Scientists at Queen's University have made a finding that will help us to understand more about the turbulent solar weather and its affect on our planet.

The first NASA spacecraft to image and map the dynamic interactions taking place where the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space is ready for launch Oct. 19. The two-year mission will begin from the Kwajalein Atoll, a part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Two University of Iowa space physicists report that the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which has been traveling outward from the Sun for 31 years, has made the first direct observations of the solar wind termination shock, according to a paper published in the July 3 issue of the journal Nature.

The mighty Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to persevere in brutal conditions, as revealed in images of the sun they are sending home. The images show how opaque the Martian atmosphere has been in the face of a raging, two-month dust storm.

A partnership between NASA and the U.S. Naval Academy is offering students real-world experience. During 2007 and 2008, students at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., will build a satellite called "MidSTAR-2" through a U.S. Department of Defense program that will carry four experiments into space in 2011 to look at different parts of Earth's atmosphere, gamma rays and solar winds.