The new database, called the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas, is important because the summer monsoon,
is one of the reasons his team compiled the drought atlas, the first analysis of which is published in Science1.
Indian space agency ISRO's first test flight of a homemade cryogenic engine powered by fuels that are liquid at very low temperatures ended in failure on 15 april,
US President Barack Obama tells Florida's Kennedy space center on 15 april that sending astronauts to the Moon is so last century (see go. nature. com/zwdf2w for more.
NASA's ageing research labs are need in dire of an overhaul, according to a report released on 11 may by the National Academies.
and NASA is planning to launch a second version of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory by 2013 (a rocket failure sent the first one hurtling into the Pacific ocean in February 2009).
The US$3. 4-billion mission a collaboration between NASA and the German Aerospace Center has had its share of turmoil
when it was axed temporarily from the NASA budget. Scientific operations should begin in October with full capacity about 800 hours of observation time a year expected by 2014.
The debate began with a 2007 study1 that used data gathered by NASA's Terra satellite to argue that the canopy of the Amazon rainforest grew
In particular, he is pushing for NASA to prioritize a mission called the Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (Hyspiri),
Research Milky way's double bubble Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, a team of astronomers declared last week that they had discovered two gargantuan'bubbles'of ray-emitting particles extending north and south of our Galaxy's centre (M. Su et al.
Researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on 16 november that analysis of the mineral compositions of some 1
Atlas Energy of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the latest to be snapped up; on 9 november, oil group Chevron of San ramon, California, said it would buy the firm in a US$4. 3-billion deal.
Says Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New york city and proprietor of the Realclimate blog:
Venus probe flop In a bitter disappointment for Japan's space agency, its Akatsuki spacecraft failed to enter orbit around Venus on 6 december.
The probe was intended to monitor the hot planet's atmosphere but must now wait six years for another chance to reach orbit.
Events Private spaceflight success Spacex (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) has become the first private firm to launch a spacecraft into orbit and return it to Earth.
NASA expects the craft to ferry astronauts, supplies and research materials to the International Space station when its shuttle fleet retires next year.
Spacex, based in Hawthorne, California, hopes to dock Dragon with the station during its next demonstration launch,
NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati will be NASA's chief scientist from 3 january, the agency's administrator Charles Bolden announced on 13 december.
A researcher on polar ice who worked at NASA for a decade until 2008, Abdalati is currently director of the Earth science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
He is NASA's first chief scientist since James Garvin, who served in the post during 2004 05.
NASA and the German Aerospace Center, who together fund SOFIA, plan two more science flights before Christmas.
is scheduled to make its first attempt to launch a spacecraft into orbit on its Falcon 9 rocket and return the craft to Earth.
NASA waste NASA could end up spending US$575 million on a space programme that has already been cancelled,
This means that NASA has to fund Constellation former president George w bush's programme to return to the Moon and reach Mars, at $200 million a month until 4 march.
and launch vehicles below limits that are lower than those agreed in a previous treaty; it also allows hands-on inspections to verify the numbers.
Stephen Crooks, climate change programme manager at the environmental consultancy ESA PWA in San francisco, California, estimates that emissions from drained mangroves and salt marshes total half a billion tonnes
Research Comet flyby NASA's Stardust spacecraft sped past comet Tempel 1 on 14 february. The probe,
Coming up 22 23 february In La jolla, California, leading genetics researchers gather to discuss the promise of human genomics over the next decade. go. nature. com/w8zzsx 23 february NASA's Glory
which funds agencies such as NASA and the National Science Foundation. Each subcommittee must now make spending recommendations,
Coming up 14 february NASA's Stardust mission 墉 rebranded NEXT 墉 is due to fly by the comet Tempel 1. It is the first follow-up mission to a comet:
The NASA satellite MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) captured 490 images of the region early last year at a resolution of 250 metres.
Research Shuttle swansong NASA's space shuttle Discovery launched for its 39th and final flight on 24 february, taking six astronauts as well as supplies and additional science capabilities to the International Space station on an 11
NASA's other two shuttles are each due to fly once more this year before the agency's shuttle fleet retires.
Booking a rocket The first contracts have been signed to send researchers into suborbit using commercial spacecraft.
