[…] The planet closest to the sun has an active magnetic field, plains formed by volcanoes and evidence of water ice in the protected shadows of some of its craters, according to scientists who have analyzed data from the most recent flyby of Mercury.

[…] Washington -- Space shuttle Discovery and its crew touched down June 14 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, completing the STS-124 mission to install and outfit the largest component of the Kibo laboratory from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The mission included three spacewalks to install and outfit the bus-sized pressurized module and activate its robotic arm system.

[…] The mission will extend into the next decade the continuous recording of sea-surface height measurements begun in 1992 by the NASA-French space agency TOPEX/Poseidon mission and extended by the NASA-French space agency Jason 1 mission in 2001. "OSTM/Jason 2 will help create the first multidecadal global record for understanding the vital roles of the ocean in climate change," project scientist Lee-Lueng Fu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California said during a May 20 briefing.

[…] The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States (US) government with the mandate to support basic research and the education of the next generation of physical scientists and engineers.

NSF is recognized as an agency that has a high standard in its merit review process, which is viewed by many as fair and transparent but also very competitive and transparent. This paper focuses on how proposals for research are elicited from the broader community, reviewed, and funded using this merit review process.

[…] The massive development effort, taking place as NASA races to complete the International Space Station, is unparalleled in the U.S. spaceflight enterprise since the shuttle program formally began in 1972. The remaining shuttle fleet -- Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour -- is scheduled to retire in 2010, and Orion’s first manned launch is scheduled for March 2015.

[…] The solar-powered robotic lander will manipulate a 2.3-meter arm to scoop up samples of soil and underground ice. Onboard laboratory instruments will analyze the samples. Cameras and a Canadian-supplied weather station will supply other information about the site's environment. Other Mars landers – Viking I and Viking 2 in 1976, the Mars Pathfinder in 1997, and the twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity in 2004 -- landed in the dry regions of Mars’s equatorial zone.

[…] The United States of America and the Republic of Italy concluded the 9th Biennial Review Meeting on Scientific and Technological Cooperation held in Washington on April 22-23, 2008. The U.S. delegation was headed by Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science Reno A. Harnish. The Italian delegation was headed by Deputy Chief of Mission Sebastiano Cardi.

[…] Virginia Tech University graduate student Jesse Farmer jumped at the chance to team up with other university students and engineers from TORC Technologies to do just that. The group worked frantically for three months to outfit a Ford Escape Hybrid with cameras, lasers, electronics, global positioning systems, computers and software for a four-hour robot car rally at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, California.

[…] President Bush is calling for a technology-based policy to slow greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. His remarks came on the eve of the Paris “Major Economies Meeting,” April 18-20 where 16 leading nations will discuss solutions to climate change. The meetings were initiated by Bush in September 2007 to stimulate international cooperation. “Today, I am announcing a new national goal: to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025,” he said.

[…] I know there’s a tremendous body of knowledge out there that I don’t possess. I’m attempting to educate myself,” he said. If there is a great deal out there that Parviz hasn’t learned, it is not for want of trying. After gaining an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, he earned graduate degrees in physics as well as electrical engineering and a postdoctoral fellowship in chemistry and chemical biology.

[…] Traveling about 15 kilometers per second and at an altitude of 50 kilometers, Cassini flew past Enceladus for its fourth encounter with the moon March 12 and its closest flyby to date with any celestial body, passing through the edge of one of the moon’s geyser like jets.

Cassini's instruments discovered evidence for the jets on Enceladus in 2005, finding that continuous eruptions of ice water create a gigantic halo of ice grains and gas around the moon that helps supply material to Saturn's E-ring.
Enceladus is embedded in the ring.