New Mars mission picked / First image of planet around a Sun-like star

      NEWSALERT: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 @ 1125 GMT
---------------------------------------------------------------------
          The latest news from Spaceflight Now


NEW MARS MISSION PICKED TO STUDY PLANET'S ATMOSPHERE
----------------------------------------------------
NASA has selected a Mars robotic mission that will provide information
about the Red Planet's atmosphere, climate history and potential
habitability in greater detail than ever before. The MAVEN spacecraft will
be launched in late 2013.

 http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0809/16maven/


LIKELY PLANET IMAGES AROUND A SUN-LIKE STAR
-------------------------------------------
Astronomers have unveiled what is likely the first picture of a planet
around a normal star similar to the Sun. The images show the young star,
which lies about 500 light-years from Earth, and a companion with a mass
about eight times that of Jupiter.

 http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0809/15planet/


HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE SEES OVERLAPPING GALAXIES
------------------------------------------------
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a rare alignment between two
spiral galaxies. The outer rim of a small, foreground galaxy is
silhouetted in front of a larger background galaxy. Skeletal tentacles of
dust can be seen extending beyond the small galaxy's disk of starlight.

 http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0809/16hubble/


MINOTAUR 4 PATHFINDER COMPLETED AT VANDENBERG
---------------------------------------------
Orbital Sciences has completed the full-scale "pathfinder" ground
operations of the Minotaur 4 space launch vehicle in preparation for its
inaugural flight that is currently scheduled to take place in early 2009.

 http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0809/16minotaur4/


OUR STAR COULD BE FAR FROM WHERE IT STARTED
-------------------------------------------
A long-standing scientific belief holds that stars tend to hang out in the
same general part of a galaxy where they originally formed. Some
astrophysicists have recently questioned whether that is true, and now new
simulations show that, at least in galaxies similar to our own Milky Way,
stars such as the sun can migrate great distances.

 http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0809/15immigrant/


1843 STELLAR ERUPTION MAY BE NEW TYPE OF EXPLOSION
--------------------------------------------------
Scientists have shown that the outbursts of Eta Carinae, the Milky Way's
biggest, brightest and perhaps most studied star after the Sun, could be
driven by an entirely new type of stellar explosion that is fainter than a
typical supernova.

 http://astronomynow.com/etacarinaeseruptionsamultistageprocess.html