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	<title>Science &#38; SpaceCategory: Nasa &#124; Science &#38; Space &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Science &#38; SpaceCategory: Nasa &#124; Science &#38; Space &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Trouble in Deep Space: Wheel Malfunction Threatens Kepler Telescope&#8217;s Future</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/16/trouble-in-deep-space-wheel-malfunction-threatens-kepler-telescopes-future/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/16/trouble-in-deep-space-wheel-malfunction-threatens-kepler-telescopes-future/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 04:56:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael D. Lemonick</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kepler Telescope]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NASA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15269</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At this time last year, the scientists working on Kepler, NASA’s fantastically successful planet-hunting space telescope, were ecstatic. The probe, launched in 2009, had originally been given just three and a half years’ worth of funding, but in April, 2012, the space agency decided to extend the mission by another 3.5 years. With nearly 3,000 candidate planets in the bag already, astronomers were anticipating a boatload of even more exciting discoveries. Not so much anymore. Last Sunday, the spacecraft’s aim began to drift, sending Kepler into “safe mode” while engineers tried to figure out why. The potentially fatal diagnosis: one of the probe’s reaction wheels, crucial for holding Kepler on target, had stopped working. And if the telescope can’t stay on target, the mission is effectively over. “Unfortunately,” said John Grunsfeld, the scientist- astronaut who helped refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope during a 2009 spacewalk, during a NASA press conference, “Kepler is not in a place where I can go up and repair it.” (PHOTOS: Deep-Space Photos: Hubble’s Greatest Hits) That doesn’t mean engineers are quite ready to give up. “We’ll try the same things you’d do to unstuck a wheel on Earth,” said Charles Sobeck, Kepler’s deputy project manager. “We’ll try jiggling it, commanding it to move back and forth in both directions, forcing it through whatever might be holding it back.” They’ll also try restarting a reaction wheel that stopped working last year. “It could be,” said Sobeck, hopefully, “that if we wake it up, wheel 2 could just start spinning again.” But most of the talk at the press conference was less can-do and more has-done. “We’ve had a phenomenally successful mission,” said Bill Borucki, of the NASA Ames Research Center, who first began lobbying NASA to build Kepler more than 20 years ago. It’s hard to argue with that: Kepler’s original charter was to figure out the frequency of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way. After staring at a single representative patch of stars for four years, it’s found 280 worlds the size of Earth, or<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15269&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/planet-hunter_subr.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Artist&#039;s rendering of the Kepler space telescope.</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>NASA&#8217;s Kepler Telescope May Have Limited Future After Equipment Failure</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/15/nasas-kepler-telescope-may-have-limited-future-after-equipment-failure/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/15/nasas-kepler-telescope-may-have-limited-future-after-equipment-failure/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 20:59:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>AP / Alicia Chang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15264</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[(LOS ANGELES) — NASA&#8217;s planet-hunting telescope is broken. The Kepler spacecraft lost the second of four wheels that control the telescope&#8217;s orientation in space, NASA said Wednesday. If engineers can&#8217;t find a fix, the failure means Kepler won&#8217;t be able to look for exoplanets — planets outside our solar system anymore. &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t call Kepler down-and-out just yet,&#8221; said NASA sciences chief John Grunsfeld. Kepler was launched in 2009 in search of Earth-like planets. So far, it has confirmed 132 planets and spotted more than 2,700 potential ones. While ground telescopes can hunt for exoplanets, Kepler is much more advanced. (MORE: Hopeful New Signs of Duplicate Earths) Deputy project manager Charles Sobeck said there&#8217;s a backlog of data that scientists still need to analyze even if Kepler&#8217;s planet-hunting days may be numbered. For the past four years, Kepler has focused its telescope on a patch of the Milky Way hosting more than 150,000 stars, recording slight dips in brightness — a sign of a planet passing in front of the star. Now &#8220;We can&#8217;t point where we need to point. We can&#8217;t gather data,&#8221; Sobeck told The Associated Press. Last month, astronomers announced Kepler&#8217;s discovery of two distant worlds that are the best candidates for habitable planets. The $600 million mission is managed by the NASA Ames Research Center in Northern California. MORE: Water Worlds: Has NASA Found Mirror Earths?<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15264&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/planet-hunter_subr.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Artist&#039;s rendering of the Kepler space telescope.