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blue filter on the spacecraft's main camera recorded the lightning flashes

scientists then exaggerated the blue tint in order to pin down the lightning's location and size

analysis of the new images revealed that the energy from the visible lightning flashes alone could have spiked up to 3 billion watts over one second

on par with some of the strongest lightning flashes on Earth.  

the lightning on Saturn was spotted across a region 100 miles (160 kilometers

Cassini spotted eight daytime lightning flashes on Saturn, five in one part of the storm and three in an another

storm wrapped completely around Saturn at its peak and is the longest-lived storm ever seen on the ringed planet. It began in December 2010 and lasted about 200 days, finally sputtering out in late June 2011

mystery that remains is why the daytime Saturn lightning only turned up in Cassini's blue imaging filter

Scientists aren't sure if that means the lightning is actually blue in color, or if it's due to a short exposure time of the camera that helps the camera filter detect the lightning

Additional findings support previous indications the moon's icy shell is rigid and in the process of freezing solid

Researchers found that a relatively high density was required for Titan's ocean in order to explain the gravity data

This indicates the ocean is probably an extremely salty brine of water mixed with dissolved salts likely composed of sulfur, sodium and potassium

The density indicated for this brine would give the ocean a salt content roughly equal to the saltiest bodies of water on Earth

Giuseppe Mitri of the University of Nantes in France

"Knowing this may change the way we view this ocean as a possible abode for present-day life, but conditions might have been very different there in the past."

Cassini data also indicate the thickness of Titan's ice crust varies slightly from place to place.

The researchers said this can best be explained if the moon's outer shell is stiff, as would be the case if the ocean were slowly crystalizing, and turning to ice.

A further consequence of a rigid ice shell, according to the study, is any outgassing of methane into Titan's atmosphere must happen at scattered "hot spots"—like the hot spot on Earth that gave rise to the Hawaiian Island chain

Titan's methane does not appear to result from convection or plate tectonics recycling its ice shell.

How methane gets into the moon's atmosphere has long been of great interest to researchers, as molecules of this gas are broken apart by sunlight on short geological timescales

Titan's present atmosphere contains about five percent methane. This means some process, thought to be geological in nature, must be replenishing the gas

"Our work suggests looking for signs of methane outgassing will be difficult with Cassini, and may require a future mission that can find localized methane sources," said Jonathan Lunine, a scientist on the Cassini mission at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

equivalent to conditions 300 miles (480 kilometers) above Earth

one oxygen ion for every 2,550 cubic feet (90,000 cubic meters

still enough to qualify as an atmosphere

announced Friday (March 2).

Dione, in addition to Saturn's rings and the moon Rhea, is a source of oxygen molecules

shows that molecular oxygen is actually common in the Saturn system and reinforces that it can come from a process that doesn't involve life

Dione is one of Saturn's smaller moons

698 miles (1,123 km) wide

orbits Saturn once every 2.7 days

distance of about 234,000 miles (377,400 km)

roughly the same as that between Earth and its moon

The oxygen on Dione may potentially be created by solar photons or high-energy particles that bombard the Saturn moon's ice-covered surface, kicking up oxygen ions in the process, Tokar explained.  Another idea suggests that geologic processes on Dione could feed the moon's atmosphere, researchers added.

atmosphere on Saturn's moon Rhea — one similar to that of Dione — was also detected in 2010

Dione was discovered in 1684 by astronomer Giovanni Cassini

named after the Greek goddess Dione, who the ancient Greek poet Homer described as the mother of the goddess Aphrodite

launched the Cassini mission in 1997 and it has been orbiting Saturn since its arrival at the ringed planet in 2004

joint effort by NASA and the space agencies of Europe and Italy, has been extended several times, most recently until 2017

hazy layer that hovered 500 kilometers

sunk to an altitude of around 360 kilometers

One year on Titan is the equivalent of nearly 30 years on Earth

one Titan year after Voyager, the moon looks more or less as it did in 1981

Cassini first swung by in 2004, the haze had ballooned outward and covered the entire moon except for the wintry north pole vortex

, as winter comes to the south, the haze is shrinking, and images snapped by Cassini in late February reveal the beginnings of a vortex at the south pole

It now looks like oxygen production is a universal process wherever an icy moon is bathed in a strong trapped radiation and plasma environment

Cassini flew by Dione on 7 April 2010

During that flyby

molecular oxygen ions near the moon's icy surface

used the measurements to estimate the density of the molecular oxygen ions to be in the range of 0.01 to 0.09 ions per cubic centimetre

molecular oxygen ions are produced when neutral molecules are ionized; the measurements confirm that a neutral exosphere surrounds Dione.

Dione's exosphere is very thin - compared to Earth's atmosphere the density is about a million billionth. The exciting thing is that there is oxygen

surface temperatures plunge to -179C

hydrological cycle runs with methane: methane lakes, methane rivers, and methane rain

In all of its observations of Titan, Cassini only spotted two instances of darkened regions that might have indicated rainfall.

approximately 100 miles (200 kilometers) in diameter when it exits the tops of the clouds

scientists deduce that the lightning bolts originate in the clouds deeper down in Saturn's atmosphere where water droplets freeze

analogous to where lightning is created in Earth's atmosphere.

