Worries about a catastrophic oil spill ... a sense of impending ecological decline ... political gridlock over environmental policy. It all sounds familiar to 90-year-old Russell Train, who was in on the beginnings of the environmental movement. Except for the political gridlock, that is.

The political factor is the big difference that Train sees between how things were back the '70s, when he was a top environmental policymaker in the Nixon White House, and how they are today.

Many of the pillars of current environmental policy were erected during Train's tenure, as the first chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the second adninstrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. And Democrats as well as Republicans were quick to erect those pillars back then. "I think that was a moment in time that we may well never see again insofar as the environment is concerned," Train told me. "The issue has become much more highly politicized than it was back in the '70s."

Over the past half-century, Train has been in on many of the ups and downs of America's environmental issues - including the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, which some have compared to the current offshore oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. "This moment may be like the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 - because most people got alarmed, that ended California offshore drilling," CleanTechnica's Susan Kraemer observed during the early days of the Gulf spill. "Even people who only watch 'American Idol' now know - there's an oil spill and it's bad."

Sam Kittner

Russell Train still speaks out on environmental policy at 90.

Train has played a big part in fostering America's environmental awareness, not only as a government official but as a grassroots leader as well. He founded the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation in 1961, was president of The Conservation Foundation from 1965 to 1969 and is founder chairman emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund. "Under his guidance, World Wildlife Fund-U.S. grew from a small, primarily grant-making organization into a global conservation force with over 1 million members," his WWF biography says.

Last month, Train celebrated his 90th birthday, but that doesn't mean he's resting on his laurels. In May, he wrote a letter to Senate leaders calling on the chamber to reject a resolution that would stop the EPA from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions. "The country would be better served if, rather than attempting to fix what is not broken, the Senate instead focused its energies on finalizing legislation to limit greenhouse gas pollutants and move the United States towards cleaner energy sources," Train wrote.

The Senate ended up defeating the motion on a 47-53 vote - which you could consider a belated 90th-birthday present for Train. During our interview, the eco-pioneer talked about past and present political controversies, past and present oil spills, and how it feels to be a "new nonagenarian." Here's an edited transcript:

Cosmic Log: I was very interested in any lessons that could be applied from your experience with the Santa Barbara oil spill to the current oil spill ... and perhaps the shape of environmental challenges to come.

Russell Train: Looking back, the Santa Barbara oil spill occurred just as I was entering the Department of the Interior as under secretary. I think I had been nominated by the president but had not yet been confirmed. I was in a bit of a no-man's land. It was very much front and center. ... I don't really recall any specific new legislative initiative that arose because of the oil spill. At that time we had in the country a rising tide of environmental awareness - particularly the younger side of society, but not exclusively. Doubtless the Santa Barbara spill helped feed that, but it was already there.

I don't think anything specific came out of the oil spill, other than building a wave of public opinion on the environment. There were other things that happened, of course: the Cuyahoga River being set on fire, that sort of thing. These helped move the public attitude on the environment toward awareness and concern. When you look back on it, and think of all the dithering we go through today to get anything done, it was absolutely unbelievable - the variety and quantity of proposals that emanated from the Nixon White House and from the Congress itself.

Q: Do you think that was a historical turning point that really can't be replicated, even if we are facing new environmental challenges such as global warming and oil spills?

A: Yeah, good question. I think that was a moment in time that we may well never see again, insofar as the environment is concerned. The issue has become much more highly politicized than it was back in the '70s. My own memory is that most of the major environmental legislation passed with bipartisan support, and rather overwhelmingly. In my own case, my confirmation was unanimous for the EPA job. I don't think that happens anymore. I may be crazy, but it strikes me that way. When I was at EPA I kept in close contact with the Democrats as well as my own Republican members of Congress that had jurisdiction over environmental matters. There were friendly relations. These were people I knew on a personal basis.

I jotted down some of our initiatives from the Nixon-Ford era, because I knew I wouldn't remember them all. Among them were the Toxic Substances Control Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, ocean dumping legislation, which also called for an international convention that did take place. The whole field of pesticide and herbicide legislation, we put that in an integrated form. And I haven't even mentioned the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, probably the two most important of all. Then you have minor things like proposed tax on sulfur emissions, a whole new approach that didn't get anywhere, but it was a new approach. Legislation calling for better control of strip mining, or surface mining. That never went anywhere, it died in the Congress.

That's a little bit of a run-through that doesn't include executive actions, such as the banning of the use of DDT on federal lands. It's an extraordinary array of initiatives, including international conventions, international cooperative arrangements, all of this coming primarily from the Nixon White House.

Q: It's pretty hard to match that record. ...

A: It's incredible. You can always look at my book, "Politics, Pollution and Pandas." That's a little self-advertising there.

Q: I'll make sure to link to that. So what lessons do you think can be taken from your experience, either on the sorts of approaches might need to be taken, or any strategies you might suggest for the next generation of environmentalists?

A: I think something has happened to our public life, and it's hard to know how to turn it around. That's the lack of bipartisanship. Put it the other way around: the acute political partisanship that seems to mark every move on Capitol Hill. Take as an example that initiative by Sen. Murkowski of Alaska, Senate Joint Resolution 26, which specified that the EPA was not to exercise any authority over the regulation of greenhouse gases, carbon emissions in particular. When that came to a vote, every single member of the Republican membership of the Senate voted for it. That's incredible. No divergence whatsoever, even among some of those I know were opposed to it. It's just a very partisan process today. That did not exist when I was involved in such matters. That's going to be extremely hard to turn around.

What would I recommend? I don't know. How do you change that? Now, maybe if the Republicans got a Republican president who would be more relaxed with the Congress ... I don't know that for a fact at all. By the way, to understand my political viewpoint, I'm registered today as an independent. I grew up as a Republican, served in several Republican administrations, but I'm no longer on that side of the fence. I am independent.

Q: It almost is like a long philosophical cycle that has to move, as it did from the Goldwater era to the Nixon era. It's almost as if we're in the wrong part of the curve.

A: That we certainly are. How that's going to change, I don't know. It seems like the only game in town right now is the defeat of Obama and the election of a Republican president the next time around. Everything else is unimportant. That, in my mind, is the picture of a Congress, or at least the Republican side of the Congress, that is abrogating its responsibility to the American people. I don't think that members of Congress are elected simply to pursue political ends, I think they're there to serve the well-being of the American people. That's what we wanted.

Q: Well, you've been involved with that world for so long, and that's uppermost in the minds of a lot of people - but in the meantime I'm wondering what sorts of strategies can be pursued by environmentalists beyond the Beltway. Is there a way to circumvent the Beltway, or is environmental policy so crucial to these developments that you can't avoid dealing with the politics?

