Alien cultures might be happy to know that if we humans ever do start colonizing the universe, we may have a few problems going forth and multiplying.

A team of Japanese scientists has found that microgravity significantly lowers the birth rate in mammals, based on their study of mice embryos subjected to space-like conditions in the lab.

In previous studies in rats, scientists had seen that microgravity during space flight lowered sperm counts and even caused the poor rodents' testicles to weigh less. [Rat-testicle weigher sounds like a job for Mike Rowe to me!]

Meanwhile, mouse-embryo cells flown aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1996 failed to yield any mousey babies.

Reporting in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, Sayaka Wakayama, of the Laboratory for Genomic Reprogramming in Kobe, and colleagues note that the issue warrants further study, but sending actual mice into space and seeing if they breed presents a few challenges.

"If mice were to be taken into space, they would be exposed to strong vibrations and hypergravity during the launch, and then suddenly exposed to the additional stress of µG conditions. In these situations, it is highly unlikely that the mice would copulate during the flight period," the study authors write.

The solution? Mouse in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

Using a device that kinda looks like a robot's rotissomat to simulate microgravity, the scientists fertilized mouse embryos and allowed them to develop in conditions like what they would experience in space.

The eggs were then taken out and transferred to waiting mouse moms. The fertilization part worked as expected, and the mice gave birth to 75 healthy space babies.

"All these offspring appeared normal, and randomly selected animals were later proven fertile by natural mating," the authors note.

But that's just a 35 percent birth rate, compared to the 63 percent of successfully born IVF mice that got to develop under normal Earth gravity.

Next steps, the authors say, will be to see how well embryo implantation works in space.

If a colony ever does get built on the moon or Mars, I suppose eventually we'll want to extend such studies to humans, although I'm guessing much more work will be done between now and then on whether we can make babies in space the old-fashioned way.

Any volunteers for this important medical research?

Did you hear? Today, July 20, 2009, is the 40th anniversary of the day humans first set foot on the moon.

Yeah, I know. If you read newspapers/watch TV/surf the web/opened your door this morning, you've probably been flooded with Apollo 11 news by now.

On one hand, it's quite the achievement worth celebrating. On the other, it's a reminder of all we have *not* accomplished in the field of human space travel over the past 40 years.

For our part, NatGeo has been busy creating some fascinating content to commemorate the heady days of the Apollo program.

One of my personal favorites is an interactive version of a pressed vinyl record called Sounds of the Space Age, which was an insert in the December 1969 issue of the magazine.

I may not be old enough to remember the moon landings (technically, I wasn't born yet!) but man, I do recall those wonderfully floppy records. I'm pretty sure I had one with a McDonald's song that had me crooning the ingredients in a Big Mac when I was 12...

Speaking of Micky Ds, some good folks working out of a now-defunct restaurant in California have been restoring the original 1960s Lunar Orbiter pictures taken to help scout out landing sites for the Apollo program, and we've got a few examples of their work on display.

To get a real sense of how well satellites could see back then, check out a zoomable version of the famous "Earthrise" image taken by the first Lunar Orbiter.

Still not convinced man landed on the moon? Writer Ker Than interviewed a couple delightfully witty experts, who gave him the skinny on why some of the more common hoax theories are all wet. And if historic images don't seal the deal, check out pictures released this weekend showing quite clearly the shadow of a lunar lander.

Finally, here's a shameless plug for a piece I scared up on the question of who, exactly, can claim the moon.

There's a ton more from us, and so much good, funny, thoughtful, and touching Apollo coverage elsewhere online.

It might seem weird to get so excited at the 40th, with the 50th just a few short years away. But as one historian recently noted, this could be the last major anniversary when all of the original Apollo 11 crewmates can still gather to tell tales. So make the most of it, people, we're living history even as we relive that historic day.

—Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Today NASA announced that its next flagship Mars rover has been granted a name: Curiosity.

