The Mid December volume of the journal Science is a special issue devoted to the Stardust mission. The cover depicts a piece of aerogel that flew to Comet Wild2 and tracks caused by captured comet dust can be seen. Scott Sandford is first author and George Cooper a co-author of the report 'Organics Captured from Comet 81P/Wild 2 by the Stardust Spacecraft' Dr. Sandford is a co-author on the report 'Infrared Spectroscopy of Comet 81P/Wild 2 Samples Returned by Stardust' and both Drs. Sandford and Cooper are co-authors on the research article 'Comet 81P/Wild 2 Under a Microscope'. All of the papers can be downloaded as PDF files and the Introduction to special issue 'Look into the Seeds of Time' by Joanne Baker can be found by following this link.

Rain on Titan: McKay article and press coverage Dr. Chris McKay is co-author of the letter 'Methane drizzle on Titan' in the most recent issue of the journal nature, which is discussed in an editors summary, or you can read the full text online at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7101/full/nature04948.html

This article attracted considerable (and international) press coverage including 'Searching For Aliens' from Space Daily, 'NASA Reports That Methane Drizzles on Saturn's Moon, Titan' from Space Ref, and an interview with Dr. McKay about searching for aliens appeared in Astrobiology News online on July 27^th.

Chondrule formation in particle-rich nebular regions at least hundreds of kilometres across by Jeffrey N. Cuzzi and Conel M. O'D. Alexander.

Chondrules are the dominant, enigmatic components of primitive meteorites and probably of most primitive asteroids; they were melted in the protoplanetary nebula and have thus lost some of their more volatile elements (Mg, Si). Research by Space Science Division Scientist Jeff Cuzzi and collaborator Conel Alexander (DTM, Carnegie Institution) suggests an explanation for a puzzling lack of the expected preferential loss of light isotopes of these elements from chondrules. The new model shows that if chondrule formation regions have a certain chondrule density (roughly 10 per cubic meter) and size (roughly 100-1000km), evaporating vapor clouds from each chondrule overlap, replacing the lost light isotopes. The results seem to preclude some candidate chondrule formation mechanisms such as nebula lightning and bow shocks from numerous small planetesimals, which act on smaller scales. The work appeared in the May 25 issue of Nature. Click here to be taken to the online version of the article at nature.com and see the News and Views piece by Steve Desch.

An image of microbial mats taken by division scientist Lee Bebout from their Baja Mexico Field site is the cover shot for the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology in association with the article 'Unexpected Diversity and Complexity of the Guerrero Negro Hypersaline Microbial Mat' co-authored by division scientist Brad M. Bebout. For more information see http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/short/72/5/3685 and http://aem.asm.org/content/vol72/issue5/cover.shtml

Two new moons, named Mab and Cupid, and two new outer rings have been discovered around Uranus by former division scientist Showalter and division scientist Lissauer (p. 973, published online 22 December 2005; see the cover and the Perspective by Murray). These new members of the uranian system were spotted in images from the Hubble Space Telescope and traced in earlier pictures from Voyager 2. Substantial changes are seen in the passages of the moons and brightness of the rings since the Voyager 2 fly-by. Many of Uranus' moons do not follow simple keplerian orbits but exhibit complex dynamics, which suggest that the whole system is gravitationally unstable or chaotic.

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