Europe’s ambition of touching down at the Moon’s south pole by 2018 has been boosted by recent test firings of the craft’s thrusters. The robot lander will prove new techniques for sending humans to the Moon and assess lunar hazards.

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Oct.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala, collaborated with NASA's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, NM, and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, Calif, to successfully complete a series of thruster tests at the White Sands test facility.

Beginning Jan 18, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will listen for possible, though improbable, radio transmissions from the Phoenix Mars Lander, which completed five months of studying an arctic Martian site in November 2008.

NASA'S Phoenix Mars Lander entered safe mode late yesterday in response to a low-power fault brought on by deteriorating weather conditions.