Sixth-grader Clara Ma of Lenexa, Kansas, penned an essay about the concept of curiosity that won her the right to name the new probe, an SUV-size rover that will be the largest, most technically capable craft yet landed on the red planet.

"Curiosity is an everlasting flame that burns in everyone's mind. It makes me get out of bed in the morning and wonder what surprises life will throw at me that day," Ma wrote in her essay.

"Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives. We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder." [read the full essay here.]

It's a beautiful bit of prose and a very mature sentiment from such a young person. Now let's hope that inflated budgets and political tugs-of-war don't tarnish the dream.

Launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, as the rover was formerly known, has already been delayed by two years due to rising costs.

All that high technology led to some serious technical problems and scrapped designs that not only cost the MSL program dearly, they also sent engineers scrambling to finish all the hardware and safety tests before the original 2009 launch date.

After weighing their options, NASA managers decided to postpone the mission to 2011, a slip that caused the budget to swell to about $400 million over initial projected costs.

In addition to fears that MSL would be set back (or scrapped completely), the move made "planetary scientists worry that pushing back the mission could have a ripple effect, delaying and even canceling future missions," Andrew Lawler wrote in a Science news article last September.

After all, those extra dollars will have to come from somewhere, likely from other less high-profile planetary missions.

Meanwhile, the abrupt resignation of senior NASA science official Alan Stern last fall allowed said official to open a huge can of whoopass on NASA in general, with the MSL as his poster child for all the things that have gone wrong at the agency.

In a scathing article in the New York Times, Stern called the project a "poorly managed" symptom of a "cancer" growing at the space agency in the form of "a NASA culture that has lost control of spending."

Irresponsible decisions and pet projects lead to budget overruns that lead to smaller but worthy projects getting shown the door, Stern says.

In January a hearing of the Planetary Science Subcommittee set out rules for how MSL's budget woes would impact other projects.

While most major planned missions will move ahead as scheduled, an atmospheric probe bound for Mars, an orbiter headed for Jupiter, and U.S. involvement in an international moon collaboration are all now at risk of delays and/or losing funds.

And geez, NASA, you know it has to be bad when you get a several hundred-word spoof in the Onion.

On the flip side, people whinging about costs and wringing their hands over delays really are nothing new in the world of Big Science [cough, LHC]. Hubble had its share of start-up troubles, but it's now arguably one of the most beloved science instruments of all time, not to mention one that has made some significant discoveries.

So out of all the things NASA has money to study, what would you like the agency to focus on? It's a federal agency, after all, and publicly accountable. All it takes is enough people willing to step up and make some noise—look what public outcry did for the future of Hubble and is still doing for Pluto's demotion.

It's your space agency people, you have to decide whether it's going to be a blessing or a curse.

Imagine trying to spot a moth flying around the rim of a searchlight. If the light is a few feet from you, there's a chance you would catch the occasional flicker of motion, but the moth would be largely hidden by the glare.

Now imagine the spotlight shines as bright as the sun and is several light-years away. Chances are all signs of that moth are obliterated.

Such is the challenge placed at the feet of those searching for habitable Earthlike worlds orbiting sunlike stars.

Prowling the poster hall here at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, I came across a group of people who hope to overcome the obstacles by sending a giant gold daisy into space.

The holiday season has officially descended upon us, and many a child is eagerly waiting for that jolly red roundness with a snowy white cap to appear in the sky.

Meanwhile, anyone whose day job requires listening for and deciphering radio signals from Mars is probably only too glad that white-capped red ball has hidden itself behind the sun, and will stay that way through the end of 2008.

Peek-a-boo!
—Image courtesy ESA

Last Friday Mars slipped into place behind the sun directly opposite to Earth observers, and over the next few weeks the red planet will drift through a line of sight very close to our stormy star.

This means that solar noise effectively blocks radio communications with the five craft now orbiting or actively exploring the face of Mars—and that means Mars mission engineers can take a bit of a breather.