A: The pendulum probably swings back and forth on something of that kind. I think that there's a huge role for grassroots environmental leadership today. A huge need, and a huge potential, because that's where it all comes from. It's not engendered here in Washington, although leadership in Washington is extremely important. The whole environmental game really started because the general public felt this was an important issue that they cared about - not because someone in Congress or the White House was leading the issue, although that helps.

You can never do it without grassroots efforts. Today, there's so much education that includes environmental studies. It's extremely important to get an educated society that knows a good deal more about environmental matters than it ever did before. That cannot help but be positive in its impact on public policy.

Q: Do you think the sorts of challenges we're facing going forward are more complex than the ones you faced? The Gulf oil spill hints at a very complex kind of challenge where you are really operating at the very edge of technology. It's such an important issue to secure those energy resources, but we may be at the limits of what we can do technologically. And with the climate change issue, there is so much that depends on how the general public will react and whether they can change their behavior. Even President George W. Bush talked about our "addiction to oil" - and whether we can break this addiction.

A: I think, just generalizing, that in the early days, the late '60s and early to mid-'70s, the problems never seemed as complex as they do today. That's not to say they were simple. They were not simple. However, compared to the problems today, they were relatively simple. And I think that made it possible to address them with the public, and have the public understand what you were up to and support it.

Today, the public hears this cacophony of argument over climate change, carbon emissions, what's the role that mankind plays in creating the problem. There's all this debate going on, and I think the average person all too often tends to say, 'Gee, this is a tough one. I don't really know the answer. Nobody else seems to know the answer.' And they just turn their backs and minds to it. There's a lot of that today.

I would be the first one to agree that climate change is a hugely complex problem. For the average guy or gal to really put this together clearly in their minds is probably impossible. But I think we have to learn to accept the overwhelming view of the scientific community that climate change is real, it is happening, and it is primarily due to human activity. There's no question about the scientific consensus worldwide on this matter. There is the odd person who speaks up and takes a different view. And those who do tend to get an awful lot of press attention. But when your own National Academy of Sciences comes out with a report presented by the president of the academy to the public, I think the American people have to pay attention to that.

This is the best scientific judgment there is. I shouldn't second-guess it, our policymakers shouldn't second-guess it. You may not like the result that science gives you, but if properly founded, that is the inevitable result. One has to accept the overwhelming view of the scientific community and move ahead, and not fall into the trap of playing politics. Scientists aren't untouched by politics. We're all human beings. But I think when the National Academy speaks up, they do so honestly, with the best expertise we have in this country, and it deserves to be accepted as a general viewpoint.

Q: Do you have any advice for people who see what's going on in the world, environmentally speaking, and want to learn more or get involved? How would you advise someone who is sometimes confused by the pros and cons of such-and-such an environmental issue. What sage words do you have, as a new nonagenarian?

A: Ha, I never thought of it that way. It's a new birth.

Q: Right ... you're a youngster when it comes to nonagenarians.

A: Well, I think if an individual cares about the issue and has a general pro-environment sense, they ought to hook up with local and state environmental organizations - and national, as the case may be - and go through a process of self-education. I think the environmental movement as such plays and should play a tremendous role. This is the future we're talking about. Not petty politics of an overnight nature, but the future of humanity on the face of this earth. It's time we woke up to that.

Q: Do you feel as if you want to hang up your mantle at some point and just go fishing?

A: I find it's very hard for me to cast a line anymore. I'm afraid it's the other way around. I've had to give up most of my outdoor sporting activities. Even walking is difficult. I'll probably spend more time wearing my environmental mantle. I'm not about to throw that away.

An earlier version of this item mischaracterized the status of international restrictions on ocean dumping, due to a transcription error. Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

NASA today announced three new competitions offering a total of $5 million in prizes — and only one of them involves actually putting something in outer space.

The space-based Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge offers $2 million for putting a satellite into Earth orbit twice in one week. The other contests are the $1.5 million Night Rover Challenge for solar-powered robots that store up enough energy to operate in darkness, and the $1.5 million Sample Return Robot Challenge for machines that can retrieve geological samples from a variety of locations without human intervention.

Many of the details - including the specific requirements for winning the money, and how the purse will be divided - still have to be worked out. "We intentionally didn't specify too much, " Andrew Petro, manager of NASA's Centennial Challenges, told me today.

Those details will be worked out with partner organizations to be named in October, Petro said. The nonprofit partners will manage the contests on NASA's behalf, and also raise the money for contest operations. NASA will be responsible only for providing the purse.

The themes of the new competitions, as well as the solicitation for partnership proposals, were made public today during a space technology industry forum at the University of Maryland. NASA's chief technologist, Bobby Braun, said in a news release that such contests "are a proven way to foster technological competitiveness, new industries and innovation across America."

Last year, NASA awarded $3.65 million to private-sector teams in four Centennial Challenge contests. California-based Masten Space Systems was the big million-dollar winner in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, and other teams won prizes as well for building prototypes for lunar landers, moon-dirt diggers, power-beaming systems and a better astronaut glove.

Three competitions are currently in active mode: a $2 million challenge to create super-strong tethers (to be run Aug. 13 at the Space Elevator Conference), a $1.1 million contest for higher-powered beaming systems (with tests expected this fall), and a $1.65 million race for alternative-fueled aircraft (planned in July 2011).

All these challenges are aimed at encouraging private-sector groups to come up with technological solutions to issues NASA has to deal with in aeronautics and space exploration. "We're trying to engage a broader group of people in participating with us in research on the frontier of air and space technology," Petro said.

Nanosatellites on the rise
The Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge has an obvious outer-space application. "It's hard to think of a more worthy subject for a prize," William Pomerantz, senior director of space prizes for the X Prize Foundation, told me today.

Small satellite programs, such as the university-led CubeSat effort, have revolutionized how space science is done. The Firefly mission to study gamma-ray flashes and the Planetary Society's Lightsail-1 mission are among the best-known CubeSat launches on the horizon. But small satellites currently have to fly standby, as piggyback payloads for larger-scale launches. "There haven't been any real launch vehicles that have been designed specifically to launch a few CubeSats," said Morehead State University's Bob Twiggs, co-director of the CubeSat Project.

Some companies, including Masten Space as well as Interorbital Systems and Garvey Spacecraft, are already developing launch vehicles to cater to the small-satellite market - and they're considered likely to enter the $2 million contest once the details are worked out. Interorbital is taking $8,000 deposits for "TubeSat" launches that could begin as early as next year.

CubeSat's other co-director, CalPoly Professor Jordi Puig-Suari, said lower-cost orbital launches for nanosats (weighing 1 to 10 kilograms) and CubeSats (about a kilogram) could open up new frontiers for rocket-powered research in the upper atmosphere, near-space and other unusual orbital neighborhoods.

