SCIENCE IN THE NEWS WEEKLY
Obama Cancels NASA Moon Mission
Last week brought the first indications (realized today) that President Barack Obama would nix a return to the moon for NASA but would increase the agency's budget to extend the life of the International Space Station and encourage the privatization of space flights.
In other space news, a team of astronomers has caught a massive star in the act of condensing, which they say suggests that large stars form in the same way that smaller ones do.
Experiments in the past two years detected more high-energy electrons than were expected in the galaxy, a surplus that was attributed by some as possibly being due to dark matter. But a new model that took into account the effects of starlight suggests a simpler explanation.
Aliens may already live among us, according to an Arizona State University physicist. He speculates that life may have developed on Earth several times, and variant life forms could still be here in the form of tiny microbes.
And, finally, NASA gave up last week trying to restore mobility to the Mars rover Spirit, but they hope it will soak up enough solar energy to get through the Martian winter and conduct stationary experiments.
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