Space News Archive - August 14, 2006

High in the Arctic, just below Earth's north polar ice cap, a collaboration of nearly two dozen biologists, geologists, and engineers have embarked on an expedition to Mars.

Jim Snoddy and other NASA engineers didn't just go to the drawing board or a warehouse when they needed ideas - and parts - for America's next lunar rocket. They went to space museums.

Call it CSI Milkyway. Scientists using NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) have solved a 35-year-old mystery about the whereabouts of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen often called "heavy hydrogen."

Astronomers have long scrutinized the vast and layered clouds of the Orion nebula, an industrious star-making factory visible to the naked eye in the sword of the famous hunter constellation. Yet, Orion is still full of secrets.