"I don't know what will happen," he told me. "I think half of the things are things you can't predict. The reason I say that is because when we started with CubeSats, we didn't know what would happen. We thought we did, but we didn't."

Robots that keep going, and going ...
The other two new contests target technologies that will be key for future robotic space exploration, but can be applied to earthly challenges as well.

The Night Rover Challenge, for example, will require teams to develop energy storage systems that can keep solar-powered rovers going through the long, cold Martian night (12 hours), or the even longer and colder lunar night (which lasts two weeks).

Better energy storage systems could reduce the need for plutonium-based power devices - such as the one planned for NASA's Curiosity rover, due for launch to Mars next year. And on Earth, they could open the way for longer-range electric vehicles and the wider use of solar and wind power.

The Sample Return Robot Challenge would reward the development of smarter rovers that can cruise along the Martian surface and identify promising samples to send back to Earth, without a human having to plot every twist and turn in the trip. On Earth, such advances in automatic navigation and robotic manipulator technologies could be applied to smarter underwater vehicles (like the ones currently dealing with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill) or semi-autonomous cars that are smart enough to avoid crashes even if the driver falls asleep at the wheel.

But wait ... there's more
The new Centennial Challenges aren't the only innovations that NASA announced today: The space agency also said it intended to revive NIAC, the gee-whiz research operation that some have compared to the Defense Department's DARPA think tank. The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts was shut down in 2007 as a cost-cutting move.

The new NIAC isn't exactly the same as the old one, which was run out of Atlanta by outside researchers. "It's now a program within NASA," based at the agency's Washington headquarters, Petro said. The acronym now stands for "NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts." NASA's own researchers as well as outside scientists and engineers would be eligible to receive grants to pursue out-of-the-box, long-term projects. (Further hints about NIAC's future are laid out on page 22 of this PowerPoint presentation.)

Petro emphasized that the funding for NIAC would have to be appropriated by Congress as part of the agency's budget for fiscal year 2011. In contrast, the money for the new Centennial Challenge prizes is already available from past appropriations.

Pomerantz said he couldn't yet predict whether the X Prize Foundation would put in a proposal to manage any of the new challenges, but he took today's announcements as a sign that NASA still has the right stuff when it comes to fostering American innovation.

"They're all exactly the kind of stuff that I want to see my space agency doing," Pomerantz said.

What do you think? Got any bright ideas for solving the million-dollar challenges? Are there other challenges you'd put on NASA's to-do list? Feel free to discuss them in your comments below.

More about space innovation:

• NASA wants your inflatable house
• NASA and GM develop Robonaut 2
• DARPA wants ideas for space cleanup
• NASA Innovative Partnerships Program

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

• The Onion: News from the year 2137
• The perfect eclipse image: From TWAN on Easter Island
• ArXiv Blog: The death of Nemesis ... and some good news!
• Cracked: 6 things from history everyone pictures incorrectly

The mysterious Higgs boson is thought to be involved in the generation of mass in the universe, but so far it seems to be best at the generation of rumors among particle physicists. A new wave of rumors is propagating even as we speak. Has the Higgs boson been detected at Fermilab's Tevatron? It might depend on what you mean by "detected." Or it might merely be a case of deja vu all over again.

Like an earlier case of Higgs boson hype, the latest wave appears to have been generated by Italian physicist Tommaso Dorigo on his blog, "A Quantum Diaries Survivor." Dorigo says he's "heard voices" talking about a Higgs effect that could be nailed down to a three-sigma level of confidence, or 99.3 percent. That's suggestive of a real effect, but not as good as the five-sigma "gold standard" for an accepted discovery.

In his item, Dorigo freely admits he has no idea whether the voices are right, even though he works on one of the Tevatron's two main experiments (CDF). "I know nothing at all, so I can certainly talk about it without violating any rule!" he writes. He goes on to review the work done at CDF and the other main experiment, D0, discussing the possibility that a lightweight Higgs particle might exist. Then he adds this appendix:

"Why am I doing this ? I know several 'serious' physicists and colleagues who have questioned this care-free attitude of mine in the past. What good does it do to shout 'Higgs' every second week ?

"It does a lot of good to particle physics, in my very humble, but not quite uninformed, opinion. I have made this point other times, and will not repeat it here. Suffices to say that, in a nutshell, keeping particle physics in the press with hints of possible discoveries that later die out is more important than speaking loud and clear once in ten years, when a groundbreaking discovery is actually really made, and keeping silent the rest of the time.

"And there is another reason why I find this kind of rumor-mongering entertaining: maybe some informed soul out there might comment anonymously and share some more gossip about the matter with us... ;-)"

Dorigo is dead-on about one thing: His hints have sparked a fresh uptick in press reports about particle physics. Follow-up reports have appeared on The Reference Frame blog as well as websites for the Telegraph, New Scientist, Discovery News ... and now in this space.

Why now? It's because a big particle-physics meeting is coming up next week in Paris, known as the International Conference on High Energy Physics or ICHEP. This will be the first ICHEP meeting to feature scientific results from Europe's Large Hadron Collider, which began its physics program earlier this year. "New results about the elusive Higgs boson, or signals of physics beyond the standard model might therefore be announced at this conference!" the ICHEP home page declares.

Finding the Higgs boson - the only subatomic particle predicted by physics' standard model that has not yet been detected -was one of the main reasons for building the $10 billion LHC was built. It's been called the "God particle," but I've said that "the goad particle" might be a more apt label, because the mere possibility that the particle may exist has goaded scientists into spending billions of dollars and expending countless hours of effort.

It'd be a sly move for Fermilab's researchers to steal the LHC's thunder. It might also be a case of somewhat wishful thinking. Chances are that Fermilab will indeed announce some significant findings at next week's meeting. How significant remains to be seen.

As for the LHC's findings, here's what Katie Yurkewicz, a U.S. spokeswoman for Europe's CERN particle physics center, told me today in an e-mail:

"I can say with all honesty that the LHC experiments themselves don't yet know exactly what will be presented at ICHEP, as they're still in the final stages of approving their results. But the results presented are likely to be so-called 'standard model' results, thus re-measurements of known quantities (such as W bosons) that show that the detectors are working properly, or providing new measurements of known quantities at higher energies (such as the paper recently published by the CMS experiment: http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.3299). We'll still have to wait some time for some new discoveries.

"You have likely seen as well the rumors that the Tevatron might announce something more exciting, however. (I have no inside information here, so as far as I'm concerned they're really just rumors, to be taken with many grains of salt!)"