The Southwest Research Institute, in San antonio, Texas, said last week it had paid for six scientists to fly with XCOR Aerospace,
whose spacecraft will take off from Spaceport America in New mexico. The institute may opt to purchase a total of 17 seats with the two companies
and cancer. go. nature. com/5lwqim 7 11 march Preliminary analysis of dust picked up from a distant asteroid last year by the Hayabusa spacecraft will be among highlights of the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science
Shuttles at rest The four remaining vehicles of the US Space shuttle fleet were assigned their final resting places on 12 april.
Atlantis will remain at the Kennedy space center in Merritt Island, Florida; Endeavour will head to the California Science Center in Los angeles;
Research Brain atlas debuts A genetic and anatomical map of the human brain, bankrolled by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen,
The Seattle, Washington-based Allen Brain science Institute's human brain atlas (www. brain-map. org) logged gene expression patterns and biochemical activity at 1,
The US$55-million project follows a mouse brain atlas released in 2006, and a map of the mouse spinal cord two years later.
Gravity probe B NASA announced on 4 may that its Gravity Probe B mission 墉 conceived
who developed the current method for detecting vegetation using NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer sensor
The heart of the CAO's US$8. 3-million sensing system dubbed the Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System (ATOMS) is a spectroscopic imager designed by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL
This really has taken everything we have learned at NASA and brought it to bear in the most advanced airborne imaging spectrometer ever built,
lead engineer on the project at the JPL. With data from a single flight that used an earlier version of the system,
NASA/JPL-CALTECHEVENTSCURIOSITY bound for Mars NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, also known as Curiosity, is on its way to Gale crater on Mars. The 900-kilogram rover (pictured,
being tested On earth last year) launched on 26 november from the Kennedy space center in Florida. It will spend the next nine months travelling to Mars
California. sites. agu. org/fallmeeting5-9 december The first conference on the scientific results from the Kepler exoplanet mission takes place at the NASA Ames Research Park, Moffett Field,
Events Heavenly kiss China's unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft docked with its Tiangong 1 module on 2 november,
Two more missions, perhaps carrying astronauts, will follow in 2012. If the next stages of testing go to plan,
China will launch further modules to be assembled into a space station by 2020. Back from'Mars'Six men have survived 520 days cooped up in 3 small rooms at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow
The rift (pictured, around 80 metres wide and 50 metres deep) was seen first in Mid-october by NASA's Operation Icebridge project, which released images last week.
NASA science head John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist and astronaut who carried out repairs on the Hubble Space Telescope
will head NASA's US$5-billion science mission directorate, the agency confirmed on 19 december. Nature reported the first news of the appointment in November.
aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan (who won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 for designing the Spaceshipone rocket-plane,
A twin Earth NASA's Kepler telescope has reached one of its major mission milestones: discovering another Earth-sized planet.
NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft are due to ease into orbit around the Moon from where they will start to map lunar gravity in March 2012. go. nature. com/msewftregulation of aviation's greenhouse-gas emissions is set to start in the European union.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASUEVENTS Fresh clue to ancient Mars water NASA's Opportunity rover has discovered veins of hydrothermally deposited minerals at the edge of Endeavour crater on Mars. The bright
Chaired by Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New york, the assessment ranked hundreds of  options for reducing black carbon and ozone pollution according to their potential to reduce warming.
NASA, meanwhile, looks set to lose out, with cuts of 3. 2%to its science budget
and 21%to planetary science leading the agency's administrator Charles Bolden to cancel plans for joint Mars missions with the European space agency.
ESA, CNES, ARIANESPACE, OPTIQUE VIDEO DU CSG, L. MIRARESEARCH Vega launches Europe's Vega rocket, a low-cost launcher intended to get small scientific satellites into low-Earth orbit,
The inaugural launch, from the European space agency's spaceport in Kourou, French guiana, carried nine satellites; its main research payload was the Italian Space agency's Laser Relativity Satellite (LARES, pictured:
sphere on top of the rocket's payload) which will study the Lense-Thirring effect, a distortion of space-time caused by Earth's gravity.
A whiff of interstellar clouda NASA spacecraft has detected directly atoms from outside the boundary of the Solar system
Mccomas presented the results today at NASA s headquarters in WASHINGTON DC, to coincide with the publication of a suite of papers detailing the results in the Astrophysical Journal.