In one composite image, they recorded five flashes, and in another, three flashes

17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue

2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta

3 January

8 January

20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells

25 January

An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology

30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch

6 February

Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets

Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans

American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice

10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane

15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people

28 February

Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta

A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart

1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot

3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year

researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants

7 March

A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies

11 March

12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals

14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson

18 March

NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm

27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.

NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station

3 April

15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital

18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft

21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight

After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh

29 April

1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope

A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life

NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like

15 May

16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine

27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory

29 May

Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia

A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent

4 June

During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory

20 June

China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date

26 June

20 June

20 June

6 July

Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms

15 July

ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector

19 July

NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover

Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn

29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth

exoplanet

7 January

Astronomers

report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy

20 February

NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon

10 June

Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence

25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667

11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere

NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered

15 August

Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination

3 September

12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977

NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples

26 September

In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type

mafic

as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi

perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site

earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts

Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b

30 September

8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"

16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.

Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through

17 October

22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet

4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy

11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars

5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System

21 November

1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16

3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b

9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater

12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter

14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there

18 December

nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away

20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported

the simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa

If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean

then this means that future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa's potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice

This would actually be the second moon in the solar system known to have water vapor plumes

The first one to be discovered was Saturn's moon Enceladus

First detected in 2005 by NASA's Cassini orbiter, the plumes also possess dust and ice particles

So far, though, only water vapor gases have been detected in Europa.

It's possible that these plumes could be vented from long cracks on Europa's surface

Cassini has actually seen similar fissures that host the Enceladus

Europa plumes are similar to Enceladus in another way. They seem to also vary depending on the moon's orbital position; active jets have only been seen when Europa is farthest from Jupiter

supports a key prediction that Europa should tidally flex by a significant amount if it has a subsurface ocean

Once the plumes are confirmed, scientists can take a closer look at their composition and may even be able to find out more about the potential subsurface sea of Europa

team found patterns in the sunlight reflecting off a northern lake called Punga Mare that they interpret as two-centimeter-high waves

There

may be a mudflat instead of a deep lake, and a shallow film of liquid on top may be the cause of the unique light signature

If life on Titan exists,

the best place to look

is in large bodies of liquid—the kind that form waves

Waves on Titan

would confirm that the lakes actually are deep reservoirs of methane and ethane,

True liquid bodies would also make a robotic spacecraft mission to explore Titan's habitability more feasible

By 2017 scientists should know for certain whether what they are seeing is indeed caused by waves

Cassini has been observing the moon during its northern winter, when weak winds are at work

As spring

over the next few years, bringing stronger winds to kick up seas, the probe should capture more definitive evidence of waves if they exist

the presence of such an ocean — possibly containing trace amounts of ammonia – would help explain how methane gets replenished into the moon’s thick atmosphere.

Curiosity used both of her high resolution color mast mounted cameras to collect a series of Earth/Moon images

Processing has removed the numerous cosmic ray strikes

these are not the first images of the Earth from Mars orbit or Mars surface

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit imaged Earth from the surface in March 2004, soon after landing

Mars Global Surveyor in 2003 and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2007

NASA’s Cassini orbiter at Saturn captured the Earth and Moon

in 2013

The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of a Nov. 17 change in voltage

made a list of potential causes, and then determined which we could cross off the list, one by one

Science operations were suspended for six days while this analysis took priority

The likely cause is an internal short in Curiosity's power source, the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator

this short does not affect operation of the power source or the rover

Similar generators on other spacecraft, including NASA's Cassini at Saturn, have experienced shorts with no loss of capability

Testing of another Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator over many years found no loss of capability in the presence of these types of internal shorts

early Nov. 23

that the rover had returned to its pre-Nov. 17 voltage level. This reversal is consistent with their diagnosis of an internal short in the generator on Nov. 17, and the voltage could change again

analysis work to determine the cause of the voltage change gained an advantage from an automated response by the rover's onboard software when it detected the voltage change

The rover stepped up the rate at which it recorded electrical variables, to eight times per second from the usual once per minute, and transmitted that engineering data in its next communication with Earth

In subsequent days, the rover performed diagnostic activities commanded by the team, such as powering on some backup hardware to rule out the possibility of short circuits in certain sensors

key ingredient of plastic containers, car bumpers and other everyday items on Earth

strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene

Scientists used Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) instrument, which measures infrared light given off by Saturn and its moon, made the discovery

When Voyager 1 conducted the first close flyby of the moon in 1980, it recognized gasses in the moon's brown atmosphere as hydrocarbons.

measurement was very difficult to make because propylene's weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals

a 1,200-kilometer-long, 10-kilometer-wide arc of icy material was observed traveling along the edge of the A ring

The arc is thought to be the result of gravitational perturbations caused by an as-yet unseen embedded object about a kilometer wide — possibly a miniature moon in the process of formation

The half-mile-wide object has been unofficially named “Peggy,”

According to the team’s paper, Peggy’s effects on the A ring has been visible to Cassini since May 2012

Eventually Peggy may coalesce into a slightly larger moon and move outward, establishing its own orbital path around Saturn

This is how many of Saturn’s other moons are thought to have formed much further back in the planet’s history

While it is possible that the bright perturbation is the result of an object’s breakup rather than formation, researchers are still looking forward to finding out more about its evolution.