Scientists have theorized that the inside of a neutron star - the remnant from a star that has collapsed under its own gravity - is a special place where the laws of physics begin to break down; atoms are squeezed so tightly by gravity that all protons and electrons are crushed into neutrons which swirl around like a liquid, but without friction (called a superfluid). This theory has gotten some confirmation according to new research from NASA which observed neutron star EXO 0748-676, located 30,000 light years away. Using various instruments, NASA scientists determined that it's approximately 11.5 km (7 miles) in diameter, and contains 1.75 solar masses. With this much mass packed into a small area, the observations match the theory that neutron stars exist in this superfluidic state, but without being crushed further.

NASA specialists have begun cleaning up after the sample capsule from its Genesis capsule slammed into the ground at high speed in the Utah desert. The ground crew took their time picking up the capsule because there could have been live explosives, which failed to eject the capsule's parachute as it entered the atmosphere. Even though it was going 311 kph (193 mph) when it smashed into the ground, scientists were surprised at how little damage was actually done. Some of the wafers that had collected particles of the Sun's solar wind were actually unharmed, so scientists will be able to extract some useful particles; although, they could be contaminated with air, water and dirt after the rough landing.

Scientists from the United Kingdom have uncovered a new object and a new ring orbiting Saturn. While Cassini images, scientists at the University of London noticed a tiny object skirt around the outer part of the F-ring - it's probably 4-5 km (3 miles) in diameter. They also discovered a new ring in the same area, which is associated with Saturn's moon Atlas. This ring was only seen as Cassini was approaching Saturn, so scientists aren't sure if it goes all the way around the planet. While attempting to pin down the orbit of the new moon, scientists from the Space Science Institute in Boulder turned up another potential object in a similar orbit.

Bought a digital camera recently? It's probably got anywhere from 3.1 to 6 megapixels of resolution. Well, the European Space Agency is building a 1 gigapixel (a gigapixel is 1024 megapixels) digital camera for its upcoming Gaia space telescope, due for launch in 2010. It's actually not a single camera, but an array of 170. Gaia will be positioned 1.5 million km (930,000 miles) away from Earth, and will be designed to simultaneously photograph 1 billion stars and plenty of other celestial objects like asteroids, comets, galaxies, and nebulae. The goal will be to map the entire Universe down to a resolution one million times fainter than the human eye can see.

NASA workers are continuing to assess the damage that Hurricane Frances wreaked on the Kennedy Space Center when it tore through Cape Canaveral over the weekend. Many buildings suffered wind and rain damage, including the Vehicle Assembly Building, where the space shuttles are attached to the external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters - it had 820 panels blown off. The Thermal Protection System Facility, where heat tiles and blankets are manufactured suffered significant damage. It's still unknown if the effects of the hurricane will push back the shuttle's return to flight.

Astronomers theorize that most of the mass in the Universe is dark matter; it's invisible and detectable only by the pull of its gravity on objects. This dark matter is in long filaments, and galaxy clusters form where these filaments intersect. NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory has found a hot gas cloud hundreds of thousands of light-years across in the the Fornax galaxy cluster is collapsing towards an invisible centre of gravity. Computer simulations have accurately predicted this kind of interaction between galaxy clusters and filaments of dark matter, so this discovery will give astronomers a chance to understand the process better.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has taken this image of two galaxies colliding, creating destruction and a wave of new star formation. The image of the Antennae galaxies in infrared shows how they're churning into each other, and throwing off massive streamers of stars and clouds of dust. Spitzer can "see" through the dark dust, and has found large nurseries of young stars in the center of the galaxies, where they overlap. This cloud of buried stars appears red in this image, and the blue indicates older stars which can be seen in visible light.

The latest image released by the Gemini Observatory shows a group of galaxies tearing each other apart 300 million light-years away. The galaxies are members of Stephan's Quintet, and their shapes are completely warped by gravitational interactions that have been going on for millions of years. This ongoing chaos has spawned huge stellar nurseries - hotspots of furious star formation. They'll keep on interacting for a few more million years before merging into larger objects; the smaller galaxies will be completely torn apart.