</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">timeassociatedpress</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>NASA: Spacewalk Planned to Fix Space Station Leak</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/05/10/nasa-spacewalk-planned-to-fix-space-station-leak/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/05/10/nasa-spacewalk-planned-to-fix-space-station-leak/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 20:51:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>AP / Seth Borenstein</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=15186</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[(WASHINGTON) — Two astronauts will do a spacewalk Saturday to try to fix an ammonia leak in the power system at the International Space Station. The leak forced the shutdown of one of eight solar panels. But NASA says the space station can operate fine with only seven panels providing power. NASA announced the decision to do the spacewalk at a briefing Friday afternoon. The leak is in one of the radiator lines that cool the power systems. There&#8217;s been a leak before in the same area. NASA has said the six-man station crew is not in danger. Three of them are scheduled to return to Earth on Monday, one of the reasons why they will try to fix the problem this weekend. PHOTOS: Window on Infinity: Pictures from Space<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=15186&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">timeassociatedpress</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>How Should We Deal With Future Near-Earth Asteroids? In the Words of NASA: &#8216;Pray&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/03/28/nasas-thoughts-on-dealing-with-unidentified-near-earth-asteroids-pray/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/03/28/nasas-thoughts-on-dealing-with-unidentified-near-earth-asteroids-pray/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Mar 2013 23:28:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kharunya Paramaguru</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[asteroids]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Charles Bolden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NASA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NEOs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sentinel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=14199</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The common military proverb notes &#8220;there are no atheists in a foxhole,&#8221; during wartime, and apparently to NASA, the entire Earth feels like a foxhole when confronted by a giant asteroid. NASA chief Charles Bolden did not have many reassuring words for the U.S. House of Representative Science Committee when he spoke recently about his agency&#8217;s efforts to track and mitigate recent threats from space. “From the information we have, we don’t know of an asteroid that will threaten the population of the United States,” Bolden said last week. “But if it’s coming in three weeks, pray.” (MORE: It&#8217;s the Little Asteroids That Get You) The series of talks convened by the Science Committee were prompted by recent events that saw an asteroid roughly 50 feet in diameter to explode over Chelyabinsk, Russia on February 15. The blast injured 1,200 people, shattered windows and damaged buildings when it entered the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere and spontaneously combusted. That same day, in a completely unrelated (and this time, expected) incident, an asteroid discovered by amateur astronomers and followed by NASA passed a mere 17,200 miles from our planet – within the orbital belt of geostationary satellites. The asteroid was a near miss, to be sure, but the Russian meteor caused most alarm because it had arrived completely undetected, causing governments around the world to reconsider their asteroid defense programs. Though Bolden did call attention to how unprepared we are with technology to deal from the impact of a collision with a NEO (near earth object), he attempted to assuage fears by noting that the probability of such objects impacting Earth within the next 100 years is “extremely remote.&#8221; The space agency has been documenting and collecting data on NEOs for over 15 years, and it is responsible for the discovery of about 98% of all known NEOs &#8212; a total of about 10,000. (PHOTOS: Russia Meteor Explosion Shatters Windows, Injures Hundreds) But former NASA astronaut and founder of the B612 Foundation (a nonprofit dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impacts) Edward Lu, wasn&#8217;t<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=14199&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/asteroid20130201-full.jpeg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">asteroid20130201-full</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/65771b2f510d667942a7f3513c6fb002?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">kparamaguru</media:title>
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		<title>NASA&#8217;s Astronaut Day of Remembrance</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/02/01/nasas-astronaut-day-of-remembrance/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/02/01/nasas-astronaut-day-of-remembrance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Feb 2013 12:10:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Astronauts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=13169</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=13169&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/90758734_10.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/90758734_10.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/90758734_10.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>A Room With a View: Scenes From the International Space Station</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2013/01/22/a-room-with-a-view-scenes-from-the-international-space-station/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2013/01/22/a-room-with-a-view-scenes-from-the-international-space-station/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 12:45:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kari Collins</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Astronauts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[astronaut]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[comet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[don pettit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dragonx]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[esa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[International Space Station]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lovejoy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MOON]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NASA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sahara]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[satellite]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[star