The IBEX spacecraft is far from this boundary, in orbit around the Earth, but it has detectors that are sensitive to neutral atoms that can enter the heliosphere.
Although a previous NASA mission, Ulysses, measured neutral helium from beyond the heliosphere, IBEX is the first to measure heavier elements, such as oxygen and neon,
and to conduct targeted surveys led by scientists and park rangers. Wilkinson and his colleagues at the WWF plan to gather leeches from the Vietnamese side of the Annamites
15 21 june 2012space X-rays NASA s Nustar telescope, which will examine high-energy X-rays produced at the thresholds of black holes (see Nature 483,255;
Chinafotopress/Gettychina celebrates space-station success In a milestone for China s space programme, three astronauts boarded the country s orbiting Tiangong 1 space module on 18 Â June.
Their flight on the Shenzhou 9 craft was the country s fourth manned space launch,
but is the first of a series of missions in efforts to build a manned space station, the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace),
) The mission carried China s first female astronaut, Liu Yang. See go. nature. com/f5qkka for more.
R. Sachs/CNP/Corbissally Ride dies Scientist, astronaut and educator Sally Ride (pictured), who was the first US woman in space,
Ride s first space flight was aboard the shuttle Challenger in June 1983; she later served on the commissions investigating the Challenger
After working at NASA, she headed the California Space Institute in San diego, and founded a company, Sally Ride Science,
Fausto Llerena, a ranger at the Galapagos National park and George s long-term keeper, found him slumped in his corral.
astronauts and former NASA officials, says that the telescope would be the world s first privately funded deep-space mission.
Van Ittersum and his colleagues are creating a'Global Yield Gap Atlas'using simulation-based models to capture data on agronomic conditions, water usage and crop yield.
and US President Barack Obama unveiled an aid package for stricken farmers on 13 Â August 17-23 august NASA s Mars rover Curiosity will attempt its first drive on the red planet next week
although no firm date had been set as Nature went to press. www. nasa. gov/msl19-23 august The American Chemical Society holds its autumn meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Mars landing NASA announced on 6 Â August that its Mars rover, Curiosity, had landed successfully in Gale Crater after an 8-month journey
Higgs papers Researchers at ATLAS and the CMS, the two main physics experiments at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, posted their papers describing a new Higgs-boson-like
particle to the online preprint server arxiv. org on 31 july (ATLAS Collaboration http://arxiv. org/abs/1207.7214 (2012) and CMS Collaboration http://arxiv org
He confirmed his field observations with 2006 data from the LANDSAT Earth-observing satellites operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey.
The report also found evidence that local forest rangers were involved in the illegal timber trade,
and that illegal coal mining in the area was taking place in full knowledge of the rangers.
Private spaceflight California firm Spacex launched its first mission to resupply the International Space station on 7 october, a milestone in commercial spaceflight.
the Dragon craft was due to dock with the space station on 10 october. The launch saw one engine fail,
A year in space Two astronauts one American and one Russian will stay on the International Space station for an entire year in a mission beginning in spring 2015,
NASA said on 5 october. Space-station missions are restricted usually to six months. The mission will collect more data about how humans react to long stays in space.
But one year is not a record: Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov spent 437 days in space on the Mir space station in 1994-95.
SOURCE: CIMMYT/FAOSTATAN analysis of agricultural potential in 12 African countries, released on 9 october, suggests that farmers are making use of just 10-25%of the land where wheat can be grown profitably without irrigation.
the outcome of last week s European space agency (ESA) budget negotiations was expected better than, given the continent s economic troubles.
But for Volker Liebig, ESA s head of Earth observation, there is a sting in the agreement.
The multi-year budget that member states approved which falls some  2  billion (US$2. 6  billion) short of ESA s proposed spending of about  12 Â
but in April ESA lost contact with Envisat, the one satellite providing such data (see Nature 484,423-424;
) Neither Japan s existing Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite nor NASA s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2),
says atmospheric physicist David Crisp of NASA s Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is the science team leader of OCO-2."A timely launch of this satellite should be among the highest priorities of ESA.
Carbonsat s competitor for ESA funding, FLEX, would also help to pin down carbon sinks, by measuring the faint fluorescence generated by plants during photosynthesis a measure of how efficiently they absorb carbon."
