Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: After a long delay due to legal snags, a skydiver is once again gearing up for a supersonic free-fall that would break a record set 52 years ago.

If you've ever dreamed of becoming an astronaut and have four months to spare, you might have the "right stuff" to fly to Mars … well, sort of.

The surface of Mars may have been parched for too long for any life-forms to exist on the planet today, a new study suggests.

The recent delay of the next manned launch to the International Space Station because of a damaged Russian space capsule highlights NASA's critical need for commercially built vehicles, space policy experts say.

This year is key for Virgin Galactic's bid to become the first commercial spaceliner service, as rocket-powered flights of its SpaceShipTwo are on the books for summer.

The MARSIS radar instrument on board ESA's Mars Express orbiter has discovered a subsurface blanket of low density material around the north polar cap, supporting theories that the northern lowlands of Mars were once covered by a large body of water.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, which is found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a similar barred spiral, and the study of galaxies such as NGC 1073 helps astronomers learn more about our celestial home.

Astronomers studying the Vela pulsar wind nebula with ESA's INTEGRAL observatory have successfully resolved its morphology in the hard X-ray band, for the first time. This pulsar-powered nebula is the most extended individual source yet observed at these energies. The study exploited a special imaging technique to reveal a new component of the source that likely consists of highly energetic electrons that have escaped from the core of the nebula in the last few thousand years.

Sand dunes are common on Earth, Mars, Venus and - unexpectedly - on Saturn's giant moon, Titan. Now detailed analysis of radar observations gathered during the Cassini spacecraft's flybys of cloud-shrouded Titan is enabling scientists to understand the distribution, shape and dimension of its exotic dunes.

AnnouncementThe International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland, invites proposals for establishing International Teams to conduct on its premises research activities in Space Sciences, based on the interdisciplinary analysis and evaluation of data from spacecraft and possible integration with ground data and theoretical models. For the purpose of this Call, Space Sciences include the Solar and Heliospheric Physics, Solar-Terrestrial Sciences, Space Plasma and Magnetospheric Physics, Planetary Sciences, Astrobiology, Cosmology, Astrophysics, Fundamental Physics, and Earth Sciences.

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This conference will focus on the astrophysical sky seen by Planck and other observatories. The five-day meeting will include sessions on Galactic and extragalactic science from radio to sub-millimeter (diffuse emission, sources, galaxy clusters, cosmic infrared background, etc.), Solar System, as well as sessions on the next observational challenges and data analysis methods.