trails]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stars]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=12891</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The International Space Station (ISS) may be the greatest machine you never gave a thought to. It&#8217;s 354 ft. (108 m) long, 240 ft (73 m) wide and with its vast array of solar panels would almost perfectly cover the rectangle of a football field. That&#8217;s a sweet hunk of hardware, even if its $100 billion price tag and its dubious record of scientific accomplishments have caused a lot of detractors to argue it never should have been built. Still, built it was and it&#8217;s been sailing silently and grandly overhead at a speed of 17,500 mph (28,200 k/h) and an average altitude of 250 mi. (400 km) since its first module was launched in 1998. The view from that rarefied high ground is something spectacular, especially after the installation of the seven-windowed node known as the cupola in 2010. What follows is just a small sampling of what orbiting astronauts see every day.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=12891&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/7372097440_cafcbb0ac3_b.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/7372097440_cafcbb0ac3_b.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">ISS</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/fb6c966cfe74751f706dbe9769c856a2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">kcollins1271</media:title>
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		<title>Ice (and Maybe Organics) on Mercury</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/11/30/ice-and-maybe-organics-on-mercury/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/11/30/ice-and-maybe-organics-on-mercury/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:45:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael D. Lemonick</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=12065</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It shouldn&#8217;t be very easy to find ice on Mercury. It’s true that temperatures on the planet’s night side drop to -280°F (-173°C), but daytime temperatures soar to a hellish 800°F (427°C) or so, and days on Mercury last for nearly three months. That&#8217;s plenty of time for the ice to melt and vaporize. Yet for decades, scientists have suspected that Mercury might be icy all the same — provided you looked in the right place. Back in the 90’s, astronomers used the giant Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico as a huge radar gun and pointed its barrel toward Mercury, specifically toward its poles. Craters there might be just deep enough — and their rims just high enough — that their basins would remain in permanent shadow. Ice once deposited there by meteors or comets would remain forever. The bright radar reflections that bounced back to Aricebo provided some tentative confirmation of that theory. Now there&#8217;s no more &#8220;tentative&#8221; about it. A set of three papers just published in Science, based on observations by the Messenger spacecraft in orbit around Mercury, makes the nearly ironclad case that there is indeed water at Mercury’s north pole, at least — and also some mysterious dark material that could be made of the same tarry organic compounds that contaminate comets. “The idea has been out there for long time,” says David Lawrence of Johns Hopkins University, author of one of the papers, &#8220;and one of the big science goals for Messenger was to try to confirm it.” Ice in permanently shadowed craters is not unique to Mercury. In 2009, NASA&#8216;s LCROSS mission established that the phenomenon occurs on the moon, a fact it proved by crashing a projectile into a crater and analyzing the debris that was blasted out. Messenger did its work more subtly, with three pieces of circumstantial evidence combining to make the case —  hence the three separate Science papers. The first bit of proof came from the spacecraft’s neutron spectrometer, Lawrence’s specialty. When cosmic rays hit Mercury’s surface,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=12065&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/sci-mercury-1129.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">image: Mercury</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>A Mars Announcement &#8216;for the History Books&#8217;? Not So Fast</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/11/20/a-mars-announcement-for-the-history-books/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/11/20/a-mars-announcement-for-the-history-books/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Nov 2012 23:36:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=11888</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Huffington Post, which is never quite so happy as when it&#8217;s hyperventilating, went big with a story today about a pending December announcement from the Curiosity Mars rover’s science team. “This data is gonna be one for the history books,&#8221; HuffPo accurately quoted Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), telling NPR. &#8220;It&#8217;s looking really good.&#8221; Hard to overplay a teaser quote like that from one of NASA’s usually reserved scientists, and on the surface it does sound potentially huge. What Grotzinger was talking about was a possible finding made by the rover&#8217;s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, which is essentially a tiny onboard laboratory in which samples of soil and air are broken down for their constituent chemicals. One of the first things Curiosity is looking for in these early stages of the mission — and will continue looking for throughout — is methane, a powerful marker of biology on Earth and likely on Mars too, assuming life exists there. (MORE: Rover Photos, from the Surface of Mars) But as NPR reported in detail but HuffPo didn&#8217;t, Grotzinger and his team were nearly tripped up earlier in the mission when SAM&#8217;s sniffers indeed seemed to detect a signature whiff of methane. That set off a lot of buzzing within NASA, but the team stayed mum until they could confirm the find — and it was a good thing they did. &#8220;We knew from the very beginning that we had this risk of having brought air from Florida,&#8221; Grotzinger told NPR. &#8220;And we needed to diminish it and then make the measurement again.