After what sounded like some pretty exhilarating deliberations back in September, JPL announced today the final four candidate sites for landing the Mars Science Lab, NASA's next big rover bound for the red planet.

Sayonara, Miyamoto. Farewell, Nili Fossae. And so long South Meridiani. These three of the seven under consideration were voted off the proverbial island.

That leaves proponents of Eberswalde Crater, Gale Crater, Holden Crater, and Mawrth Vallis to duke it out and name a winner in time for the lab's planned fall 2009 launch.

A false-color map of Mars shows the four candidate landing sites for the lab as well as the positions of NASA's current and previous missions to Mars.
—Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Each remaining site has it's own unique set of features and local geology that would provide the roving lab with a different set of challenges.

Late last night the Mars Phoenix Lander put itself to sleep after experiencing a malfunction brought on by its deteriorating power supply.

The craft also unexpectedly switched over to its backup electronics and shut off one of its batteries.

The news was surely a disappointment, but not entirely a surprise, for NASA engineers, who had been expecting problems with the rugged lander right about now.

That's because the Martian arctic is moving into fall, and as the days get shorter, poor Phoenix has been losing its fire [in the form of sunlight to power its instruments].

An image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the Martian north pole, with the Phoenix lander at about the 10 o'clock position
—Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

It's not just the scientific equipment that needs power.

Mars is pretty frigid even in summer, and right now it doesn't get much warmer than -50 degrees Fahrenheit (-45 degrees Celsius) during the day, with overnight temperatures plummeting to -141 degrees Fahrenheit (-96 degrees Celsius).

Back in September I had a chance to get inside the Chariot, a prototype of the next-gen lunar rover being designed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

It's a pretty wacky concept: Instead of just making a frame with wheels a la the original Apollo moon buggies, NASA is giving the lunar voyagers of 2020 a tricked-out RV.

This puppy comes equipped with six-wheel drive and an active suspension system, plus a full cabin with comfy seats, benches that double as beds, a pantry, a toilet, and enough juice to ride for 62 miles (100 kilometers) before heading home to recharge.

The idea is that a pair of astronauts could live in the rover wearing NASA-approved street clothes for up to two weeks. Their space suits ride on the back, attached so that moon walkers can slip in and out as needed to collect samples and snapshots from various lunar sites.

The current version of the Chariot is being field tested this weekend in Arizona, and while I couldn't make the trip to the desert, I was able to use information collected on my Houston trip to whip up a preview piece on the craft.

NASA's lead engineer for mobility, Robert Ambrose, gave me a ton of details on the vehicle and how it's being designed, including some interesting tidbits that I didn't have room for in the article.

—Image courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

NASA's MESSENGER space probe sent some postcards home this morning from its second jaunt past Mercury, that tiny planet nearest to the sun.

The flyby is part of some maneuvering MESSENGER has to do to ease itself from orbiting the sun to orbiting Mercury.

Using the gravity of other planets helps the orbiter reach Mercury while saving on fuel, a bit of technique that was not even feasible until the 1980s.

—Image courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

NatGeo News reporter Anne Minard has the skinny on what scientists are saying about the new images, including the implication that geologic processes on Mercury might be an awful lot like those on the moon.

Minard also collected a great set of facts and figures about Mercury and its exploration that didn't make the cut for the news story, but that I think deserve a bit of airtime:

• Mercury has a metal-rich core 60 percent denser than Earth's.
• The planet's thin atmosphere is contains sodium, calcium, potassium, and, surprisingly, water vapor.
• Mercury's daytime surface temperatures can reach over 800 degrees Fahrenheit (426 degrees Celsius), but it looks like the planet still manages to have ice in some of its craters.
• Mariner 10 flew by Mercury three times in 1974 and 1975, capturing images of about 45 percent of the planet's cratered surface.
• MESSENGER launched on August 3, 2004. It carried about 1,323 pounds (600 kilograms) of liquid chemical propellant at launch, nearly 55 percent of its total launch weight.

