Hubble telescope spies incoming Comet ISON

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A recently discovered comet, dazzlingly bright even though it is still almost as far away as Jupiter, is racing toward a November rendezvous with the sun, officials said on Tuesday.

If it survives the encounter - and that's a big if - the comet may be visible even in daylight in Earth's skies at the end of the year.

Discovered by amateur astronomers in September 2012, Comet ISON is about to reach the outer edge of the asteroid belt, located some 280 million miles (451 million km) from Earth, said William Cooke, lead scientist at NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

U.S. Air Force eyes mixed approach for next weather satellite

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force will likely opt for a mixed approach for a next-generation weather satellite that includes smaller spacecraft, according to top Air Forceofficials.

The Air Force plans to finish a review of possible approaches for the satellite early this summer following the collapse of the previous program due to technical and cost issues.

"It will be a much smaller satellite. We will press for that for lots of reasons," General William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, told a space conference hosted by the Space Foundation on Tuesday. He underscored the need for more affordable satellites given expected declines in U.S. military spending.

For Private Manned Mars Mission, It's Make-or-Break Time

Progress made during the next year or so will determine whether a private manned Mars mission can get off the ground in 2018 as planned, its organizers say.

The pressure is on the nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation, which intends to launch two astronauts on a flyby mission around the Red Planet in January 2018. If the team misses this window, the next one won't open until 2031, when Earth and Mars are again suitably aligned for a fast roundtrip trek.

South Korea increases surveillance as North moves missile

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Korea has raised its surveillance of North Korea after the reclusive state moved one or more long-range missiles in readiness for a possible launch, Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday.

Admiral Samuel Locklear, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific region, said the U.S. military believed North Korea had moved an unspecified number of Musudan missiles to its east coast.

NKorea recalling workers from jointly run factory

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Monday it will suspend operations at a factory complex it has jointly run with South Korea, pulling out more than 53,000 North Korean workersand moving closer to severing its last economic link with its rival as tensions escalate.

The Kaesong industrial complex just north of the Demilitarized Zone is the biggest employer in North Korea's third-largest city. Shutting it down, even temporarily, would show that the destitute country is willing to hurt its own economy to display its anger with South Korea and the United States.

Israel honors 6 million victims of Nazi Holocaust

JERUSALEM (AP) — Among the crowds marking Israel's annualHolocaust remembrance day at the Yad Vashem memorial Monday was a retired American Air Force colonel from San Francisco who came to honor a family he never knew.

Bertrand Huchberger was too young to remember his parents, who sent him and his older sister from Paris into the French countryside to escape the Nazi roundups during World War II. For three years he was hidden by Christian rescuers, including a prostitute, before he was put into an orphanage and adopted by American Jews when he was 11 and taken to New York.

Japan increasingly nervous about North Korea nukes

TOKYO (AP) — It's easy to write off North Korea's threats to strike the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile as bluster: it has never demonstrated the capability to deploy a missile that could reach the Pacific island of Guam, let alone the mainland U.S.

But what about Japan?

Though it remains a highly unlikely scenario, Japanese officialshave long feared that if North Korea ever decides to play its nuclear card it has not only the means but several potential motives for launching an attack on Tokyo or major U.S. military installations on Japan's main island. And while a conventional missile attack is far more likely, Tokyo is taking North Korea's nuclear rhetoric seriously.

Virgin Galactic's Private SpaceShipTwo Soars in Test Flight

A private spaceship soared through the California sky on Wednesday (April 3) in a flight test meant to pave the way for future passenger trips to space.

Virgin Galactic's suborbital space plane SpaceShipTwo was released at high altitude from its mothership, the WhiteKnightTwo, and glided to the ground in what's called a drop test.

The suborbital SpaceShipTwo touched down at the Mojave Air and Space Port, following a milestone that moves the craft closer to its first hot-engine flight using its hybrid rocket motor.

NASA to Launch Planet-Hunting Probe, Neutron Star Experiment in 2017

NASA has picked two new low-cost missions for launch in 2017: a planet-hunting satellite and an International Space Station experiment designed to probe the nature of exotic, super-denseneutron stars.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) are the latest missions chosen under NASA's Astrophysics Explorer Program, which caps costs at $200 million for satellites and $55 million for space station experiments, officials announced Friday (April 5).

40 Years Later, NASA's Pioneer 11 Probe's Solar System Legacy Lives On

On April 5, 1973, exactly 40 years ago, Pioneer 11 blasted off from Cape Canaveral for a risky mission that would take the small satellite dangerously close to Jupiter's surface and through Saturn's outer rings, paving the way even more ambitious explorations of the solar system.

The spacecraft had a tough act to follow. Its sister craft, Pioneer 10, which launched on March 2, 1972, was the first to fly beyond Mars, the first to fly through the asteroid belt and the first to zip by Jupiter, sending volumes of scientific data back to Earth.