NASA hopes the Taurus 2 and Falcon 9 rockets will be ready to launch medium-class science missions. Credit: Orbital Sciences and SpaceX
The space shuttle Discovery sits atop Launch Pad 39A during final launch preparations at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida August 24, 2009. Discovery is scheduled for launch later in the day on a mission to the International Space Station. REUTERS/Pierre Ducharme
One of the first photos of the gScreen Spacebook Photo: GIZMODO 
You Might Feel A Little Pinch
BYU professor Summer Rupper doing field work with Switzerland's Gornergrat glacier. Her newest study details how a group of Himalayan glaciers grew despite a significant rise in temperatures. (Credit: Image courtesy of Brigham Young University)
Entropy At Work: One liquid diffusing into another is an
The Anak Krakatau volcano
The rocket and fuel tanks of the Lisa Pathfinder satellite, which will be launched in 2011 and pave the way for new scientific experiments on gravitational wave detection and black holes.
Photo: Astronaut Jose Hernandez is an American-born son of immigrants from Michoacan, Mexico.
Portugese water dog. (Credit: iStockphoto/Lee Feldstein)
Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) Director Jay Keasling with Rajit Sapar in lab at JBEI with beaker of cellulose sludge. Credit: JBEI//Jay Keasling
That pits Sony and Google against Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon, all of which have allied in opposition to the settlement. (See Wired.com’s Google Book Search FAQ to learn more.)
Muslims pray before they break their fast in a mosque during the Ramadan month in Kabul, Afghanistan. Mohammad Kheirkhah / UPI / Landov
Space shuttle Discovery roars to life and blasts off on space station resupply mission.
Photo: Two Nodes of a quantum network that Caltech researchers created by halting entangled photons within two ensembles of cesium atoms housed in an ultrahigh-vacuum system. Temporarily storing entanglement provides a basis for quantum data storage, which might be useful for various applications, including quantum cryptography.
Preaching to the converted: Li Yang, founder of the Crazy English movement, lectures a crowd of students. SEAN GALLAGHER
Image: Recently published research shows how newly discovered interactions between the Sun and the Earth affect our climate. (Credit: UCAR)
Do we cry because it makes us feel good, or because it cleanses us of stressful chemicals? Or, as Oren Hasson now theorizes, is a good cry just a way to get attention and gain acceptance? Image credit: stockxpert
The space shuttle Discovery is shown on Launch Pad 39A after mission managers scrubbed a launch attempt because of bad weather at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida August 25, 2009. REUTERS/Scott Audette
A king's ransom: Silver jewellery buried more than a millennium ago
From The BBC:
SEAPLEX researchers spotted a large net tangled with plastic in the "garbage patch." (Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography)
Woman drinking milk the first superfood. Photo: GETTY 
A detail of the Snow Leopard desktop. Photograph: Apple
Predicting the drop (Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features)
Pentacene, Up Close: IBM Research - Zurich
A Soyuz craft has three seats versus the shuttle's seven.
From The New York Times:
Artist's impression shows a gas-giant exoplanet transiting across the face of its star. 
Serious runners know the feeling, a sense of never-ending endurance that comes on a long run. But is it good for you? The sensation may be addictive, the new study finds. Image credit: Stockxpert
The five-segment solid rocket motor for Ares I. Credit: NASA
The computer used 1.2 megawatts to run - enough to power 1,000 homes
Oxfam staged an underwater family to highlight the risk of sea rises due to climate change.
From The Telegraph:
Women are more likely to be fearful of spiders (Image: Donna Day/Getty)
Perforated Nassarius gibbosulus from archaeological layers dated to between 73,400 and 91,500 years ago at Taforalt. (Credit: Image courtesy of d'Errico/Vanhaeren)
An Aedes aegypti mosquito feeding on blood. Credit: USDA
Photo: ARMED FOR DISCOVERY: At the LIGO site in Louisiana, a pair of four-kilometer-long arms [one of which stretches toward the top of this photograph] awaits the telltale elongation or compression of a passing gravity wave. A similar observatory in Washington State is also on the case. LIGO Scientific Collaboration
Competitors who wear red win more than those that are dressed in any other colour, according to a study in Germany. Photo: GETTY IMAGES 
Google's ambition to create an uber-library on the Internet raises some concerns for privacy experts. (ABC News Photo Illustration)Now imagine that this uber-library never closes; that it's always just one mouse-click away.
This isn't fiction, it is the ambitious vision of Google Book Search, an online service that stands to revolutionize the way people access and interact with books.
Read more ....
Views like this could be lost forever (Image: KPA/Zuma/Rex Features) US national parks could be changed so significantly by global warming that they will be lost forever, senators were warned this week.
"If we continue adding heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere in the way we now are, we could, for the first time, lose entire national parks," Stephen Saunders, president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, National Parks Subcommittee.
SpaceX propulsion chief Tom Mueller examines a spacecraft control thruster.