&#8221; (Photos: Window on Infinity: Pictures from Space) They made that correction, and the sensational data evaporated. And even if few members of the Curiosity team were around in 1996, when NASA convened a sudden, almost unheard of midday press conference to announce that they had found bacterial fossils in a Martian meteorite — only to have to walk back from the finding in the months that followed — there is enough institutional PTSD<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=11888&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Space</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/h_14264318.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Curiosity Rover on Mars</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Cosmic Old Faithful: Are There Geysers on Mars?</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/10/09/cosmic-old-faithful-are-there-geysers-on-mars/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/10/09/cosmic-old-faithful-are-there-geysers-on-mars/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:02:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[carbon dioxide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[geyesers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Benson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NASA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Planetfall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[water]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=10955</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The rule for space aesthetics has always been clear: First comes the science, then comes the art. You can&#8217;t take the most distant cosmic photographs ever captured unless you build and launch the Hubble Space telescope first. You can&#8217;t capture close-up shots of Neptune&#8217;s aquatic blue or Jupiter&#8217;s spin-painted atmosphere or Saturn&#8217;s braided rings until you get the Voyager spacecraft out to their neighborhood. (Photos: Window on Infinity: Pictures from Space) Now that rule is being proven again with sensational images making the rounds on the Web — and soon to be published in the new book Planetfall, by Michael Benson — that provide a cool and new and faintly eerie look at Mars. Benson is not a NASA engineer, much less an astronaut. What he is however is a photographer and media artist, one with an unusually sharp eye for images from the deep elsewhere that can dazzle terrestrial sensibilities like ours. (More: Martian Blizzard: It&#8217;s Snowing on the Red Planet) The pictures doing the dazzling today were shot by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)in 2010 and show the predictable — if beautiful — rusty dunes of the Martian surface, sculpted like snowdrifts from the planet&#8217;s tenuous but persistent wind. The scene is broken up, however, buy strange, black, spidery blemishes scattered randomly about. From orbit they look tiny, but on the ground they&#8217;d be huge — surely larger than a football field. It&#8217;s partly their very ugliness that makes them eye-catching and partly the mystery of what causes them. Actually, however, that last part is likely no mystery at all — and the source of the features is one more indication of how complex a planet Mars is turning out to be. (More: Compelling New Evidence For Flowing Water on Mars) While Mars can sometimes be an almost temperate place — at high noon in midsummer on the Martian equator, temperatures can  reach or exceed 70º F (20º C) — at other times it can fall as low as -225º F (-153º C). This can have a dramatic effect<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=10955&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/600_esp_016423_2640_rgb-nomap_crop_rev4_bigger2.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/geysers_custom-08879bee8e7b30fd8f3367ea86db0d0bfc1512ae-s3.jpg?w=170" medium="image">
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		<title>Martian Blizzard! It&#8217;s Snowing on the Red Planet</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/09/17/martian-blizzard-its-snowing-on-the-red-planet/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/09/17/martian-blizzard-its-snowing-on-the-red-planet/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:03:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Daniel Cray</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[carbon dioxide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MRO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NASA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[snow]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=10656</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Bit by bit, feature by feature, Mars is slowly revealing itself to us. A century ago, it was thought of as a planet crisscrossed by a network of canals — surely the great irrigation channels of a highly advanced race. Then we flew by for a first close look in the early 1960s and saw nothing but a cratered wasteland, little better than our own moon, save for the rusty color. But closer study has revealed much more. Mars was indeed once wet, as the dry seabeds and riverways that score its surface attest. Indeed, it still has some water, as new sightings of seasonal streaking down mountain faces caused by springtime ice melt show. Now comes word from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) that it&#8217;s snowing on the Red Planet — a lot. A massive, 500-km-diameter cloud persists all winter long over the planet&#8217;s south polar cap, dumping snow to blizzard-level depths. The catch: this snow isn&#8217;t made from water crystals, but carbon dioxide, and that&#8217;s just a little bit of what makes the new findings — and the way they were uncovered — so intriguing. (PHOTOS: Snapshots of the Heavens: Amazing Astronomy Images) As anyone near a tailpipe knows, atmospheric CO2 readily absorbs and radiates heat, making it synonymous with planetary warming. But sometimes even carbon dioxide meets its match, and that’s what happens at the south pole on Mars, where brutal winter temperatures of –125ºC make the notorious greenhouse gas flutter down from the Martian atmosphere as a dry, coarse snow similar to corn starch. Researchers went looking for south-pole snow using the Mars Climate Sounder, a spectrometer aboard the MRO that measures the visible and infrared light emitted from cloud particles in the  atmosphere. In this case the infrared readings were crucial since Mars’ polar regions, like Earth’s, remain dark all winter. That means there isn’t enough visible light to study the area when the snow is falling. Infrared, on the other hand, offers scientists something of a night-vision peek at the atmospheric particles above the south<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=10656&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/ar0574-001.