On July 14, NASA announced the public release of a huge collection of images (1.9 million) from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), the most thorough census of stars ever made. Using two automated, 51-inch telescopes, one in Arizona and the other in Chile, the three-year-old survey has so far taken images of half a million galaxies and 162 million stars. By its completion, the survey's catalogs...

Two halves of NASA merge at half-century http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26948872/ NASA at 50: Johnson Space Center being put to the test http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6028850.html 50 Years in Space: NASA's Roadmap to 2058 http://www.space.com/news/081001-nasa50-road-ahead.html The Hubble Space Telescope [Real Player, Macromedia Flash...

"The Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at the Johnson Space Center is tasked to curate NASA's current and future collections of extraterrestrial samples." The website divides the collections into six categories: Rocks and Soils from the Moon, Meteorites from Antarctica, Stratospheric Dust, Solar Wind, Space-Exposed Hardware, and Stardust Mission Samples. Besides learning how to...

On Friday, September 15th, the nearly twenty-year-long Cassini-Huygens mission came to an end when the probe sent into space by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) completed a "death dive" into Saturn's atmosphere. Over the past thirteen years, Cassini has captured spectacular images and revealed previously unknown facts about the planet along with its rings and moons. BBC News has created...

Beyond the bounds of the Earth's atmosphere, two golden orb spiders are living and flourishing on the International Space Station. Each one lives in separate habitat chambers, and they have a bountiful supply of fruit flies. Each chamber contains cameras and lighting systems, and visitors can use this site from BioEd Online to peer into their world up above. BioEd Online also provides an amazing...

China will soon make history by sending the first Chinese man to space. Scheduled for sometime in 2003, it will be the first step toward China's highly ambitious plans for space exploration. The China National Space Administration Web site (1) has a detailed description of the country's space policy. Aerospace China, a journal published online by the administration, has information on space...

Astronomy buffs, stargazers, and students of all ages will want to check out CosmoQuest, an online community space where citizen scientists can participate in expanding our knowledge of the universe through collaboration with scientists from NASA, OSIRIS-REx, Dawn, and other organizations. While the citizen science aspects of CosmoQuest are on hold (as of this writing), visitors can still find...

This site, from one of NASA's premier telescopes, should offer plenty to users with even a passing interest in astronomy and space exploration. The site features a collection of amazing images from the Chandra orbiting X-ray observatory that were recently unveiled at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Highlights include a crossbow-shaped shock wave of warped gas, a jet that emanates...

Amazing photos have been added to the Space Telescope Electronic Information Service Site in May 1996. Hubble Space Telescope images released include Dynamics of the Crab Nebula and Doomed Star Eta Carinae. Included are several black & white and color resolutions, as well as well as explanatory captions. Of particular interest are the incredible gas clouds emanating from each side of Eta Carinae....

Europe reclaims a stake in Mars exploration! The European Space Agency has launched this informative site in conjunction with the Mars Express mission which lifted off on June 3, 2003. Before the live Webcast of the craft arrival in December, 2003, visitors to this well organized site can track the progress of the spacecraft. You can also learn a lot about early attempts to explore mars and...