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Hurricane Wilma
International Space Station cameras captured this incredible video of Hurricane Wilma and its well-defined eye from an altitude of 220 miles. Wilma was packing winds of 175 miles an hour as a Category 5 storm when the station flew overhead.

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Hubble examines moon
NASA has used the Hubble Space Telescope for scientific observations of the Earth's moon in the search for important oxygen-bearing minerals -- potential resources for human exploration. Scientists held this news conference on October 19 to discuss their investigations.

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Fuel tank leaves KSC
Space shuttle external fuel tank No. 120 is moved out of Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building and loaded onto a barge for transport to the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Once there, the tank will undergo modifications prior to being returned to Florida for a future launch.

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Practicing for Stardust
Stardust spacecraft recovery and science team members meet at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to rehearsed the steps that will be involved when recovering the comet-encountering spacecraft after its landing on Jan. 15, 2006. The spacecraft has collected cometary and interstellar particles for return to Earth.

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Space shuttle update
Space shuttle program officials Friday held a news conference at the Johnson Space Center to provide a status report on efforts to understand and fix the external tank foam insulation problems and confirm that the next launch won't happen before May 2006.

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Saturn's spongy moon
Stunning images of Saturn's moon Hyperion taken by the Cassini spacecraft show a surface dotted with craters and modified by some process, not yet understood, to create a strange, "spongy" appearance, unlike the surface of any other moon around the ringed planet.

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ISS crew back on Earth
Russian recovery forces pull the space travelers from the just-landed Soyuz capsule as dawn begins to break over the touchdown site in north-central Kazakhstan.

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Astronaut parade
The astronauts from space shuttle Discovery's return to flight mission recently paid a visit to Japan, the homeland of mission specialist Souichi Noguchi, and were treated to a grand parade.

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Scientists studying the ground beneath Mars rovers
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NEWS RELEASE
Posted: October 21, 2005

When it comes to longevity, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars are giving some real competition to the pink bunny from those battery advertisements. The two rovers in a couple of months will celebrate their second anniversary on the red planet, even though their original missions were only 90 days.

With no end to the rover missions in sight, NASA has selected a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology to see if he and his team can learn new things about the ground the rovers are currently rolling on. With any luck, the researchers will uncover further evidence about water or water vapor once present on the planet's surface.

Oded Aharonson, assistant professor of planetary science at Caltech, was chosen as part of the Mars Exploration Rover Participating Scientist Program. Aharonson and seven other investigators have been selected from 35 applicants. According to NASA, the eight successful proposals were chosen on the basis of merit, relevance, and cost-effectiveness. Aharonson and the seven other finalists will become official members of the Mars Exploration Rovers science team, according to Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program.

"Spirit and Opportunity have exceeded all expectations for their longevity on Mars, and both rovers are in good position to continue providing even more great science," said Meyer. "Because of this, we want to add to the rover team that collectively chooses how to use the rover's science instruments each day."

Aharonson's proposal is formally titled "Soil Structure and Stratification as Indicators of Aqueous Transport at the MER Landing Sites." In nontechnical talk, that means the researchers will be using the rovers to look at Martian dirt and rocks to see if liquid water has ever altered them.

The search for evidence of running water on Mars has been a "Holy Grail" for the entire exploratory program. Although the details of how life originally evolved are still largely conjectural, experts think that liquid water is required for the sort of chemistry thought to be conducive to the emergence of life as we know it.

Although there is no liquid water on the Martian surface at present, Opportunity has found geological evidence that water formerly flowed there. Thus, Aharonson will be looking for the telltale signatures of ancient as well as more recent aqueous transport and alteration.

"My experiments would normally take a couple of weeks, but it's not clear exactly how much time we'll devote to them," Aharonson said. "If we find something interesting, it could be much longer. But we might also cut the time shorter if, for example, we come upon an interesting rock we want to look at more closely."

Aharonson will work with a new Caltech faculty member, John Grotzinger, who comes from MIT as the Fletcher Jones Professor of Geology and is already a member of the rovers' science team. In addition, Caltech postdoctoral researcher Deanne Rogers will be involved in the research.

Spirit and Opportunity have been exploring sites on opposite sides of Mars since January 2004. They have found geological evidence of ancient environmental conditions that were wet and possibly habitable. They completed their primary missions three months later and are currently in the third extension of thse missions. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.