NASA's latest missions launched and aims to monitor comets.  Eventually, information gathered has the potential to uncover origins of life.

Congress passed a bill last semester, effectively ending the Space Shuttle program, potentially freeing up budgetary space for larger missions, such as a trip to Mars.  In the meantime, NASA will rely on private, commercial space flights and international partnership for access to the space station.

The Mars rover "Spirit," which was being led by Prof. Steve Squyres, astronomy, may have finally lost power for good, after greatly exceeding all initial expectations.

Carl Sagan, faculty from 1971 to 1996, is considered one of greatest popularizers of science. During his lifetime, Sagan published more than 600 papers and 20 books. He won a Pulitzer Prize, and he was even nominated for a Grammy. In the 1980s, he co-wrote and narrated the award winning television series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, about the origin of life on Earth and humanity’s place in the universe. His novel, Contact, was made into a film with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey. 

People all over the world went outside Saturday night to observe the moon for the first ever International Observe the Moon Night. At Fuertes Observatory on north campus, over 300 adults and children from the university and surrounding communities gathered to view and learn about the moon. The event was organized by the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research (CRSR) and the Cornell Astronomical Society.

Former Cornell professor William E. Gordon, engineering, the designer, construction manager and first director of Cornell's massive radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, died on February 16 in Ithaca. Gordon, who died of natural causes, was 92 years old.

Society teaches us that science has no limits; that you and I can be whatever we want to be, do whatever we want to do, and that scientists are nothing but an utter bouquet of bright minds moving from grass to grace, sharing their knowledge with all and sundry, passing on the ‘Universalistic’ torch inscribed with the message: all is possible in the name of science. True to its nature, the more we learn about the physical world the smaller it gets, the more justifications we come up with for branching out of our egg-shell shaped Earth, for exploring the Moon, the stars, the Milky Way, the Universe. But whence come our limit, if any?

I often feel clueless trying to identify the many stars, planets and orbital objects speckled across Ithaca’s anomalous, clear night sky. I admit to feeling a tug of glee when identifying Orion, the Big Dipper or the three stars of the Summer Triangle. No matter how knowledgeable or ignorant one is about the positions and names of the objects in the night sky, it’s never been possible to see more than small white pinpricks of light with the unaided eye.

The Cornell-managed Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has been under cost-cutting pressure due to budget cuts by the National Science Foundation. However, the observatory received a break with a new partnership agreement signed last week to bring in $2.3 million annually to Arecibo.

The National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center and the Puerto Rico Department of Education will run the program together, though the Department of Education will contribute the funds.

The money will go to fund a program called “Inspiration to Science,” which aims to educate kindergarten through 12th grade Puerto Rican school children.