• The spacecraft conducted an Earth flyby in 2005 and two Venus flybys in 2006 and 2007 on its way to Mercury.
• MESSENGER first flew by Mercury in January of this year, imaging a further 20 percent of the surface.
• On its second flyby, MESSENGER flew 124 miles (200 kilometers) above Mercury's surface during its closest approach on October 6, 2008.
• The craft imaged 30 percent of the surface not seen during previous space-based missions.
• As of today [October 7, 2008] MESSENGER is about 61million miles (99 million kilometers) from Earth.
• The craft is halfway through a 4.9-billion-mile (7.9-billion-kilometer) journey into Mercury's orbit that includes more than 15 trips around the sun.

—Image courtesy NASA

The tug-of-war between space-based and ground-based telescopes continues, with today's release of what's being called the sharpest full-planet image of Jupiter taken by an on-the-ground observatory.

—Image courtesy ESO

[versus]

Jupiter, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2007
—Image courtesy NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)

An international team used the ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile to stare right at Jupiter for almost two hours straight.

The resulting infrared image revealed that Jupiter has lowered its belt. The bulk of the haze within the bight band around Jupiter's midsection has migrated south by more than 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) since 2005, the researchers said.

"The change we see in the haze could be related to big changes in cloud patterns associated with last year's planet-wide upheaval, but we need to look at more data to narrow down precisely when the changes occurred," team member Mike Wong said in a press release.

[Incidentally, the global upheaval he's referring to involved massive changes in cloud patterns and other wild weather features observed in 2007.]

In an interview with NatGeo News reporter Richard A. Lovett, lead researcher Franck Marchis, a planetary astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, and the SETI Institute, said of the new image: "We have something comparable to or even better than the Hubble Space Telescope."

Wow. But this isn't the first time researchers using ground-based 'scopes have compared their work to products of the aging but much beloved Hubble.

It was with a certain amount of glee that I arrived at my aunt's house near Houston, Texas, a few weeks ago and told her the highlight of my media tour at NASA's Johnson Space Center was putting on a bunny suit.

The incredulous eyebrows were lowered when I explained that this is the playful name given to the clean-room attire needed to enter the Lunar Receiving Lab, a "library" of moon rocks and other cosmic material cataloged for study in Johnson's Building 37.

—courtesy NASA

The process of entering the lab was pretty intense. My tour group had already been instructed to wear long pants and closed-toe shoes—the first time I had ever been given a dress code for a media briefing.

First we needed to set aside any sundry items (pen, notepad, camera) we wanted to take with us to be cleaned by helpful professionals. Then we had to take off all jewelry and step inside a mostly bare room, where one can only put street shoes on the gray "welcome" mat. Blue booties went over the shoes, and we immediately had to step on the white tiles and move toward the next door.

Behind Door Number Two we put on the aforementioned bunny suit: a white jumpsuit, tall cloth boots, a hat, and gloves.

Next we stepped into an air lock-style holding area, where we were swept with filtered air for a full minute before finally being allowed to set foot inside the lab.

This summer's successful touchdown of, and subsequent science results from, the Phoenix Mars Lander have been setting the stage for NASA's next big payload bound for the red planet: the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), due to launch next fall.

An artist's rendition of the MSL
—Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Even as I type, planetary researchers are gathered in Monrovia, California, to argue the scientific merits of seven proposed landing sites for the upcoming mission.

Figuring out where to position the craft might not seem like that big a deal, since the science lab is actually a rover—the biggest NASA has ever tried to land on Mars—that's designed for long-range mobility.

Unlike its famously long-lived but distance-challenged predecessors, the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, MSL will have the potential to travel up to 12 miles (19.3 kilometers) from its initial landing site.

But on a world more than 4,000 miles (kilometers) wide, location really will be key to the mission's ultimate goal of figuring out whether the red planet could ever have supported life.