"The last thing we want to do is to destroy the forests or whatever is absorbing almost half of the CO2 that we are emitting,
However, there was better news for other ESA programmes. Europe s Ariane  5 rocket launcher, which is more expensive than competitors,
They also reached a deal on how to pay for Europe s contribution to operating the International Space station between 2017 and 2020.
The costs will be covered in kind by a German-backed plan to provide the propulsion and avionics for NASA s Orion manned spacecraft.
ESA also agreed to Russian involvement in its twin Exomars missions an ambitious programme of orbiters and landers scheduled for launch in 2016 and 2018.
NASA pulled out of the project earlier this year. But ESA s science programme faces a squeeze:
it will receive  508  million a year for the five-year period from 2013 to 2017.
Willy Benz of the University of Bern, chair of ESA s Space science Advisory Committee, says that this could force the agency to delay a future large mission;
So for the latest study, Sassan Saatchi, a remote-sensing expert at the California Institute of technology Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, studied the forest s microwave silhouette,
which are unaffected by clouds, from a NASA Â probe. When it passed over lush canopy,
according to results from NASA s MESSENGER probe, published on 29 november in Science. Although  the surface of the planet reaches temperatures of 400 °C,
a systems engineer who is spearheading the monitoring initiative at NASA s Jet propulsion laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
says Charles Miller, a colleague of Duren s at the JPL. Tuned to near-infrared wavelengths,
25 31 january 2013nasa joins Euclid  NASA is joining a  1-billion (US$1. 3-billion) European space agency mission to explore the dark parts of the Universe.
On 24 Â January the US space agency announced that it would join Euclid, a space telescope that will measure the locations and shapes of some 2 Â billion distant galaxies.
Under the agreement, 40 NASA scientists will join the project and NASA will contribute 20 infrared detectors, valued at around $50 million in total,
for one of the instruments on the spacecraft. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2020. Reed Schererdrilling team reaches Lake Whillans A US research team drilled through 800-metre-thick ice to reach the subglacial Lake Whillans in Western Antarctica on 28 january.
The project is the first to retrieve fully intact samples of liquid water (pictured) and sediment from a subglacial lake,
ESA s climate-eye dilemmasnow, trees or the air we breathe? Europe s environmental research community is facing the difficult task of settling
this week to weigh up the scientific benefits of projects proposed for the roughly  300-million (US$390-million) seventh Earth Explorer mission of the European space agency (ESA).
Neither NASA s Landsat programme, which has captured images of Earth since 1972 (see Nature 494,13-14;
And climate scientists have been warning of an impending data crisis after the 2010 retirement of NASA s ICESAT mission,
) Once ESA has decided which it will back, a satellite could be ready for launch by the end of the decade.
Whichever proposal prevails at the Graz meeting is almost certain to be funded by ESA. A final decision is expected at the agency s board meeting in May in Svalbard, Norway,
but ESA has backed the verdict of the scientists in the past.""If I had my way, I would love to see all three missions fly,
Spain, France and Italy last year reduced their contributions to ESA, leaving the agency with  600 million less for its 2013-17 Earth-observation budget than it had hoped for.
says Volker Liebig, director of ESA s Earth-observation programmes. But tight budgets are likely to shrink the size and ambition of future missions."
The rocket is the first vehicle to take off from NASA s new launch pad at the Wallops Flight Facility In virginia.
The flight puts NASA one step closer to having two US cargo carriers available to resupply the International Space station."
said NASA launch commentator Kyle Herring. See go. nature. com/b6oeoz for more. Lawsuit settlement Cancer researcher Philippe Bois has settled a lawsuit against the US Department of health and human services (DHHS) over scientific misconduct, according to an announcement on 18 Â April.
said the European space agency. Astronomers have hailed the legacy of the observatory, which over three years has helped them to revise theories about the birth
the German Aerospace Center (DLR) reported on 9 july, on the basis of images collected by its Terrasar-X satellite.
Economy rocket The European space agency (ESA) announced the design of its next rocket Ariane  6, on 9  July.
ESA s choice of a more cost-effective design was influenced by competition from rockets abroad, notably the Russian Proton launcher.
NASA/ESA/M. Kornmessertrue blue planet Using the Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have discovered the deep blue hue of exoplanet HD Â 189733 Â b (pictured in an artist s impression) the first planet beyond the Solar system to have its colour directly measured.
