latitudes. A team of astronomers from the University of New South Wales made observations using a robotic telescope in an observatory called "Dome C" on the Antarctic Plateau, 3250 metres (10,600 feet) above sea level. They found that the sharpness of images was three times better than the best sites used by astronomers in other locations. An 8m telescope here would function like a 25m telescope anywhere else - at a fraction of the cost of a space-based observatory.

Even as it's battening down the hatches for another rough ride at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA is getting as much science as it can out of Hurricane Ivan. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer aboard NASA's Terra satellite has provided a wealth of data about its formation and structure that will help improve future hurricane forecasts. Scientists need to learn what elements make hurricanes strengthen or weaken, and sometimes make last minute swerves as they approach land - the more they know, the more accurately they can predict hurricane paths to lead evacuation efforts.

Jupiter's moon Io is peppered with volcanoes spewing gas and dust up to 400 km (284 miles) high. You'd think that this material would all settle down again onto the moon, but something very unusual is happening: it's being accelerated to a velocity second only to the Sun's solar wind. This new space hazard came as a complete surprise when it was first discovered pelting the NASA/ESA Ulysses spacecraft. The dust came in a tight stream, moving at 300 km per second (200 mps), and it was detected again when Galileo visited the Jovian system. It turns out that Jupiter's powerful magnetic field picks up the material from Io and accelerates it.

It will probe the dark ages before the era of re-ionization, and perhaps before the birth of the first stars. It will observe the formation of the first galaxies. It will map the web of neutral Hydrogen that is spread across our universe, near and far. In 2015, an array of 4400 twelve meter fully steerable paraboloid radio dishes, called the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is scheduled to be complete and operational.

Two, uh... people without clothes. That's what comes to mind when people think about the Pioneer space probes. From a series of some of the most advanced and original missions brought forward by NASA, people's subsequent memory is a sketch of a nude man and women that was used as a greeting card to alien life forms. Luckily, if you want some refreshing insight into the science and the politics of the Pioneer space probes, then you can read Mark Wolverton's book, The Depths of Space, to easily augment some half-forgotten image of people in their natural form.

British scientists are working on a project that would link up robotic telescopes around the world so they could get the jump on events in the night sky, and keep watching regardless of day or night, or local weather conditions. It's always nighttime somewhere, so the network would connect the telescopes so they can transfer their targets to one another continuously, essentially watching an object around the clock. It's currently planned for three telescopes, but a future version would connect six telescopes.

NASA operators were so concerned about the safety of the fragile capsule from Genesis and its precious cargo of solar wind samples that they'd arranged an elaborate airborne capture with helicopter stunt pilots. So when the capsule's parachute failed to open, and it slammed into the Utah desert at hundreds of km per hour, you'd think it was a total writeoff. Well, apparently not. NASA scientists have been analyzing the wreckage, and found enough is intact that they should be able to achieve most of their scientific objectives - enough samples of the Sun's solar wind have survived to keep the scientific community busy for a long time.

The crew on board the International Space Station restarted the malfunctioning Elektron oxygen system on Friday, but shut it down about an hour later. Russian engineers are trying to figure out why the system is automatically commanding itself to shut down. Commander Gennady Padalka used spare parts that were on hand to get a backup system ready if necessary. There's still plenty of oxygen available to the two men on board the station, including full tanks on the docked Progress cargo ship, and 84 solid fuel oxygen canisters which can last them 42 days.

NASA's Terra satellite took this photograph of Hurricane Ivan as it roared past the island of Jamaica on Saturday. The US space agency is gearing itself up for another potential encounter with a hurricane; just a week after Hurricane Frances damaged the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. Forecasters are expecting that KSC will receive winds of 75 kph (45 mph) and more rain on Tuesday. 1,500 employees have been working to get the space centre back online, and managers are still planning to reopen to its full 14,000 employees on Monday.

Astronomers from the Institute of Astronomy (IoA) in Cambridge, England have watched a bundle of matter at the heart of a galaxy 100 million light-years away as it orbited a supermassive black hole four times on its way to being destroyed. The material was approximately the same distance as our Earth is from the Sun, but instead of taking a year, it only took a quarter of a day, because of the massive gravity of the black hole. By tracking the matter's doomed orbit, astronomers were then able to calculate the mass of the black hole: between 10 and 50 million solar masses.

Scientists working with the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) have demonstrated that they can track changes in the Earth's environment by measuring its gravity field. Launched in 2002, Grace is actually two identical spacecraft that keep track of their precise distance from each other. As they pass over the lumpy gravity field of the Earth, their distance changes, which they can measure and turn into a gravity map of the planet. The mission demonstrated that it could measure 10 cm (4 in) of rainfall in the Amazon, just from the effect of its gravity.

This perspective image of an eroded crater on Mars was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft in May 2004. It's at Solis Planum, in the Thaumasia region of Mars. The larger eroded impact crater is about 53 km (32 miles) across, and the crater rim is nearly a kilometre high. The blue-white areas at the upper left have light clouds, changing the colour.

A team of European and US astronomers think they've taken the first direct image of a planet orbiting another star about 230 light-years away. Until now, planets have been discovered because of the effect they have on their parent star - they haven't been "seen" directly. Using the European Southern Observatory's 8.2-m telescope in Chile, the team found a faint, red object nearby a brown dwarf star called 2M1207. By analyzing the object with various instruments, they believe the object is approximately 5 times the mass of Jupiter. There's still some uncertainty, though, so the team will make regular observations over the next 2 years to see how its position and composition changes.

Brian Hynek, an associate researcher from the University of Colorado at Boulder thinks he's found evidence for a vast ocean or lake that once covered the region around NASA's Opportunity rover landing site. The data comes from the Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey spacecraft, which have extensively mapped the area. He estimates that the ocean must have been 330,000 square km (127,000 square miles), which is more than all the Great Lakes combined. Hynek used several pieces of evidence to make this prediction, including gray hematite scattered around the whole region, and outcrops of sedimentary rock.