news of moon

The shock wave plowing through the supernova remnant RCW 86, seen above in x-ray and visible light, acts as a superefficient particle accelerator, new images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory reveal.


Workers secure the hatch to the multipurpose logistics module Leonardo, one of three giant pressurized "moving vans" used to ferry cargo to and from the International Space Station via NASA's space shuttles.

Built by the Italian Space Agency in the late 1990s, the 21- by 15-foot (6.4- by 4.6-meter) Leonardo--named after da Vinci--is designed to temporarily dock with the station. During the next shuttle mission, slated to begin August 18, Leonardo will carry racks for storage and science experiments.



It may look like an aerial photo, but this Death Valley view is so much more.

The image, released by NASA and a Japanese government agency Monday, is a detail from "the most complete topographic map of Earth." The interactive elevation map was created using more than a million images taken by Japan's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite.



-Saturn's icy moon Tethys (not pictured) casts a long shadow on the planet's rings in this rare image from NASA's Cassini orbiter.

Saturn takes 29 years to orbit the sun, which means the planet has an equinox--when the sun crosses the plane of the planet's equator--roughly every 15 years. The planet is now approaching its August 2009 equinox, and its rings are seeming to tilt in relation to the sun. Such an event is the only time Saturn's moons will cast shadows on the rings rather than the planet's surface.



-A false-color image taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows layers of clays and sulfates in Gale Crater, a roughly 62-mile-wide (100-kilometer-wide) crater on the border between Mars's southern highlands and northern plains.

Gale Crater is one possible landing site for NASA's Curiosity rover, an SUV-size science lab due to launch in 2011. The crater has a three-mile-high (five-kilometer-high) central mound of layered deposits, which might reveal clues about the action of liquid water--and the possibilities for life--on early Mars