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">AR0574-001</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Still More Robot Company for Mars</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/08/23/still-more-robot-company-for-mars/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/08/23/still-more-robot-company-for-mars/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 Aug 2012 12:00:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[curiosity rover]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[InSight]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[JPL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NASA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rocky planets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tectonics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=10175</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[NASA is not without its cynics. The agency that was founded on the dreamy, even childlike, premise that America could and should explore the cosmos — because, well, why not? — is a department of government all the same. And that means it’s spent more than half a century fighting the annual budget battles in Washington, trying to wring terrestrial dollars out of hometown lawmakers for missions that will take place everywhere but Earth. That hasn’t always been easy, and in 1992, then-Administrator Daniel Goldin decided to use the agency’s straitened financial condition as a way to inspire his troops. “Better, Faster, Cheaper,” would be NASA’s new marching orders, he announced — posing his engineers a challenge to do ever more with ever less. The grumbling from within the ranks suggested that not everybody was buying it. “Better, faster, cheaper — pick two,” was the subversive response. But the agency persisted, most prominently with its now 20-year-old Discovery program — a series of unmanned missions to points throughout the solar system that would be built from off-the-shelf parts, cost-capped in the vicinity of $500 million, and go from blueprint to space with just a year or two between missions. And like it or not naysayers, a generation later, the program has worked spectacularly. (PHOTOS: Seeing Red: 40 Years of Exploration on Mars) Since the 1996 launch of the NEAR spacecraft — the Near Earth Asteroid Flyby — nine missions have been dispatched to asteroids, comets, the moon, Mars and Mercury. In 2009, the program’s biggest hit — the Kepler Space Telescope — was launched, and in the three years since, has discovered more than 2,300 candidate exoplanets orbiting distant stars, with years of work still ahead of it. Only one spacecraft in the Discovery fleet, the Comet Nucleus Tour, failed, vanishing from radio contact shortly after it reached space in 2002. This week, NASA announced its next planned Discovery mission, dubbed InSight, which will take off in 2016 heading for a destination that has been much in the news of<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=10175&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mars1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Mars</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>What’s Next for NASA? 10 Wild Newly Funded Projects</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/08/13/whats-next-for-nasa-10-wild-newly-funded-projects</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/08/13/whats-next-for-nasa-10-wild-newly-funded-projects#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Aug 2012 13:52:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Keith Wagstaff</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=10082</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Take a look at 10 of the most fantastic projects that NASA hopes will be inspiring people long after Curiosity has finished exploring Mars.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=10082&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/moonbase.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">moonbase</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/fbc023b645aea34aec43e08d8534352c?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">kpwagstaff</media:title>
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		<title>What the Curiosity Rover Can Teach Us About Mars — And Earth</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/08/09/what-the-curiosity-rover-can-teach-us-about-mars-and-earth/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/08/09/what-the-curiosity-rover-can-teach-us-about-mars-and-earth/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 09 Aug 2012 11:17:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[curiosity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Earth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[geology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[meteorology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NASA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rover]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=9930</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Communicating with a Mars probe can be a little like talking to the dead. Depending upon how far apart Mars and Earth are at any given moment, it will take anywhere from 4 to 20 minutes for a light-speed radio signal to traverse the distance. What&#8217;s breaking news or an imminent danger when the spacecraft sends out its signal can be long over — for better or worse — by the time we learn about it. That&#8217;s what made things so harrowing just after 1:17 AM EDT on Monday, August 6. It was at that moment that the Curiosity rover was supposed to touch down on the Martian surface after a journey of more than eight months. The Earth and Mars were about 154 million miles (248 million km) apart, which meant the transit time for a message  was 13 minutes and 48 seconds. If the rover crashed — a real possibility considering it would be slamming into the atmosphere at 13,000 mph (921,000 k/h), slowing down via a combination of air resistance, a parachute and retrorockets. In addition, the rover was relying on an untried, hovering sky crane  to winch it the final 25 ft. (7.6 m) to the ground — no one would know until 1:32 AM. Every bit of happy news Curiosity was beaming back about its progress could already have been trumped by a disastrous finish. (Cover Story: Live From Mars) But the news that did finally arrive in Mission Control at NASA&#8217;s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was exactly what the mission managers had been hoping to hear: &#8220;Touchdown confirmed!