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A scientific panel has narrowly recommended South Africa over Australia as the best site for the proposed Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an enormous radio telescope (see " Astronomy in South Africa: The long shot ").

By Eric Hand of Nature Magazine On 4 January, John Grunsfeld, the fix-it-man for the Hubble Space Telescope, became the head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. [More]

Like jazz musicians who make up a melody as they go along, scientists often improvise even after an experiment is underway.

By Eric Hand of Nature magazine John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist and astronaut who fixed the Hubble Space Telescope, has been chosen to lead NASA's science mission directorate, according to several sources with knowledge of the selection.

Testing mirror segments for JWST.

With the return of the brilliant planet Venus to our evening sky, I'm reminded of an amusing anecdote related by a good friend of mine, George Lovi, a well-known astronomy lecturer and author who passed away in 1993. One night, while running a public night at the Brooklyn College Observatory in New York, the telescope was pointed right at Venus, which was displaying a delicate crescent shape at the time. Yet, one student gazing through the telescope eyepiece stubbornly insisted that he was really looking at the moon.

From Nature magazine The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is perilously overbudget and under threat of cancellation, but Naturehas learned that it may be offered a financial lifeline. The flagship observatory is currently funded entirely through NASA's science division; now NASA is requesting that more than US$1 billion in extra costs be shared 50:50 with the rest of the agency. The request reflects administrator Charles Bolden's view, expressed earlier this month, that the telescope is a priority not only for the science programme, but for the entire agency.

OV-105, as Space Shuttle Endeavour is designated by NASA, is due to fly into space for the final time today

Among the various complex, clever, futuristic solutions to solving the space-junk problem, DARPA's just unveiled a new tool to help with the job that's wonderfully simple. It's a telescope, to look for the stuff.