Astronomers have found several examples of galaxies which bend and focus the light from a more distant object, like a quasar. These are called gravitational lenses and they can reveal details that would just be a smudge to the most powerful telescopes. A recently discovered lensing galaxy called PMN J1632-0033 is unusual because the light from a distant quasar passes so close to the heart of the galaxy that the focused image can reveal information about the supermassive black hole in PMN J1632-0033.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft was mated to launch hardware that will eventually be connected to the top of its Ariane 5, in preparation for its February 26 launch. If all goes well, Rosetta will blast off from the space centre in Kourou, French Guiana and begin its long journey to meet up with Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. The launch will give the 3,000 kg spacecraft enough velocity to make its escape trajectory, but it will still need to make two gravity assisting flybys of Earth, and one past Mars to get enough speed to reach the comet.

NASA's Opportunity rover is continuing to examine the exposed bedrock at the edge of the crater. The first images showed that the rock has parallel layers that could be sediments created by standing water, but closer inspection shows that the lines converge and diverge at low angles. This gives clues that something moving probably created these rocks, like volcanic flow or a river. Both rovers will continue searching their landing sites and nearby environment for evidence of past water on Mars - something that might have supported life at one time.

New research from NASA shows that cities in the United States have been built on the most fertile soils of the nation - cities account for just 3% of its land area, but food grown there could out produce the 29% of the US which is currently used for agriculture. The researchers used data two NASA satellites to track plant growth and the locations of urban centres. They created a computer model for a potential pre-urban US landscape which they used to calculate how much the country's vegetation growth is diminished because of cities.

Now in orbit for more than a month, the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has been delivering mountains of data back to Earth. Here's a beautiful desktop wallpaper you can use for your computer: an image taken on January 21, 2004 of the caldera of Olympus Mons, the largest known mountain in the Solar System. Olympus Mons is 22 km high and the caldera has a depth of 3 km.

Many of the sky's most interesting objects, like gamma-ray bursts and supernovae, change within days or even hours. It's very difficult for traditional observatories to dedicate the kind of time required to watch the evolution of these objects, but a new class of instruments will help astronomers stay on top of them. ULTRACAM will track changes in brightness that last only a thousandths of a second, while Super WASP can watch an area of sky 1000x the size of the Moon, looking for anything unusual. And a new network of robotic telescopes could be the best tool for spotting Earth-like planets around other stars until big space observatories are launched in the next decade.

Using a NASA aircraft which flies over the Arctic, Harvard scientists have made observations of a molecule which is believed to be responsible for destroying stratospheric ozone. The substance is called chlorine peroxide, and it's formed from industrial materials used in refrigeration. These have been banned for several years, but they can persist in the high atmosphere for decades. This new data will allow scientists to better forecast the future degradation of the ozone layer, and regions which might let in more solar radiation.

After it had finished examining "Adirondack", NASA's Spirit rover drove right over it and kept on moving for another 6.4 metres. This was the first test of the rover's autonomous navigation system, which steered it clear of rocks as it moved towards a crater 250 metres away. Opportunity completed its journey to the rocky outcropping on the side of the crater that the rover landed in. Close examination of the bedrock showed strange spheres of sand embedded into the layers of rock.

NASA has swapped out the next crew headed for the International Space Station. Astronaut Michael Fincke and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka will be replacing Russian Valery Tokarev and American Leroy Chiao. Russian space officials said that it wasn't because the team was unprofessional or ill, just that it hadn't had enough time to be ready for space - Leroy Chiao was only added to the team last month when astronaut William McArthur fell ill. Fincke and Padalka are due to blast off on from the Baikonur cosmodrome with Dutchman Andre Kuipers in a Soyuz rocket on April 19.

Canadian government and business officials today announced the development of a new microsatellite called CASSIOPE which will serve a dual role in science and commercial communications. Scheduled for launch in 2007, CASSIOPE will carry a suite of eight scientific instruments called ePOP to study the effect of the Sun on the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. The satellite will also serve as a high bandwidth information courier, picking up data and delivering it to anywhere in the world.

Astronomers from several US universities have developed a scenario where colliding black holes could be ejected from their galaxy. When two galaxies merge, their central supermassive black holes will orbit one another and eventually collide. When this merge happens, the radiation pressure is so large that it could theoretically knock the black hole out of the centre of the galaxy. Although it should be incredibly rare, it could be possible to spot a black hole in a recently merged galaxy which isn't at the centre where it normally belongs.

NASA engineers commanded the Opportunity rover to drive forward 3.5 metres from its previous position towards the rocky outcrop on the side of the Martian crater. Instead of digging a trench into the soil, the mission scientists have decided they want to go directly to the outcrop to get some close up pictures. On the other side of Mars, the controllers for Spirit have successfully reformatted its flash memory, which should fix all remaining traces of the problem that plagued the rover over the last few weeks.

An Atlas IIAS rocket successfully launched the AMC-10 satellite on Thursday evening from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket lifted off at 2346 UTC (6:46 pm EST), and the satellite separated 28 minutes later. The launch was delayed nearly and hour because of problems with a helium valve. Lockheed Martin built the AMC-10 satellite, which will provide regular and high-definition television broadcasting services in the US.

Researchers from the University of Queensland believe they have more evidence that supports the theory that NASA researchers found life in a Martian meteorite back in 1996. Their new technique uses an electron microscope to see through the bacteria and into the gel surrounding the magnetic crystals inside the creature. Their research indicates that the bacteria likely lived four billion years ago, before life was even believed to have formed here on Earth. Their research was published in the Journal of Microscopy.

The European Space Agency has given the lander portion of the Rosetta mission a name: Philae. This is the name of an island in the Nile where a French explorer, Jean-Fran?ois Champollion, discovered an obelisk with a bilingual inscription of the names Cleopatra and Ptolemy. This gave Champollion the clues he needed to decipher the Rosetta stone, and begin translating ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The name was proposed by a 15-year old girl from Italy. If all goes well, Rosetta will lift off on February 26 to begin its 10-year mission to reach and land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Scientists on Earth have investigated the microscopic pictures of Martian soil returned by NASA's Opportunity rover, and found features that are unlike anything seen on Mars before, including spherical particles that could have been formed by the erosion of water. Opportunity also used its instruments to create a mineral map of the area, and discovered large quantities of hematite right at the surface, especially near the rim of the crater which the rover landed in. Engineers will have the rover drive forward about 3 metres - halfway to the outcrop of rock - and dig a trench with its wheel to see material down a few centimetres.

The latest image released from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals spiral galaxy M64 in a new light. Nicknamed the "Black Eye" galaxy because of the dark bands of obscuring clouds, M64 is well known to amateur astronomers because of how it looks in small telescopes. What's unique to M64 is that the stars rotate in one direction, while the interstellar gas in the outer regions goes in the opposite direction - likely the outcome of a galactic collision.

The newest photo released from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the nearby dwarf galaxy NGC 1569, which is a hotbed of vigorous star birth activity. These stellar nurseries blow huge bubbles of gas and dust that riddle the structure of the galaxy. NGC 1569 is only 7 million light-years away, so astronomers can study the galaxy in great detail.