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As if the debate over what is and what is not a planet hasn't gotten confusing enough, Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have now confirmed the existence of a tortured, baked object that could be called a "cometary planet." The gas giant planet, dubbed HD 209458b, is orbiting so close to its star that its heated atmosphere is escaping away into space. Now, observations by the new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) aboard NASA's Hubble suggest that powerful stellar winds are sweeping the castoff material behind the scorched planet and shaping it into a comet-like tail.

This is JAXA's Japanese astronaut primary activity report for May 2010.

An Aerojet AJ26 rocket engine was delivered to NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center on July 15, 2010. This is the first of a series of Taurus II engines to be tested at Stennis to include acceptance testing of flight engines. Stennis will provide propulsion system acceptance testing for the Taurus II space launch vehicle, which is being developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va. The first Taurus II mission will be flown in support of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services cargo demonstration to the International Space Station. Orbital's Taurus II design uses a pair of Aerojet AJ26 rocket engines to provide first stage propulsion for the new launch vehicle. Image Credit: NASA

The first spacecraft designed by NASA to orbit Mercury is giving scientists a new perspective on the planet's atmosphere and evolution.

On Monday, July 19, NASA Television will launch a full-time High Definition (HD) channel that media, cable and satellite service providers can access.

On July 11, 2010, the new moon passed directly in front of the sun, causing a total solar eclipse in the South Pacific. In this image, the solar eclipse is shown in gray and white from a photo provided by the Williams College Expedition to Easter Island and was embedded with an image of the sun’s outer corona taken by the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on the SOHO spacecraft and shown in red false color. LASCO uses a disk to blot out the bright sun and the inner corona so that the faint outer corona can be monitored and studied. Further, the dark silhouette of the moon was covered with an image of the sun taken in extreme ultraviolet light at about the same time by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The composite brings out the correlation of structures in the inner and outer corona. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Williams College Eclipse Expedition

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the existence of a baked object that could be called a "cometary planet." The gas giant planet, named HD 209458b, is orbiting so close to its star that its heated atmosphere is escaping into space.

Serving as a contracting agent for the Department of Defense’s Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office, NASA has selected Millennium Engineering and Integration Co., of Arlington, Va., to receive a contract for Rapid Response Space Works (RRSW).

Dim, distant,

Easter Island Eclipse