While you're salivating over that scientific salt, here are some links to chew over:

• Big Bang Machine: Special report on the LHC
• The Guardian: Hunt for the God particle
• Inside the subatomic race
• Atom smashers on TV

Update for 2:15 a.m. ET July 13: Caltech physicist Sean Carroll points to this tweet from Fermilab Today: "Let's settle this: the rumors spread by one fame-seeking blogger are just rumors. That's it."

Update for 11:11 p.m. ET July 13: The Reference Frame's Luboš Motl adds a bit more spice to the rumors in an e-mail:

"A reader just provided me with striking new details about the Higgs rumor:

http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/07/detailed-rumor-gluonb-goes-to-bhiggs.html

"A gluon plus bottom-quark collided and created a bottom quark and a Higgs - many times for them to have a signal. This is an unexpected process a priori. However, it's one natural in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with a large value of tangent (beta), which is the ratio of the two vacuum expectation values.

"This would be huge. Needless to say, I am the only blogger on this planet who claimed that SUSY [supersymmetry] was likely to be found, and I also have $10,000 bets about it - although only time will tell whether my parties would respect their commitments (which are not legally written on paper)."

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

NASA is partnering with Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope to offer half a billion high-resolution images of Red Planet sights, ranging from past rover tracks to future landing zones for Mars-bound astronauts. The collaboration is part of NASA’s public-private strategy for making cosmic imagery more widely available to students and space fans.

"We want to have this be an example of what public outreach means ... not just putting things up on a website, but really connecting with an audience," Chris Kemp, chief technology officer for information technology at NASA Headquarters, told me today.

"Our hope is that this inspires the next generation of explorers to continue the scientific discovery process," Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California, said in today's announcement about the project.

The virtual Mars database was unveiled today at a gathering for researchers at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash. (Microsoft and NBC Universal are partners in the msnbc.com joint venture.) It's now available as part of the latest version of the WorldWide Telescope as well as WWT's Web-based client.

The good stuff includes a new series of Mars-themed guided tours, narrated by a couple of NASA's best-known Marsologists, Carol Stoker and Jim Garvin. Stoker's tour addresses the question"Is there life on Mars?" and focuses on the findings of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. Garvin traces the three geological ages of Mars (Noachian, Hesperian and Amazonian) and points out three of the leading sites for future human missions to Mars:

• Jezero Crater in Nili Fossae, which provides a window on the Noachian age, when water is thought to have flowed freely on Mars.

• Mangala Valles, whose channels may record the transition between that ancient warm, wet planet and the current cold, dry world.

• Arsia Mons, one of Mars' giant shield volcanoes, which is the site of glacial deposits as well as caves that could provide a haven for human visitors.

You can zoom in on high-resolution views of the planet, fly over mountains and craters and touch down for a virtual landing on the Martian surface. "The new Mars experience allows people to feel as though they're actually there," Dan Fay, director of Microsoft Research's Earth, Energy and Environment effort, said in a NASA news feature.

The dataset includes 13,000 gigapixel-scale images from the main camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, known as the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment or HiRISE for short. Those giga-images are blended with 74,000 images from an earlier probe, Mars Global Surveyor, then broken down into mosaics that comprise a half-billion smaller pictures.

NASA's Kemp explained that most of the full-resolution image data is kept on NASA's Nebula cloud computer servers, while high-interest imagery is served up by Microsoft. The WWT imagery hands off from one database to the other as users click around, and new HiRISE images are added on a near-real-time basis. "We see this as an evolving architecture," Kemp said.

WorldWide Telescope offers more than one virtual view of the Red Planet: For example, if you click through the collection of Mars imagery, you can follow the tracks of NASA's Spirit rover as it plowed through the Columbia Hills, or Opportunity rover as it made its way around Victoria Crater. But Martian windstorms recently erased some of the rover's tracks at Victoria. Fortunately, the database offers HiRISE images captured at different times, so you can still trace Opportunity's old route, Kemp said.

Based on my experience, I'd have to say that the stand-alone version of WorldWide Telescope works much more smoothly than the Web client - so if you have a Windows-based computer with the firepower to run the program, that's definitely the way to go. If you're on a Mac, the Web client is the only choice. And if you're running a different operating system, such as Linux, you'll probably have to run elsewhere.

There's more than one virtual Red Planet out there, of course: NASA also feeds image data from HiRISE and other sources into Google Earth's Mars database, which has received positive reviews from Mars mavens. Kemp said serving multiple platforms is a big part of NASA's public-private strategy for getting all of its cool pictures out to the public.

"We can't ignore the fact that there's a Facebook out there, we can't ignore that there's a WorldWide Telescope or a Google Earth out there," he told me.

Other virtual-telescope software programs include Celestia, Stellarium, NASA World Wind and the Digital Universe Atlas. And if you're looking for a cosmos you can play around with, check out Universe Sandbox.

More, bigger pictures
The virtual Mars database may be the headline act for the latest version of WorldWide Telescope, but there are other new features as well. Microsoft Research's Fay pointed to a new rendering of the night sky that's been smoothed out to remove all the seams between separate images from the Digitized Sky Survey. The full-sky image stored on the WWT server takes in 1 trillion pixels, he said.

"We think it's the world's largest seamless spherical image," Fay told me. "It would take about 500,000 high-definition TVs if you wanted to see it at full resolution."

WWT developer Jonathan Fay (no relation to Dan) told me that the new version also lets users track the swarms of asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects that are part of our solar system. To home in on a particular object in the asteroid belt or the Kuiper Belt - such as Eros, Eris or Pluto - you type in its ephemeral coordinates and create an orbit on the spot. You can use a similar strategy to pinpoint Earth-orbiting satellites such as the Hubble Space Telescope, and even stick in a 3-D model that looks just like the object in question.

Adding new elements or entire guided tours to WorldWide Telescope is supposed to be so easy a 6-year-old could do it. If that's so, I might just have to whip up a tour that gives Pluto and the other dwarf planets their due. But first, I'm off to find the caves of Arsia Mons ...

More about virtual space exploration:

• Explorers return to Mars in Canada
• Virtual life on NASA's 'Moonbase'
• Touring Mars, old and new
• Calling all moonbots!
• Moon with a view

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

• Ecouterre: Designer 'grows' entire wardrobe from bacteria
• The New Yorker: Finding the mark of a masterpiece
• New Scientist: How not to clean up an oil spill
• The Daily Grail: The birth of science fiction

This weekend is filled with wonder, and not just because of Sunday's South Pacific eclipse. On Saturday, Europe's Rosetta probe is due to fly by 70-mile-wide Lutetia, the biggest asteroid ever visited by a spacecraft. Rosetta's view of Lutetia is already more than an overgrown speck, as you can see at right, and that dot will get bigger in the hours ahead.

