NASA

Every year, NASA's Desert RATS spend two weeks in the Arizona desert conducting tests in anticipation of future lunar exploration. This year, two crew members lived for more than 300 hours inside NASA's new moon vehicle, the Lunar Electric Rover. --by Nikki Staab

Scientists have new pictures of the old Apollo landing sites, just in time for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that put humans on the moon. --by Nicole Staab

Want to suggest places on Mars for ASU's THEMIS camera to photograph? Want to see the very latest infrared images being beamed back from the Red Planet? Now you can, through two new features of Google Earth 5.0. (image courtesy of NASA) --by Robert Burnham

ASU professor Mark Robinson is sending his work to the moon this afternoon aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Scientists at ASU's Mars Space Flight Facility are using the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to monitor a new dust storm that has erupted on the Red Planet. --by Robert Burnham

Cuatro Cienegas, in Mexico's Chihuahuan desert, might hold the key to secrets about microbial evolution, the Cambrian Explosion, speciation, extraterrestrial life, and just about everything else. That key is phosphorus. --by Margaret Coulombe

Scientists studying NASA's MESSENGER data have imaged parts of Mercury never seen before. They have found that volcanos played a large role in shaping the planet's surface, and that Mercury's rocks are unusually iron deficient. --by Robert Burnham

Why did the earliest life on Earth--mostly bacteria--remain virtually unchanged for a billion years? --by Diane Boudreau