When Robert Zubrin imagines the human colonization of Mars, he sees us eventually terraforming the planet to make it more earthlike. In this interview with Astrobiology Magazine, Zubrin details how terraforming the Red Planet might happen, and how long it could take before you can step outside your protective dome without being simultaneously flash frozen, irradiated, and asphyxiated.

The McDonald Observatory's Hobby-Eberly Telescope has found its first extrasolar planet. The planet is 2.84 times of the mass of Jupiter, and orbits star HD 37605 every 54.23 days. The discovering team used the "radial velocity" technique, where the star's velocity toward and away from the Earth is measured to determine the mass of the planet. The observatory is well-equipped to find planets because of its High Resolution Spectrograph instrument, which can measure the composition of objects with great precision.

A Blue Moon is a fairly rare event that happens when there are two full moons in a single month. Since the Moon's cycle lasts 29 days, and most months are 30 or 31 days long, it can happen - usually every 30 months or so. Since there was a full Moon on July 2, the next one will happen on July 31. Of course, the Moon won't actually turn blue - it's just a saying.

When Cassini swept past Saturn last week, it analyzed the planet's rings in many spectra to help scientists understand their composition. Here's a 1024x768 wallpaper of the rings in the ultraviolet spectrum, which shows that there is more water ice toward the outer part of the rings. The red in the rings indicates more "dirty" and smaller particles, while the turquoise is ice.

Astronomers with the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a pair of brown dwarfs circling one another, which should help answer some key questions about these objects. Are they large planets, failed stars, or something else entirely? One theory is that brown dwarfs form in clouds of interstellar gas, but they get ejected before becoming full stars. This pair of brown dwarfs, however, circle one another at 6 times the distance of the Sun and Pluto - their gravitational hold on one another is very tenuous. It's more likely they formed in a calm environment like regular stars.

The European Space Agency is working an ambitious new space observatory that will be capable of precisely mapping a billion stars in our galaxy. Called Gaia, the spacecraft will launch in 2010 and observe the sky for a period of five years. Astronomers will compile this detail into a 3D map of a billion stars, including their position, motion and even composition. With such a comprehensive map of the sky, Gaia will turn up all kinds of new objects, and give astronomers plenty of future targets to study with more sensitive instruments.

The Sea Launch team has begun looking into what caused a launch malfunction during last week's Telstar 18 mission, which placed the communications satellite 14,000 km short of its intended orbit. Based on preliminary data, the investigators know that the rocket's upper stage shut down 54 seconds prematurely, but the cause of this shutdown is unknown. The satellite is operating normally, and it still has enough fuel on board to maneuver itself to its final geosynchronous orbit position; however, it might have a shorter lifespan than originally designed.

NASA scientists have been busy in the last few days, downloading the mountains of data sent back from Cassini when it made its orbital insertion around Saturn last week. As part of the insertion maneuver, Cassini made the closest approach it'll make to Saturn's rings for its entire mission. One finding has been that the Cassini division - the large gap between the A and B rings - is mostly particles, and not entirely ice as originally believed. Scientists think it might be the remnants of a shattered moon. Cassini has also turned up excess amounts of oxygen at the edge of the rings.

Only days after arriving at Saturn, Cassini made its first flyby of Titan, the planet's largest moon. The spacecraft only got as close as 339,000 km (210,600 miles), but that was enough to reveal surprising new features about the moon's surface. Cassini is equipped with special camera filters that allow it to peer through the thick clouds that obscure most wavelengths of light. Darker regions seem to be made up of water ice, while the lighter regions are a mixture of ice and hydrocarbons. Cassini is scheduled to make 45 flybys of Titan, getting as close as 950 km (590 miles), so the view will only get better.

The concepts of Dark Matter (hidden mass that surrounds all galaxies) and Dark Energy (an accelerating force on the Universe) are still largely mysteries; astronomers have detected them, but they have no conclusive idea what they are. A new theory by Vanderbilt University researcher Robert Scherrer proposes that they are actually two aspects of a single, unknown force, called a K-essence field. Under some conditions, this field would have the repulsive force of dark energy, while in other conditions, it would appear to clump together and mimic the effect of invisible particles.

Astronomers have found that a nearby star, Tau Ceti, is surrounded by 10 times as many asteroids and comets as our own Solar System. Even if there are planets orbiting Tau Ceti, they would be unlikely to support life because of the frequent and devastating impacts by these objects. This discovery will help astronomers narrow down their search when looking for distant worlds that may support life; ones which have a small number of comets and asteroids.

As Cassini passed directly through a gap in Saturn's rings, it got the closest view any spacecraft has ever had of the Ringed Planet. This image was taken after the spacecraft had passed the ring plane, and was seeing it lit by the Sun. Cassini was only 195,000 kilometres (121,000 miles) above the rings when this picture was taken. One interesting feature is the wavy edge of the inner ring; this is caused by interactions with Saturn's moon Pan, which orbits in the middle of this gap.

New observations of Procyon from MOST, Canada's space telescope, have called long-held assumptions about the star into doubt. Launched a year ago, MOST watched Procyon 8-times a minute, making a total of 250,000 observations over the course of 32 days. It found that the star is completely stable, and doesn't pulsate or vibrate in any way. This challenges 20 years of speculation that Procyon does vibrate, and could reveal insights about its interior - astronomers will need to find a new candidate.

Another day, another wallpaper. Today it's a 1024x768 image of active star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This region is called N11B, and it contains new stars in all stages of early formation. The stars on the left of the image are among the most massive stars ever seen in the Universe. The region around them is clear of dust because of the strong stellar winds blowing from these powerful stars. As the dust is blown away, it collides with other clouds, which can collapse to form new stars.

Seven years after it set out from Earth, the Cassini spacecraft finally arrived safely at Saturn. Using its high-gain antenna to protect it from dust particles, the spacecraft crossed the ring plane early Thursday morning at 0203 UT (10:03pm EDT Wednesday). It fired one of its twin main engines for 96 minutes to slow down its velocity, and then pointed at Earth to transmit news of its successful arrival. The spacecraft then took detailed images of Saturn's rings, as Cassini isn't scheduled to ever get this close to them again. Cassini will now begin its 4 year mission to analyze Saturn and its moons.

A seven-year journey is nearly over as NASA's Cassini spacecraft is arriving at Saturn later today. The spacecraft will fire its main engine for 96 minutes beginning at 0236 UTC (10:36 pm EDT), which will put it into orbit around Saturn. Scientific data from the spacecraft will arrive on Earth about 4 hours later, and the first photographs will be returned 6 hours after that, at 1239 UTC (8:39 am EDT). As Cassini is performing these operations, the scientific equipment will be running, gathering as much data as possible on this extremely close pass.

NASA researcher Marc Cohen thinks that a permanent base on the Moon might not be the right way to get started - in the beginning, you've got to stay mobile. Cohen is proposing that NASA consider lunar bases that can move on wheels, or even legs. This would increase landing zone safety, provide equipment redundancy, and allow explorers to survey many sites of scientific interest. There are many challenges with this idea too, however, including constant repairs in the vacuum of the lunar surface, and carrying enough radiation protection to keep the astronauts safe.