Back here on Earth, there'll be opportunities to see the International Space Station in evening skies, plus plenty of planets to spot. And the World Cup finals will put Paul the psychic octopus' predictive powers to their last test. (But even if Germany and Spain win their matches, the cephalopod's performance wouldn't be all that amazing ... just as it's not front-page news when you call seven or eight coin flips in a row.)

I've got my own gig at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) Saturday, when I'm due to chat with Christopher Eldridge, a longtime Cosmic Log correspondent who hosts "The Deliberacy" on The Green Talk Network. We'll be chatting about energy policy, environmental issues and whatever else strikes our fancy. (Maybe even climate change on Pluto!) I hope you'll tune us in over the Internet and say hello.

If you're looking for still more brain food online this weekend, check out these Web links:

• 'Nova' on PBS: 'The Deadliest Plane Crash'
• Habitation Intention: Carnival of Space 161
• Planetary Society: Solar sail powered by photons
• SFF: More teachers wanted for future space flights
• Dallas Observer: Armadillo works on robotic moonshot
• SpaceRef.ca: How should we tweet about Canadian space?

Tip o' the log to Clark Lindsey at Space Transport News

Andrew Sinclair

An animated image shows the track of the moon's shadow during the July 11 total solar eclipse. Click through an interacttive that explains eclipses.

Eclipse chasers are known to go to the ends of the earth for just a few minutes of totality, and this weekend the ends of the earth just happen to be on exotic islands in the South Pacific. But if you can't make it to Easter Island in time, you can still chase Sunday's total solar eclipse ... over the Internet.

Seeing an eclipse on your computer screen can't possibly match catching sight of the black sun in person, of course. Not everyone can spare the time and money to go on eclipse expeditions, however, and experiencing the eclipse online can still give you a glimpse of one of nature's rarest phenomena. You'll also feel the thrill of the hunt - because eclipse-watching over the Web, like eclipse-watching in person, involves more than a little bit of persistence and luck.

First of all, it takes quite a bit of sleuthing to track down which websites offer streaming video of the sight. We've done some of that spadework for you, and I'm hoping that Cosmic Log correspondents will provide more pointers in the comment section. But that's just the beginning. If past eclipses provide any guide, there'll be lots of frantic clicking from site to site, looking for online destinations where the webcam skies are clear and the network connections aren't swamped.

When to start chasing
The first thing to keep in mind is the time: Totality will be visible only from a thin track that runs through the South Pacific. The event begins at sunrise on the west end of the track, and quickly runs eastward toward sunset on the other side of the track, as shown in Andrew Sinclair's animated graphic above.

The central part of the moon's shadow touches down around 2:15 p.m. ET Sunday, zooms over the ocean, hits the French Polynesian island of Tatakoto around 2:45 p.m. and passes over Easter Island's throngs starting at 4:08 p.m. ET. The eclipse finishes up over Chile and Argentina, near the southernmost tip of South America, at 4:51 p.m. ET.

The total phase of the eclipse lasts only a few minutes at most. The partial phase, during which the moon slowly covers up the sun's disk and then retreats, lasts much longer - about an hour and a half on each side of totality on Easter Island, for instance.

Where to look on the Web
If you're up for Web-based eclipse-chasing, check out these sites during the partial phase, and be prepared to switch around as the climax nears for each region:

• Live.Saros.org: Researchers from the Canary Islands are on Tatakoto and promise to send back live pictures. Follow their adventures on this Spanish-language blog.
• Live!Eclipse 2010: Japan's Live!Eclipse webcasts have been beamed from a string of solar eclipse sites, and this time around, streams may be available from multiple locations. Watch the team's UStream channel for coverage.
• SolarEclipse.eu: Several groups from Spain and the Canary Islands, including the Ciclope research team and the Shelios science information venture, are collaborating to send back video from Easter Island.
• Eclipse Tahiti: French-language website promises coverage of the eclipse via a UStream channel.

During last year's Asian eclipse, Indian television networks were the standouts for Web streaming. So it's worth checking in with the streaming TV coverage from these Chilean and Argentinian news networks, just in case they have reporters on Easter Island or the South American mainland:

• 24 Horas (Chile)
• TV de Chile on UStream (or via Eclipse2010.org)
• LND TV 24 Horas (Argentina)
• TN (Argentina)

If you totally miss totality, you can still catch up on the coverage by checking in with Dan Falk's Easter Island dispatches on New Scientist's Culture Lab, plus his Twitter updates. NASA Science News promises to provide post-eclipse images of totality, and the National Geographic Channel is scheduled to air an eclipse special at 11 p.m. ET Sunday. And of course you can rely on msnbc.com to have a full report.

Then what? The next big event is a total lunar eclipse on Dec. 21, with prime viewing from North America. NASA lists a series of partial solar eclipses next year, but the next dose of solar totality won't be available until Nov. 13, 2012. And if you're an American who's hankering to see totality from your own country, you'll have to wait until 2017. That'll give you plenty of time to work on your eclipse-chasing skills, online and maybe even in person.

More about eclipses:

• Interactive: What causes a solar eclipse?
• Slideshow: Greatest hits from eclipses
• Quiz: Test your knowledge of eclipse lore
• The truth behind eclipses (vampires not included)
• Shadow and Substance: Eclipse in motion
• How to view the sun safely
• NASA Eclipse Website

Update for 3:55 p.m. ET July 11: We're down to the final minutes before totality on Easter Island and I haven't been able to chase down the eclipse yet. But it looks as if SolarEclipse.eu (a.k.a. Shelios) is the best bet, with the Live!Eclipse Ustream webcast still a possibility. When it comes to South American TV coverage, TN in Argentina seems to be the best hope. The show is already over on the western part of the track, and SpaceWeather.com is already getting some great pictures.

Update for 3:57 p.m. ET July 11: Video coverage is available via SolarEclipse.eu. Yee-haw!

Update for 5:35 p.m. ET July 11: The eclipse is over - what a cool sight! Be sure to check in with SpaceWeather.com, tonight's National Geographic Channel special, New Scientist's Culture Lab and of course our own eclipse coverage on msnbc.com for follow-ups.

Update for 6:38 p.m. ET July 11: Don't miss Daniel Fischer's pictures from an Andean vantage point on Twitpic.

Update for 8:15 p.m. ET July 11: Here's another SpaceWeather stunner from Janne Pyykkö.

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Researchers have set up camp in the Canadian Arctic once again, testing the tools and techniques that could be used on future human missions to Mars, the moon ... or wherever.

This is the 14th year of operation for the Haughton-Mars Project, a NASA-backed expedition that brings scores of researchers to the 12-mile-wide (20-kilometer-wide) Haughton Crater on Canada's Devon Island for several weeks starting every July. The 2010 field campaign is getting under way this week.

