What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour — fast enough to travel from Earth to the moon in 24 minutes! Once again NASA manages to capture the attention of Star Wars lovers everywhere. [via NASA ]

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NASA unveiled a new service today where you could add your name to a list that will be included in the next shuttle to Mars, and two reddit users took advantage of the oppurtunity to make their voices heard.

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The Best Links:

1. Send Your Name To Space!

A 7-year-old named Julian found out the Spirit Mars rover was stuck, and sent this idea to fix it. NASA is so impressed that they're trying the idea and sending him an award for ingenuity. As if that weren't outrage enough, they're also naming the next rover “Curiosity,” on the suggestion of a sixth-grader. Awesome work, NASA. Don't come crying to me when the Russkies win the space race.

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The Best Links:

1. How to rescue the Mars rover by Julian, age 7
2. Spirit Stuck in ‘Insidious Invisible Rover Trap’ on Mars
3. Praise for Julian on MarsRovers’ Twitter
4. 12-Year-Old Clara Ma Is Now Apparently in Charge of Naming Our Multi-Million Dollar Taxpayer-Funded Space Machines

Link: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/...

One small step for NASA, one giant running leap for Stephen Colbert. After much anticipation, NASA said Tuesday it would not name the new room in the international space station after Colbert, even though he won the most votes in an online write-in contest. Instead, a treadmill will carry the Colbert name into space.

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The Best Links:

1. Colbert Lost in Space When NASA Names Station Node
2. NASA Jumps On the Stephen Colbert Treadmill
3. Colbert Treads Where No Comic Has Before
4. NASA Names Cosmic Treadmill After Colbert
5. NASA Names Treadmill After Colbert

A spinning star resembling a giant cosmic hand has been captured in images taken by a NASA observatory orbiting miles above the Earth's surface.

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The Best Links:

1. ‘Hand of God’ Seen in Space

SCIENCE BUZZ: NASA may name a space toilet after Stephen Colbert after he urged viewers to vote for him. Falling behind were nominees “Earthrise,” “Legacy,” “Serenity,” and “Venture,” which Colbert claimed sounded more appropriate as flavors of “organic tea.”

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The Best Links:

1. Later, Xenu! Hello, Colbert!
2. “Come On, Serenity?” Colbert Said On His March 10 Show. “That’s Not a Space Module, That’s a Glade Plug-in.”
3. “When Al Gore Got the Most Votes, He Didn’t Even Get a Toilet Out of the Deal.”

I did not realize NASA could do this.

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The Best Links:

1. More funny signs
2. via Bits and Pieces
3. If NASA does not destroy the Earth, Tom Hanks will

SCIENCE BUZZ: After a five-year long alcohol-induced slumber, NASA's Mars Odyssey Orbiter awoke yesterday, wondering, “Woah, Universe, where am I?” Hope you slept well, sweet prince. Now just dust off those space rays and get back to work.

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The Best Links:

1. Mars Odyssey Orbiter Reboots for First Time in Five Years

The Space Shuttle cockpit! Cool!

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SCIENCE BUZZ: NASA, ever coy, officially announced they might have found life on Mars. That, or the planet is geologically active. But probably there is biological life there! Maybe. Sorry David Bowie, you have to keep wondering.

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The Best Links:

1. Methane Means Mars “Is Not A Dead Planet”!
2. David Bowie: “Life On Mars”
3. Nasa’s Historic Discovery of Methane Gas On Planet Mars

Link: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/anaglyp...

Whip out your 3D glasses and take in the topology of the surface of Mars. These 362 new images of Mars from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show the Red Planet's surface in unprecedented detail.

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Scientists are trying to figure out what this weird blue glow over Saturn could possibly be. Photos captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft show a blue-green glow near Saturn's north pole unlike any other astronomers have ever seen.

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The Best Links:

1. ” ‘We’ve never seen an aurora like this elsewhere,’ said Tom Stallard, a scientist working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester.”

It’s Phoenix as you’ve never seen her before, fully naked and completely see-through! NASA must have released these after a rather rough break-up, because sharing your private collection of Space Porn is most undoubtedly the ultimate revenge act.

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The Best Links:

1. Naked Martian Robot
2. NASA Image of the Day

The Messenger probe has just sent back the most up-close images yet taken of Mercury. After passing just 125 miles above the surface of the closest planet to the sun, Messenger has already sent back some great photos (though I thought one side of the planet was perpetually in flames?).

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The Best Links:

1. NASA’s Messenger Web Site

The biggest true color shot of Jupiter to date. This image was take in 2000, but Jupiter’s giant red spot has since swallowed the smaller one.

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The Best Links:

1. Many More Views of Jupiter
2. Bye-bye Mini Red Spot

The new generation of lunar truck. A NASA engineer testing the new prototype moon truck at the Johnson space center. It’s got six sets of wheels that can move in any direction. More importantly, it’s got a bad-ass paint job.

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The Best Links:

1. More Shots of Moon Trips Past and Future

SCIENCE BUZZ: The NASA Phoenix Mars mission says they’ve found proof of water on the Red Planet. Small white patches that the Phoenix lander discovered when digging into the Martian soil earlier this week have shrunk, and bits of debris in the trench have disappeared, which NASA says could only mean they were ice.

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The Best Links:

1. NASA: Disappearing Chunks Must Have Been Ice
2. Watch the Disappearing Ice!
3. Phoenix Twitter: w00t!!! Best day ever!!
4. A Step Towards Discovering Whether Mars Was Habitable
5. It MUST Be Ice

SCIENCE BUZZ: The Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope will look for dark matter and microscopic black holes. After a series of delays, the launch of the new Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope went off without a hitch. Peering into the mysteries of the universe!

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The Best Links:

1. Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope Finally Gets “Go”
2. Live Blogging GLAST Off
3. NASA’s GLAST Launch Blog
4. Exploring the Werid and Unknown in the Universe

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera orbiting Mars snapped a stunning shot of the Earth and the moon. Depending on your mood, this could either be inspiring or terrifying — ‘tis a mighty small speck we circle on.

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The Best Links:

1. Images From the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

NASA’s Mars rover Spirit (from 2005) sent back a nice sunset picture from the Red Planet. It looks like parts of Nevada, only minus the clouds, vegetation, or casino on the horizon.

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The Best Links:

1. Official NASA Images
2. Animation of the Pheonix Lander’s Landing
3. Mars Pheonix on BuzzFeed