It's bad, but it could have been much worse. Hurricane Frances devastated Florida over the weekend, with the eye sweeping close to NASA's Kennedy Space Center - the region sustained winds as high as 110 kph (70 mph). There were no injuries, and the worst damage was to the Vehicle Assembly Building, which lost more than 1,000 panels, leaving huge holes in its sides. None of the space shuttles or the Swift mission were damaged. The center is closed Tuesday for most employees, and a more detailed damage assessment should be released later today.

The board inquiring into the loss of the remotely-operated Helios aircraft released its final report on Friday. Helios was a solar-powered aircraft, capable of flying higher than any conventional plane. During a test flight in June, 2003, the aircraft took off from the island of Kauai and flew out over the Pacific Ocean. About 30 minutes into its flight, turbulence caused Helios to become unstable, with its wings bending more than it was designed for. Shortly after that, the upper surface of the wing ripped off, and it plunged into the ocean. The board determined that NASA lacked the analysis tools to predict how turbulence could affect the plane in all conditions.

The crew of Expedition 9, Gennady Padalka and Mike Fincke, completed their fourth and final walk outside the International Space Station on Friday. The spacewalkers spent a total of 5 hours and 21 minutes in space installing equipment to prepare for the arrival of the new European cargo ship next year, including three communication antennas. Three more antennas will be installed by the next station crew, and Expedition 11 will upgrade equipment inside the Zvezda module to prepare for the new cargo ships as well.

The Hubble Space Telescope took this image of the Stingray Nebula, known to astronomers as Henize 1357. The dim star is surrounded by a halo of gas that was shed when the star became a red giant - a final stage in its life. As the nebula expanded away from the star, the remaining core got hotter and hotter, heating the gas up until it glowed. The Stingray Nebula is the youngest known planetary nebula; it wasn't visible in the sky just 25 years ago, when the gas around the central star hadn't heated up enough to glow.

According to NASA's Cassini spacecraft, the temperature of Saturn's rings range from cold to really really cold. In this false-colour image, the red signifies 110 Kelvin (-261 degrees F), and the blue is 70 Kelvin (-333 degrees F). Cassini has shown that opaque regions of the rings are cooler, while transparent sections are warmer; this was predicted by scientists before the spacecraft arrived. The data was gathered using one of Cassini's 12 scientific instruments, the composite infrared spectrometer.

After four months in orbit, NASA's Gravity Probe B is finally ready to begin its scientific mission - to find out if two predictions by Einstein about relativity are correct. It wasn't easy, though. Controllers expected to get the spacecraft orienting on its target star within a few days, but it took weeks because sunlight reflecting off of dust particles confused its tracking system. Engineers also had to tweak the spacecraft's software to compensate for cosmic rays that flashed into its telescope. Everything's working fine now, and in a year or so, we should have some answers.

The European Space Agency's Envisat Earth has a whole suite of tools to analyze Hurricane Frances with, and that's just what it's done. The Earth observation satellite has both optical and radar instruments, and it can observe high-atmosphere cloud structure in both the visible and infrared spectrum, and use radar backscatter to look at the roughness of the water underneath to calculate wind speeds. Frances is expected to make landfall in Florida on Saturday and cause a significant amount of damage.

A mystery that has puzzled astronomers for years is: why does the Sun's temperature rise as you get further away from it? While the surface of the Sun might only be 6000 degrees Celsius, the corona which surrounds it can be 2 million degrees. The "wave heating" theory proposes that the Sun's magnetic field carries waves of heat from the surface of the Sun and dumps them into the corona. Another theory proposes that lines in the Sun's magnetic field get twisted up and eventually snap, releasing a tremendous amount of energy into the corona.

NASA's Opportunity rover has gone back to work after a two week delay because a pebble was jamming its rock abrasion tool. The pebble fell out of the tool on its own just before engineers tried reversing its motor to kick it out. Opportunity demonstrated that everything was working fine by cleaning off a rock inside "Endurance Crater" with its wire brush. Mars and Earth are approaching "conjunction", where the Sun lies directly in between our planets, so controllers will be unable to communicate with the rovers for several days.

NASA has awarded the first contracts for aerospace firms to begin preliminary concept studies for returning humans to the Moon, and then onto Mars. A total of $27 million USD was awarded to eleven companies to work on concepts for human lunar exploration and the crew exploration vehicle; there is also an option for an additional $27 million. The contracts will give the companies six months to work on their ideas, and then the additional six-month options may be exercised depending on the quality of the work.