"I say jokingly that the Haughton Mars Project has lasted longer than the Apollo moon program," Pascal Lee, the project's creator and director, told me. "It's a project that's been somewhat high-profile but has received relatively low levels of funding. But I'm not complaining about that. This site is going to remain and continue to grow as one of the most important analog sites for exploration fo the moon, Mars and other places."

It will be years, and most likely decades, before humans actually walk on the surface of Mars. But Devon Island - as well as other Mars analogs in Utah, Sweden, Russia and elsewhere - can give researchers and mission planners ample opportunities to find out what kinds of vehicles, equipment and strategies are best-suited for interplanetary exploration. They can even sort out the interpersonal issues that may come with a long-duration space mission.

In the past, I've compared such simulated missions to a game of "Survivor" played on a make-believe Mars. But there's nothing make-believe about the science. The cold, dry environment of Devon Island serves as one of our planet's best stand-ins for Martian surroundings, and Lee says that opens the way for "comparative geology with Mars."

That's just one of the themes for this season's science program. Other experiments will focus on drilling into Haughton Crater's frozen ground for biological sampling, chemically processing the site's nutrient-poor soil to make it more fertile, and using remote-operated rovers to follow up on past geological studies.

"Most people in the space program, when they think of a robotic rover, tend to think of something going in advance of a humsn crew. ... Here, the question that was asked from a scientific standpoint is, 'What if we use the robotic asset as a follow-up tool, not a reconnaissance tool?'" Lee explained.

Such studies have obvious implications for the design of future space missions. If robots can take on more of the burden of exploration - not just in the beginning stages, but throughout the entire program - that will greatly reduce the costs and risks associated with human spaceflight.

One of the projects planned for this year involves having a remotely operated vehicle drive 10 miles (17 kilometers) from one site to another, stopping along the way to study areas of scientific interest and getting the second site set up for the arrival of a human crew. "It's going to take five days of driving, basically," Lee said.

This experiment was originally designed as a way to help NASA plan for a robotic convoy's journey from Shackleton Crater near the lunar south pole to Malapert Mountain, a distance of 120 miles (200 kilometers). NASA's revised space vision may be downplaying lunar exploration, but the lessons learned during the Arctic simulations can help shape future missions to a Martian moon, a near-Earth asteroid or anyplace else where boots and wheels will set down on alien ground.

"We're of course realizing that Haughton is not the moon," Lee said. "We're looking at categories of things that will surprise us. Are there sudden drops in elevation, is there terrain roughness? Is it the lack of 3-D information about slopes that will throw us off? How do we manage power?"

The Haughton team will test equipment being considered for future exploration, including NASA's four-wheeled K10 rover and a Humvee vehicle outfitted with K10 instruments as a stand-in for a large pressurized rover. Researchers will try out prototypes for next-generation spacesuits that astronauts can climb into through an innovative suitport. That spacesuit experiment, but the way, is being funded not by NASA but by the suits' developer, Hamilton Sundstrand.

"We're leveraging research and development here," Lee said. "I think it's fair to say that in terms of the overall effort that's behind what's being tested at Haughton this year, there are literally tens of millions of dollars involved. But in terms of how much this particular campaign is going to cost ... we're talking about a figure that's about $750,000 or so."

When you're talking about the Canadian Arctic, the logistics can get gnarly pretty quickly: Virtually everything has to be flown in, usually via a circuitous route. For example, this week the New York Air National Guard is flying in cargo and personnel via Moffett Field in California, Vancouver in British Columbia and Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island in Nunavut.

When researchers finally get to Haughton, they'll have to hunker down in a spartan tent city, amid barren surroundings and freezing temperatures. They'll have to watch out for the occasional polar bear, a threat that Martian settlers will probably never have to worry about. But on the bright side, the food has gotten good reviews in past years. The conversations are sure to be stimulating. And the communication links are fantastic.

"We have a wireless Internet connection that is up at the T1 level," Lee said. "You can walk around with your laptop and work while you order a book from Amazon."

The Haughton-Mars Project is managed by the Mars Institute, with support from the SETI Institute and funding from private ventures as well as educational institutions, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. Lee is proud to proclaim that the project's base on Devon Island "is now the largest privately operated polar research station in the world."

"It's more than an arcane claim to fame. It's actually a sign of the times," he said.

Operations at the research station could well serve as a model for future space exploration. "It's a paradigm for an international station that might be used by different countries on the moon or Mars, but operated by a private organization," Lee said.

But the Haughton-Mars Project isn't the only paradigm that's out there. Here's a quick rundown on other Mars analog projects:

• The nonprofit Mars Society is recruiting crew members for its 10th annual series of simulation missions at its Mars Desert Research Station near Hanksville, Utah, starting in November. Like the Haughton-Mars Project, the main goal of the MDRS missions is "to find out what exploration strategies and tactics work on Mars," Robert Zubrin, the society's president, told me. In 2011, the Mars Society will conduct an Arctic field season on Devon Island as well, at the Flashline Mars Analog Research Station. You can find out a lot more about Arctic as well as desert Mars simulations at the Mars Society's annual convention, scheduled next month in Dayton, Ohio.

• The Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition is getting under way this month in Sweden. Researchers will study the area's Mars-like carbonate deposits and test biosensor technology that is being developed for future Mars missions.

• The Mars500 isolation experiment is well under way at Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems. This is an ambitious test to see how six guys get along while they're cooped up for a simulated 520-day Mars mission. They'll have to stay inside their spaceship simulator until November 2011. One of the crew members, Diego Urbina, is a veteran of a Mars Society simulation and is keeping up an online diary during his confinement. On Wednesday he wrote that he and his colleagues are "having our first contact with the real execution of some of the experiments."

• In addition to these crew simulations, Mars analog experiments are being carried out in other climes around the world, including Antarctica, Spain, Chile and the Australian Outback. Check out this rundown from NASA Quest.

In addition to laying the scientific groundwork for future space odysseys, such simulations help keep the dream of interplanetary travel alive for a generation of would-be explorers. And the way things are looking now, it may take another generation before the lessons learned in earthly expeditions are applied to an actual mission to Mars. Or can that schedule be accelerated? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Correction for 1:30 p.m. ET July 9: The Haughton-Mars Project's associate director and chief engineer, Stephen Braham, points out in a Twitter tweet that I was wrong to say the HMP's Internet connection is better than it will ever be on Mars. "Our data rate is smaller than we'll have on Mars!" he writes. Sorry about that! I've made the fix.

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Natives of the Amazonian jungle tell tales about cats that imitate the sounds of its prey to lure birds, monkeys or rodents into their clutches - and now researchers have recounted how the sneaky strategy works.

