[Monday, June 2, 2008] Last week, 32 talented candidates gathered at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, with the hope of becoming part of a unique study that will act as a platform for human exploration of the Solar System.

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[Tuesday, June 3, 2008] A team of Penn State scientists has discovered a new ultra-small species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles.

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[Tuesday, June 3, 2008] A glint of bright material appears in the scooped-up soil and in the hole from which it came. "That bright material might be ice or salt. We're eager to do testing of the next three surface samples collected nearby to learn more about it," said Ray Arvids

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[Tuesday, June 3, 2008] NASA and The University of Arizona will hold a televised news briefing on Wednesday, June 4, at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT), to present the latest news from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which touched down on the Red Planet on May 25.

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[Thursday, June 5, 2008] A microscope on NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander has taken images of dust and sand particles with the greatest resolution ever returned from another planet.

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[Thursday, June 5, 2008] Today's weather report from Mars is great, thanks to Odyssey Moon industrial partners MacDonald Dettwiler (MDA) and Optech Incorporated.

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[Saturday, June 7, 2008] The arm of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander released a handful of clumpy Martian soil onto a screened opening of a laboratory instrument on the spacecraft Friday, but the instrument did not confirm that any of the sample passed through the screen.

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[Tuesday, June 10, 2008] Engineers operating the Robotic Arm on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander are testing a revised method for delivering soil samples to laboratory instruments on Phoenix's deck now that researchers appreciate how clumpy the soil is at the landing site.

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[Wednesday, June 11, 2008] "We have an oven full," Phoenix co-investigator Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said today. "It took 10 seconds to fill the oven. The ground moved."

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[Saturday, June 14, 2008] New observations from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander provide the most magnified view ever seen of Martian soil, showing particles clumping together even at the smallest visible scale.

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[Monday, June 16, 2008] Scientists looking for evidence of life on Mars have turned to technology invented by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers to help with their mission.

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[Wednesday, June 18, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander began digging in an area called "Wonderland" early Tuesday, taking its first scoop of soil from a polygonal surface feature within the "national park" region that mission scientists have been preserving for science.

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[Thursday, June 19, 2008] Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.

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[Saturday, June 21, 2008] Scientists relishing confirmation of water ice near the surface beside NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander anticipate even bigger discoveries from the robotic mission in the weeks ahead.

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[Saturday, June 21, 2008] NASA's Human Research Program and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, or NSBRI, of Houston will fund a group of research proposals to help investigate questions about astronaut health and performance on future space exploration missions.

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[Tuesday, June 24, 2008] A team of scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom has developed a technique using ultraviolet light to identify organic matter in soils that they say could be used to document the existence of life on Mars.

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[Tuesday, June 24, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has delivered a scoop of Martian soil from the "Snow White" trenches to the optical microscope for analysis tomorrow, June 24, the 29th Martian day of the mission, or Sol 29.

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[Wednesday, June 25, 2008] A new analysis of the topography and gravity of Mars has solved one of the biggest remaining mysteries in the solar system -- why the planet Mars has two completely different kinds of terrain, in its northern and southern hemispheres.

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[Wednesday, June 25, 2008] New analysis of Mars' terrain using NASA spacecraft observations reveals what appears to be by far the largest impact crater ever found in the solar system.

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[Wednesday, June 25, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander placed a sample of Martian soil in the spacecraft's wet chemistry laboratory today for the first time.

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[Thursday, June 26, 2008] A new analysis of Martian soil data suggests that there was once enough water in the planet's atmosphere for a light drizzle or dew to hit the ground, leaving tell-tale signs of its interaction with the planet's surface.

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[Thursday, June 26, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander performed its first wet chemistry on Martian soil flawlessly yesterday, returning a wealth of data that for Phoenix scientists was like winning the lottery.

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[Friday, June 27, 2008] The 106the Rescue Wing will support NASA's Haughton-Mars Project Research Station located in the Canadian high arctic by flying in research equipment, personnel and supplies next week.

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[Friday, June 27, 2008] New medical equipment recently delivered to the Antarctic station Concordia will help understand how our bodies physically adapt to this extreme environment -- knowledge which could help prepare for a future human mission to Mars.

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[Saturday, June 28, 2008] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander scraped to icy soil in the "Wonderland" area on June 26, confirming that surface soil, subsurface soil and icy soil can be sampled at a single trench.

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