[…] 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.

[…] 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.

[…] “There really isn’t anymore a U.S. human space flight program or a Russian human space flight program,” NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said during a post-landing briefing. “There is a world human space flight program centered around the building and then later the utilization of the International Space Station. We hope when we get that under our belt, this partnership will return to the moon and later go on to Mars. It’s something we’re doing together.”

[…] Over the next few weeks, the ESA spacecraft will maneuver to rendezvous and eventually dock with the space station to deliver cargo, propellant, water and oxygen to the orbital outpost. At a post-launch press briefing, Keiji Tachikawa, president of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and Canadian Space Agency director Guy Bujold expressed their gratitude to NASA and the other space station partners and their hope about their future in space.

[…] Because many surfboards have been coated with polyester resins that are harmful to the environment and the workers who handle them, some manufacturers have recently developed epoxy resins and natural composites.
Not only are they more environmentally friendly, they resist bumps and scrapes better than the polyester-coated versions.
Footballs, soccer balls, and other high-end sports balls are traditionally made with a rubber inner air bladder and covered with polyurethane or synthetic leather. But continued and repeated harvesting of rubber can diminish forests.