This tale, published in the June 2009 issue of Neotropical Primates, involves a margay cat that made baby monkey sounds in hopes of snagging a pied tamarin or two. But don't worry: No animals were hurt in the making of this research. The tamarins got away unharmed, thanks to a savvy sentry.

The journal paper's authors say their account was the first scientific publication to support the folk stories about Amazonian copycats. "Cats are known for their physical agility, but this vocal manipulation of prey species indicates a psychological cunning that merits further study," Fabio Rohe, a researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society, said in a news release issued Wednesday.

A. Antunes

Pied tamarins serve as prey for the Amazonian margay cat.

The cat-and-monkey encounter unfolded in Brazil's Reserva Florestal Adolpho Ducke in October 2005, while Rohe and his colleagues were remotely monitoring eight squirrel-sized pied tamarins feeding in a ficus tree. The sounds of tamarin babies in distress rang out from behind a clump of tangled vines. An adult male monkey climbed up and down the tree, trying to identify the source of the sound. In the meantime, the researchers saw where it was coming from: a margay cat, making its way toward the monkeys.

The sentinel monkey dropped to the ground, keeping watch. Within minutes, four more monkeys followed. But as the cat closed in, the sentinel suddenly realized what was going on and emitted a high-pitched warning scream. The whole group of monkeys scattered, and the cat went away empty-pawed.

Researchers came away impressed - not only with the cat's strategy and the monkeys' vigilance, but also with the way the encounter verified what they were hearing from local residents. Other cats are said to imitate types of rodents known as agoutis and tinamou birds.

"This observation further proves the reliability of information obtained from Amazonian inhabitants," said Avecita Chicchon, director of WCS-Latin America. "Accounts of jaguars and pumas using the same vocal mimicry to attract prey also deserve investigation."

For more about this research, check out Brian Switek's April report on the Laelaps blog. Unfortunately, Rohe and his colleagues couldn't capture audio of the margay's monkey call - it all happened too fast. But you can hear a margay's growl, courtesy of The Cat House, and watch a National Geographic video of a margay facing off with a black-handed spider monkey.

Other authors of the paper, "Hunting Strategy of the Margay (Leopardus wiedii) to Attract the Wild Pied Tamarin (Saguinus bicolor)," include Fabiano de Oliveira Calleia and Marcelo Gordo of Projeto Sauim-de-Coleira / Federal University of Amazonas.

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In an alternate universe, Rocketplane would be flying passenger spaceships by now … but in this universe, the company has declared bankruptcy, after receiving millions of dollars in NASA cash and Oklahoma tax credits.

Four years ago, one of Rocketplane's subsidiaries was in line to get more than $200 million from the space agency to develop a K-1 reusable launch vehicle to service the International Space Station. But when the company couldn't put its financing together in time, NASA dropped Rocketplane and allocated the rest of the budgeted money for Orbital Sciences Corp.

Rocketplane Kistler had already been given more than $32 million but didn't have to pay any of that money back to NASA. The company also received nearly $18 million in transferable tax credits from Oklahoma to locate its flight operations at the state's spaceport, a converted Air Force base near Burns Flat. Those credits were transferred years ago to generate capital for the company.

Even after the NASA-backed Kistler project fizzled, another subsidiary called Rocketplane Global kept working on a suborbital rocket-jet hybrid plane that would have lofted paying passengers above the 62-mile (100-kilometer) altitude mark, giving them a taste of weightlessness and a fantastic view in the process for a $250,000 fare. Last year, Rocketplane Global was working on a deal that would have put a space tourist hub in Hawaii. And this April, the company was talking about a potential tourist operation in Florida.

Now the Oklahoma Gazette reports that Rocketplane's owner, George French, has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy papers in his home state of Wisconsin, covering Rocketplane as well as the Kistler and Global subsidiaries. French is also filing for personal bankruptcy. The documents show assets ranging from $108,000 to $287,000, and liabilities of more than $8 million.

The Chapter 7 bankruptcy process would lead to the liquidation of Rocketplane's assets - and the death of the company's outer-space dreams. "We didn't leave a nickel on the table," the Gazette quotes French as saying. "We did what we said we could do. Unfortunately, we did not complete the program as originally conceived."

Rocketplane's exit still leaves lots of companies in the entrepreneurial space race, including Orbital as well as California-based SpaceX, which notched a successful orbital test flight of its Falcon 9 rocket last month; Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, which are working together on captive-carry tests of the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane; XCOR Aerospace, which is building its own suborbital rocket plane; Bigelow Aerospace, which has launched two prototype space modules into orbit; and Blue Origin, the space venture backed by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, which shared NASA-backed prizes in last year's Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, are also in the running. Who'll turn out to be the big winners? Will there be more losers as well? Feel free to handicap the new space race in your comments below.

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• Newsweek: Little flaw, big problem in longevity-gene study?
• CJR Observatory: Uproar over Pepsiblog at ScienceBlogs.com
• Nat'l Geographic: Archaeologists hit dead end in Egypt tomb
• Speakeasy Science: Warriors against scientific claptrap

Today's arrest in the "Grim Sleeper" serial-killing case demonstrates how the sins of the father can be found out through a son's DNA - and why the technique can be controversial.

A 57-year-old one-time LAPD garage attendant named Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested in Los Angeles in connection with the string of 10 murders, committed between 1985 and 2007. The killer was nicknamed the "Grim Sleeper" because there was a 14-year break within that string, from 1988 to 2002.

The case puts an unorthodox forensic tool known as familial DNA analysis at center stage. The method is specifically allowed only in two states - California and Colorado - and it's specifically banned in Maryland. New York is OK with using the method, but only if it's an "inadvertent" side effect of a more rigorous data search. The FBI currently has no firm policy on familial DNA matching but is willing to let states share their DNA data for use in the procedure.

Now that familial DNA analysis has come up with a high-profile match, you'll probably be hearing much more about whether it should be used more widely.

Not-quite-perfect match
Why is the technique so controversial? It's because investigators look for not-quite-perfect matches between the DNA left behind at a crime scene and DNA markers taken from a wide sampling of people who may or may not have committed a crime themselves. The goal isn't necessarily to find the suspects, but rather the potential relatives of suspects. If there's a close match, investigators could focus their search on close relatives of the person who matched up - in hopes that the trail will lead to suspects who haven't left a DNA trail themselves.

It's basically a crime-lab variant of the tests widely used to trace your genealogy, but these would be relatives you might not want to feature on your family tree.

Familial DNA searches have been done in Britain for years, and California Attorney General Jerry Brown gave investigators the go-ahead to do the same in the Grim Sleeper case two years ago. A database search came up with a partial but significant match between DNA collected during the investigation and a routine sample taken from Franklin's son. Brown said the son was given a cheek swab after his conviction on a felony weapons charge. LA Weekly reported that the results of the DNA analysis "lit up like a Christmas tree."