&#8221; flight dynamics engineer Allen Chen called. &#8220;We&#8217;re safe on Mars!&#8221; That kind of announcement is the reason space geeks get out of bed in the morning — and it&#8217;s one of the reasons the United States travels to distant worlds in the first place. But it&#8217;s hardly the only reason. For all of Mars&#8217;s desert-like appearance, it was once a warm and watery place, with its surface still scored by ancient riverbeds, dry seas and empty oceans.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=9930&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/cut_wmars.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">WMARS</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/cover_0820.jpg?w=299" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Cover of August 20, 2012 issue of TIME</media:title>
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		<title>Mars Curiosity Rover: Wheels Down on the Red Planet</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/08/06/mars-rover-curiosity-lands-safely-on-the-red-planet/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/08/06/mars-rover-curiosity-lands-safely-on-the-red-planet/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:55:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Daniel Cray / Pasadena</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[curiosity rover]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[landing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NASA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=9823</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sometimes the wildest ideas work best. NASA’s latest Mars lander transformed an engineering team’s high-risk brainstorming into reality on Sunday, safely lowering the 1 ton, $2.5 billion Curiosity rover into Mars’ Gale Crater while reminding us to think twice before laughing off the quirky spaceships in old science-fiction movies. “This rocked!” a grinning Richard Cook, the mission’s deputy project manager, told an auditorium filled with exuberant colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif. “Seriously, wasn’t that cool?” It was, in fact, cool, because Curiosity — a car-size mobile laboratory that’s bigger and more advanced than any of its predecessors — finished its 104 million-mile journey with a landing as dramatic as it was improbable. The touchdown required an extraordinary sequence of events designed to slow the incoming spacecraft from a blistering 13,000 m.p.h. to 2 m.p.h. in just seven minutes. Among the new tools in play: a 51-ft.-diameter parachute with eight suspension lines — the biggest ever used in an extraterrestrial landing — and retrorockets designed to slow the craft almost to a hover. Then there was the little matter of the spacecraft&#8217;s transforming itself into a sky crane just prior to landing, using nylon cords to lower Curiosity the final 25 ft. to the ground. (PHOTOS: An Inside Look at the Mars Curiosity Rover) As it turned out, the much-hyped “seven minutes of terror” that began when the spacecraft entered the Martian atmosphere instead became seven minutes of breathless cheers. Scientists and engineers repeatedly erupted in applause as each dreaded obstacle — guided entry, parachute deployment, heat-shield separation — passed by uneventfully. Then came the words that seemed to make JPL’s estimated 3,000 visitors catch their breath. “Standing by for sky crane,” announced flight-dynamics engineer Al Chen, who provided commentary from the mission control room. The awaited terror finally hit; the lab fell silent. Then, after a slight pause, Chen’s smooth voice returned. “Touchdown confirmed!” he shouted at 10:32 p.m. Pacific time. The scientists and engineers, many of whom spent 10 years working on<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=9823&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2012/08/06/mars-rover-curiosity-lands-safely-on-the-red-planet/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mars-rover-03.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mars-rover-03.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mars-rover-03.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Inside Look at the Mars Curiosity Rover</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a040f2b92f9b67e7a61358b7e6b78aac?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">joetimemag</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Window on Infinity: Pictures From Space</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/08/02/window-on-infinity-pictures-from-space/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/08/02/window-on-infinity-pictures-from-space/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:36:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kari Collins</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Astronauts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Month in Space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[month-in-space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=9520</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Stunning images of the sun, Earth and far-away locales in our roundup of cosmic views from July 2012.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=9520&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2012/08/02/window-on-infinity-pictures-from-space/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>The Month in Space</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/the-month-in-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/03318067.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/03318067.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/03318067.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">July - Month in Space</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/fb6c966cfe74751f706dbe9769c856a2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">kcollins1271</media:title>