Red rover NASA s next Mars explorer will be a leaner meaner version of the Curiosity rover, with one major upgrade:
NASA proposed the mission in December, less than a year after it disappointed planetary scientists by pulling out of Europe-led Mars missions planned for 2016 and 2018.
19 july NASA s Cassini spacecraft turns to image Saturn and its entire ring system while also capturing a picture of Earth from 1. 44 Â billion kilometres away. 20-24 july In Kagoshima, Japan,
S. Wiessinger/NASA Goddard Space Flight Centerastronomers image pink exoplanet A magenta exoplanet 17.5 parsecs from Earth is the lowest-mass planet that has ever been imaged directly orbiting a Sun-like star
outside the Solar system, NASA announced last week. The Subaru Telescope on Mauna kea Hawaii, took pictures of the exoplanet GJ 504b at near-infrared wavelengths with the help of adaptive optics.
NASA launched the US$855-million Landsat  8 probe in February (see Nature 494,13-14;
2013), but the space agency has outlined not yet clear mission objectives or secured sufficient funding for a successor.
Paul E. Alers/NASANASA deputy out NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver (pictured) is resigning after four years,
As second in command to NASA chief Charles Bolden, Garver had a major role in developing initiatives such as commercial space transportation
20 26 september 2013space mission dead After a 7. 6-billion-kilometre journey, NASA s comet-hunting Deep Impact spacecraft is no more.
NASA ponders Kepler s futurenasa just can t quit Kepler. On 15  August, the agency ann  ounced that it would stop trying to revive the failed reaction wheels that gave the planet-hunting telescope its precise pointing ability.
two weeks earlier, it had asked astronomers to submit ideas by 3 Â September on how the hobbled spacecraft might still perform good science.
if any, to recommend to NASA headquarters for further review. To secure funding from the space agency, the Kepler team will have to show that the studies could not be done by other telescopes.
This will be no easy task especially given that engineers are not sure how well Kepler can perform with just two of its four spinning reaction wheels,
"We re in a real quandary, says Kepler principal investigator Bill Borucki at NASA s Ames Research center in Moffett Field, California."
. If any of the proposals recommended by the Kepler team seems worthwhile to NASA, they will be examined early next year by a review panel of external scientists.
NASA will make its final funding decisions next June. Not everyone is rooting for Kepler. Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wants NASA to support missions that are still healthy.
He has used Fermi to discover two galaxy-sized bubbles of ionized gas blowing from the centre of the Milky way,
Brent Stirton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013in'Ivory trash'by Brent Stirton, a Kenyan ranger inspects elephants killed by poachers.
says Sassan Saatchi, a remote-sensing scientist at NASA s Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is leading the data analysis for the project."
The biomass estimates are used then to calibrate imagery from NASA s Landsat spacecraft and radar data from Japan s Advanced Land Observing Satellite,
Volcanic ash can melt in the high temperatures of jet engines, clogging the equipment. Fukushima fuel Workers in Japan have taken the first steps towards fully decommissioning the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
MAVEN launch NASA s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft is on its way to study the upper atmosphere of the red planet.
22 november The European space agency is scheduled to launch Swarm, a constellation of satellites that will study Earth s magnetic field for four years. go. nature. com/rxaaur24-27 november Science for global sustainable development is the theme of the sixth World Science Forum,
18 november NASA s MAVEN mission to Mars is scheduled to launch. See page 178 for more. 19-21 november In Paris,
NASA/ESA/J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer & the HFF Team (STSCI) Super-distant galaxies glimpsed Astronomers unveiled pictures of the deepest galaxy cluster ever imaged at the annual meeting
The images from NASA s Hubble Space Telescope are part of the Frontier Fields programme which harnesses the phenomenon of gravitational lensing (see Nature 497,554-556;
Space station stays As space-agency leaders from around the world gathered in WASHINGTON DC to discuss the future of space exploration
the US White house approved operations aboard the International Space station until at least 2024, extending the previous 2020 end date.
In a joint announcement on 8 Â January, Charles Bolden, the head of NASA, and President Barack Obama s chief science adviser John Holdren said that the decision will enable the continuation of short-and long-term research,
20 january The European space agency s Rosetta spacecraft comes out of hibernation in preparation for reaching its destination later this year:
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