The investigators followed up by snagging DNA samples from Franklin himself. A relative of one of the Grim Sleeper victims who was briefed by police said that the sample was left on a restaurant cup, while the Los Angeles Times reported that the DNA was recovered from a discarded piece of pizza. The most likely scenario is that forensic sleuths tested the pizza, the cup and any other items that Franklin might have put to his lips while dining.

District Attorney Steve Cooley told the Times that the arrest "shows the legitimacy" of using partial DNA matches and promised to provide more details at a Thursday news conference.

If the arrest leads to a conviction, the feat will take forensic genetics to a whole new level. But it could raise a whole new crop of questions about genetic privacy as well.

Lifetime genetic surveillance?
In California, for example, the DNA samples are collected after every felony arrest, and may be retained even if the suspect later goes free. That has sparked a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU noted that about a third of all those arrested for felonies in California are not convicted of any crime, and said that "thousands of innocent Californians will be subject to a lifetime of genetic surveillance because a single police officer suspected them of a crime."

The ACLU also said the system could have a "huge racial impact" because a disproportionate number of people of color are already represented in California's criminal justice system, which serves as the main channel for the state's DNA sampling flow (at a rate of roughly 25,000 samples per month). The latest figures show that California has the biggest statewide DNA database in the country, with more than 1.5 million samples. ACLU calls it the third-biggest forensic DNA database in the world, behind the FBI's nationwide CODIS system (which includes the California samples) and Britain's national data bank.

We're right in the midst of a massive crime-lab experiment in DNA collection. The federal government and all 50 states require those convicted of felonies to provide DNA samples, but California is just one of the 23 states that require DNA for felony arrests. Congress and several states, including New York and North Carolina, are currently talking about widening their DNA collection programs to cover arrests as well as convictions.

Proponents of wider DNA testing say that such measures will prevent crime, save lives and provide more protection to the innocent. Opponents say that such measures will put more of a burden on the innocent, and that familial DNA analysis could turn even distant relatives into "genetic informants." I say that the Grim Sleeper case will increase the pressure on lawmakers to bulk up DNA databases across the country, and will lead to wider use of familial DNA as well. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? What do you say? Weigh in on this issue by leaving a comment below.

More on genetic sleuthing:

• Who's keeping your genetic keys?
• Interactive: Your genetic fingerprints
• DNA collection raises ethical questions
• Gaps in DNA databanks lead to tragedy
• DNA pioneer wants cuts to criminal database

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• QuantumG's Blog: Living inside an asteroid
• NASA announces moon art winners (via Space for All)
• Scientific American: Did supernova spark solar system?
• NASA Watch: Space chief's Al-Jazeera talk sparks anger

• New Scientist: Worried about aliens finding us? Too late
• CollectSpace: The ultimate space shuttle model ... for $540
• Wash. State U: Super-high pressures used for super-battery
• BBC: Hayabusa capsule particles may be from asteroid

There's a new shooter taking spectacular pictures from the highest vantage point possible: the International Space Station.

Almost as soon as NASA astronaut Douglas Wheelock arrived at the orbital outpost, just a little more than two weeks ago, he settled into the photographer role once filled by Japanese spaceflier Soichi Noguchi. Wheelock's Twitpic account is brimming with shots looking outside as well as inside the space station. And it's not just the pictures: "Astro_Wheels" also provides a running account of what he's seeing and doing. Some examples:

• "'Don't tell me that the sky is the limit, when there are footprints on the moon...' Sure looks beautiful behind our blue planet, maybe one day we'll be daring enough to go back."

• "Me on cleaning day in the U.S. Lab. We call our vacuum cleaner 'Jaws' ... and it was my turn to wrestle the beast! I won and the Lab is clean! :-)"

• "The view from Earth orbit of the lunar eclipse during Saturday's beautiful full moon ... the eclipse in progress with the Earth's shadow moving across the surface of the moon, simply breathtaking! The Master's handiwork..."

• "I am floating through the transfer hatch to my position in the Soyuz capsule, all suited and ready to take Olympus for a spin around the block for re-docking. Would love to hear your ideas for a caption, maybe 'Did you guys see the keys?'"

If Wheelock's first two weeks on the station are any guide, we could be in for a picturesque account of life in space over the next six months. For more imagery from the International Space Station, check out the Expedition 25 photo gallery on NASA's Human Spaceflight website.

Assuming that the weather is clear and you're not dazzled by Fourth of July fireworks, you should be able to see the space station for yourself this weekend. Consult NASA's real-time sighting database to find out where and when to look.

Wheelock's aurora picture is one of the zingers we've included in our just-published Month in Space slideshow. You'll love this batch because the photographs are more colorful than usual. In fact, you may love them so much that you'll want to put bigger versions of the images on photo paper or your computer desktop. Here are Web links to the sources for this month's selections:

• Psychedelic Moon from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
• Southern lights from space, seen from the International Space Station
• Blue planet from Japan's Akatsuki probe
• Cosmic jellyfish from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer
• Back to Earth from AP, with a view similar to NASA's Human Spaceflight Web
• Cotton candy in space, served up by the Hubble Space Telescope
• The spreading spill, from NASA Goddard Photo and Video ... plus updates
• Moonset over telescopes, courtesy of European Southern Observatory
• Chaos on Mars from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
• Shipment from an asteroid delivered by Reuters and JAXA
• Two moons in the night from Cassini
• Space spider from European Southern Observatory
• Bull's-eye volcano from EO-1 via Goddard Photo and Video
• Frosty Red Planet from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
• Point after touchdown from Reuters with our full story
• Clouds in volcano country from Terra via Goddard Photo and Video
• Celestial streaker from Michael Jäger
• The sun acts up, as seen by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory
• Cosmic watercolor from European Southern Observatory
• Thumbs up from Reuters, with more about the space station trio

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Here's wishing you a happy and safe Fourth of July weekend ... If you want to reflect on "the reason for the season," Daryl Cagle's collection of cartoons with Independence Day themes is a good place to start. You should also check out this meditation on Independence Days past and present, and this roundup of America's great Fourth of July celebrations. I'll be out of the office, celebrating the Fourth and the Fifth with my family. Regular postings will resume Tuesday the 6th. In the meantime, here are some Web links for the long holiday weekend.

• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Missing in MiG Alley'
• NPR: Thermonuclear fireworks in space
• Slate: What kind of invisible ink did spies use?
• The Economist: It's time for Internet arms control
• AFP via Cosmos: Prehistoric humans went to the movies
• Univ. of Washington: Microscopic bug-bot crawls into the ring