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		<title>Explore NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with Google Street View</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2012/08/02/explore-nasas-kennedy-space-center-with-google-street-view</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2012/08/02/explore-nasas-kennedy-space-center-with-google-street-view#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Aug 2012 17:58:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Keith Wagstaff</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google street view]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=9714</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With NASA's rover hopefully landing safe and sound on the surface of Mars late Sunday night, people are once again talking about space travel. Before getting images back from Curiosity, you can get your space fix by exploring NASA's Kennedy Space Center via Google Street View.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=9714&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2012/08/02/explore-nasas-kennedy-space-center-with-google-street-view/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/nasa-kennedy.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/nasa-kennedy.jpg?w=240" />
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			<media:title type="html">nasa kennedy</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/fbc023b645aea34aec43e08d8534352c?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">kpwagstaff</media:title>
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		<title>The Rise of the Spacewoman: 10 Women Who Conquered the Final Frontier</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/25/the-rise-of-the-spacewoman-10-women-who-conquered-the-final-frontier</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/25/the-rise-of-the-spacewoman-10-women-who-conquered-the-final-frontier#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jul 2012 15:26:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Astronauts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=9491</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Riding rocket ships was once an all-boys&#8217; game. Valentina Tereshkova changed that for the Russians and Sally Ride changed it for the U.S. With the passing of Ride, here&#8217;s a look at some of those who came before and followed.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=9491&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/25/the-rise-of-the-spacewoman-10-women-who-conquered-the-final-frontier/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/kathryn-sullivan.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">kathryn-sullivan</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Tribute: Sally Ride, First American Woman in Space</title>
		<link>http://science.time.com/2012/07/23/tribute-sally-ride-first-american-woman-in-space/</link>
		<comments>http://science.time.com/2012/07/23/tribute-sally-ride-first-american-woman-in-space/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:53:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Astronauts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://science.time.com/?p=9511</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=9511&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://science.time.com/2012/07/23/tribute-sally-ride-first-american-woman-in-space/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/360_obit_sallyride_0723.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">360_obit_sallyride_0723</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/f2cdfe953fad799c6100332224e6ecb9?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Top 10 NASA Flubs</title>
		<link>http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1982672_1982673,00.html</link>
		<comments>http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1982672_1982673,00.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:58:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TIME Staff</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=9473</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Even as NASA welcomes home the crew of one its final shuttle missions (just two days after commemorating the 40th anniversary of the miraculous return of the Apollo 13 crew), it&#8217;s grappling with how to adapt to a new President&#8217;s plan for its future. TIME takes a look at the dimmer moments in its history: the canceled projects, the failures and some notable mishaps<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=9473&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1982672_1982673,00.html/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/tout.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">tout</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/3cb61b88047e46fa55ea7dd6bf87ec1c?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">timeadmin</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Apollo 11: Photos by Armstrong and Aldrin</title>
		<link>http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1910918,00.html</link>
		<comments>http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1910918,00.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:27:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TIME Staff</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ecocentric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/?p=9426</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Out-takes from the cameras of the first two men on the moon reveals scientific rigor — and a bit of artistic flair<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=science.time.com&#038;blog=13785469&#038;post=9426&#038;subd=timeecocentric&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1910918,00.html/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Nasa</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://science.time.com/category/space-2/nasa-space/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/moon_02.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<media:content url="http://timeecocentric.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/moon_02.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">moon_02</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">timeadmin</media:title>
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