Sally Ride, First American Woman in Space, Passes Away Read more:

Venus Transit June 2012

NASA ScienceCasts: ISS Transit of Venus

Cassini Captures a Rarely-Seen Moon

While many of us here on Earth were waiting for the Moon to take a bite out of the Sun this past Sunday, Cassini was doing some moon watching of its own, 828.5 million miles away!
Cassini Captures a Rarely-Seen Moon

ScienceCasts: The 2012 Transit of Venus

NASA's Spitzer Finds Galaxy With Split Personality

PASADENA, Calif. -- While some galaxies are rotund and others are slender disks like our spiral Milky Way, new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show that the Sombrero galaxy is both. The galaxy, which is a round elliptical galaxy with a thin disk embedded inside, is one of the first known to exhibit characteristics of the two different types. The findings will lead to a better understanding of galaxy evolution, a topic still poorly understood. 

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: 
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-115&cid=release_2012-115

Cassini Investigates Titan’s Chemical Factory

Saturn's giant moon Titan hides behind a thick, smoggy atmosphere that's well known to scientists as one of the most complex chemical environments in the solar system. It's a productive "factory" cranking out hydrocarbons that rain down on Titan's icy surface and cloak it in soot. With a brutally cold surface temperature of around minus 270 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 170 degrees Celsius), the hydrocarbons form lakes of liquid methane and ethane. 

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-116&cid=release_2012-116

LYRID METEOR SHOWER

The annual Lyrid meteor shower peaks this weekend on the night of April 21-22 when Earth passes through a stream of debris from ancient Comet Thatcher. Usually the shower is mild (10-20 meteors per hour) but unmapped filaments of dust in the comet's tail sometimes trigger outbursts ten times stronger. This year's peak coincides with a new Moon, so lunar interference will not be a problem. The promise of a good display has prompted NASA to plan an unusual 3D meteor photography experiment combining observations from the ground, a research balloon, and the International Space Station. More information, observing tips, and live audio from a meteor radar are available on today's edition of http://SpaceWeather.com

SPECTACULAR EXPLOSION:

On April 16th around 17:45 UT, magnetic fields curling over the sun's northeastern limb rose up and erupted, producing one of the most visually-spectacular explosions in years. The event, which also produced an M1.7-class solar flare and a coronal mass ejection, was not Earth-directed. Nevertheless, it confirms suspicions that a significant active region is rotating onto the Earth-side of the sun. Visit http://spaceweather.com for movies and updates.

Kepler Mission verlängert

Die Suche nach Extrasolaren Planeten mit dem Weltraumteleskop Kepler, das im März 2009 startete, wurde von der NASA bis Septemper 2016 verlängert. Das Ziel ist Erden ähnliche oder kleinere extrasolare Planeten zu entdecken. 

Mehr dazu auf astronews.com

Wikipedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_%28Weltraumteleskop%29
Kepler Homepage: http://kepler.nasa.gov/