An 11m-wide asteroid will pass within 60,000km of Earth on Friday – one of the 20 closest recorded approaches to our planet, but one that poses no danger.

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Asteroid to make near-miss fly-by

Members of the public are being asked to become online stargazers and join the hunt for nearby planets that could support life.

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Volunteers wanted for planet hunt

CHARLESTON, S.C. Thanks to globalization, and to containerized shipping that began in 1956 and makes globalization work, commodities swiftly move vast distances around the planet. Wal-Mart alone imports 400,000 containers a year. Trade flows can, however, be deflected or even defeated by a distance of just five feet. Herewith a story of the high costs of a few feet and of too many years required for our nation’s increasingly sluggish public processes to move. Read full article > >

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Clogging our ports with rules

An expedition is attempting to be the first to use a bike to reach the South Pole. So how can you cycle in some of the most extreme conditions on the planet?

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How do you cycle to the South Pole?

How the Frozen Planet brinicle sequence was filmed

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Anatomy of a shoot: Filming Frozen Planet’s brinicle

Discovery of an “Earth-like” planet has generated a wave of excitement, but our fascination with finding other habitable worlds goes back a long way.

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The obsession with a ‘twin Earth’

Startling new images from the depths of the Pacific Ocean reveal one of the planet’s most violent processes – the destruction of massive underwater mountains.

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Subsea mountains’ ‘march to ruin’

The search for Earth-like planets circling other stars is heating up, but the latest discovery is not too hot at all. It’s not too cold, either. Instead, the temperature on the newly announced planet Kepler-22b could be just right for life — about 72 degrees, a perfect spring day on Earth. Spied by NASA’s Kepler space telescope , Kepler-22b marks the best candidate yet for a life-bearing world beyond our solar system, project scientists said Monday. Read full article > >

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Newest alien planet is just the right temperature for life

When Brian Hawthorne enrolled at George Washington University as a 23-year-old junior after two tours in Iraq, the former Army medic was unprepared for the adjustment. “I felt like I was on another planet,” he said of his first semester in 2008. Hawthorne recalled feeling whipsawed by the abrupt transition of “going from an environment where people around you are dying every day and trying to kill you” to a campus where he was surrounded by people who didn’t know anyone in the military. Read full article > >

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Veterans find that their transition from combat to college can be difficult

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A rover of “monster truck” proportions zoomed toward Mars on an 8½-month, 354 million-mile journey Saturday, the biggest, best equipped robot ever sent to explore another planet. NASA’s six-wheeled, one-armed wonder, Curiosity, will reach Mars next summer and use its jackhammer drill, rock-zapping laser machine and other devices to search for evidence that Earth’s next-door neighbor might once have been home to the teeniest forms of life. Read full article > >

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Super-size Mars rover blasts off, biggest robotic explorer ever built to roam another planet

Nasa launches its most ambitious mission to Mars yet – a 900kg robot to find out whether the Red Planet is, or ever has been, suitable for life.

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Giant Nasa rover launches to Mars

Nasa is set to launch its latest rover mission to the Red Planet – a 900kg robot to find out whether Mars is, or ever has been, suitable for life.

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Nasa ready to launch Mars rover

NASA officials were asked some years ago to catalogue the number of technical actions and successful communications necessary to fly a spacecraft safely from Earth to Mars. The number: about 10,000. And that was for an orbiter, as opposed to a lander such as the Mars Science Laboratory , which requires an additional and very demanding descent through the thin Martian atmosphere to the surface. Read full article > >

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Landing on Mars is hard, but another mission to the Red Planet is about to begin

NASA’s most high-stakes, ambitious planetary mission in decades is scheduled to launch next week with a goal right out of science fiction: to learn whether Mars was, or ever could be, home to extraterrestrial life. If the unmanned Mars Science Laboratory lifts off and travels a 354 million-mile path to Mars, it will lower to the surface a sedan-size rover called Curiosity, which has the potential to change our understanding of the cosmos. Read full article > >

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NASA Mars mission to test planet for ability to sustain life

Tomorrow night, backyard astronomers may catch a glimpse of an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier that will miss Earth by only 200,000 miles as it flies by. Although there’s no danger of the space rock accidentally hitting our planet, it marks the closest flyby of an asteroid this large since 1976, according to NASA. Read full article > >

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Asteroid to fly by Earth tomorrow night: How to see it in your back yard