N.A.S.A said the Z-2 spacesuit was only a prototype , but elements of it would be incorperated into the suit worn by the first humans to reach the Red Planet

The suit uses light emitting patches and luminescent wire that could be customised to identify individuals  , the "technology" design beat out two others with 63% of a public vote of 233,431

The other suits were : A "bio mimicry" suit , which mirrored the bio luminesence of aquatic creatures and the tough scaly skins of fish and reptiles

                                A "trends in society" suit , which reflected what everyday clothes may look like in the future

The Z-2 will be built using 3-D printed parts , and 3-D lazer scanners will ensure each suit fits each astronaut perfectly

It will be tested in vacume chambers , at N.A.S.A's training pool and at a site that imitates the rocky Martian surface

In 2012 N.A.S.A released the Z-1 which bore more than a passing similarity to the suit worn by 'space ranger" Buzz Lightyear  from the Toy Story movies , the first major overhaul of the spacesuit in about 30 years 

N.A.S.A said " each interation of the Z series will advance new technologies that one day will be used in a suit worn by the first humans to step foot on the Red Planet"

And the Z-2 "pays homage to thhe spacesuit achievements of the past while incorporating subtle elements of the future" , it's hard composite upper torso "provides the much needed long term surability that a planetary extravehicular activity suit willl require" , but despite its "aesthetic appeal" the prototype was not made of the same durable material designed to protect space walking astronauts from micro meteroite strikes , extreme tempertatures and radiation , N.A,S.A added

It has been almost a year since the Robot last turned the power tool in the ground , the vehicle has since travelled more than 3 miles (5 k) as it heads towards the mission's target , the foothills of the huge mountain that dominates Mar's Gale Crater

The rock drill was spun at a scientific waypoint known as "The Kimberly" , new pictures sent back to Earth on Wednesday , taken by the rover's Mahli "hand lens" , show a sharply defined hole surrounded by a pile of grey powder

Before turning the tool , the Robot had been commanded to examine several rock targets with all it's survey instruments 

Scientists and Engineers must now assess the qualities of the powder produced , if past practice is followed , this will have been a test, asssuming it has gone satisfactorily , the Rover will then acquire a second drill sample for ingesting in the robot's on board labratories

Curiosity last used it's drill in May last year in a small depression not far from it's 2012 landing site

The samples pulled from mudstones at the bottom of this shallow bowl contained evidence of an ancient lake

From the rock chemistry , scientists were able to determine the type of enviroment that existed in Gale Crater billions of years ago ,the researchers said the conditions would have allowed micro organisms to florish had they been present

The U.S. based group which includes a number of former N.A.S.A astronauts , campaigns on the issue of space protection

It hopes the visalisation will press home the idea that impacts are more common than we think

The presentation leans on data collecyted by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) the CTBTO operates a network of sensorsthat listens out for clandestine Atom bomb detonations

Between 2000 and 2013 , this infra sound system catalogued 26 major explosions on Earth , none were caused by A-bombs , they were all the result of asteroid strikes , they ranged in energy from one to 600 kilotons , by way of comparison , the bomb which destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima was a 15 kiloton device

Fortunately , most of these space rocks disintergrated high up in the atmosphere and caused few problems on the ground

A few people will have heard about , such as the 20 m wide object that ripped across the sky above Russia's Chelyabinsk last  year , but many will have gone unseen , occuring over Earth's ocean's

And just one of these 26 events were detected in advance and then by only a matter of hours

Because although Chelyabinsk was a terrifying experience for those caught up in it , the event itself was quite small compared with some of the incomer's recorded through Earth's history

The foundation says the CTBTO data would suggest that Earth is hit by a multi megaton asteroid , large enough to destroy a major city if it occured over such an area about every 100 years

Remembering the Tunnngrrriska event of 1908 , it was fortunate that the object thought to be about 45 m wide struck a very remote part of  the globe

Many sky watchers on the West coast of America caughht a rare Blood Moon , caused by the Earth's shadow falling across the Moon , causing the surface of the Moon to  appear a red or orange , before becoming a total lunar eclipse for around ann hour , the time of rhe eclipse occured about 12:07 PST  or 07:07 GMT

America is expected to get a glimpse of yet another Blood Moon later thes autumn

the photo shows how the Moon looked if you happened to be ib California , Utah andd in the Hawaiian islands

A total lunar eclipse is set to begin on the 15th of April at two O' clock in the morning ET

You may have heard of how Mars alignment brings it closer to the Earth than it's been in many years , you can see it if the sky is clear of clouds with the naked eye

However the same is true from the planet Mars , this photo shows Earth as seen if you were on Martian soil , taken by the N.A.S.A  Mars Rover Curiosity , you are literally looking at your home , the Earth from the perspective of another planet

Scientists have produced their most precise measurement yet of the rate at which the early universe was expanding

They find that some three billion years after the Big Bang , the cosmos was pushing itself apart by another one percent every 44 million years , it is the latest result to come from the Baryon Oscillation Spectrscopic Survey (BOSS) the international group clocks the expansion by making detailed maps of the distribution of matter in space

The hope is such studies can provide further insights on "dark energy" this is the mysterious force that  appears today to be driving the cosmos apart ever more quickly

Theory holds that the universe has been on a rollercoaster like ride , from the Big Bang 13.8 billion year ago , it expanded rapidly , but that expansion decelerated in the first four billion years under the constraining influence of gravity , then some six billion years ago cosmos started to speed up again under the influence , scientists suspect of dark energy

We've assumed that dark energy is a consstant and this approch has been very successful so far , but as more data is taken and push down into the noise , it's possible something new will emerge , it is also possible that as more data is taken , the tension will simply go away

Now scientists say the expansion , far from slowing , is accelerating , pushing the galaxies apart at a faster and faster rate , the BOSS team have traced dark energy's part in the expansion over more then ten billion years of cosmic history

It won't panic in an emergency , it's hands don't shake after too little sleep , it won't miss a family after months away from base , in fact it does'nt even need to breathe

N.A.S.A's Robonaut 2 has the making of the perfect space sergeon , the humanoid has already been posted to the International Space Station , the only problem is it's motor skills are somewhat rudimentary at the moment , in truth , it can't even walk in zero gravity yet , and perhaps it's most impressing physical feat to date has been to catch a floating roll of duct tape

But N.A.S.A. has high hopes for the new recruit , and techniques being developed by a team on the ground could mean the machine can eventually   perform life saving operations on it's team mates 

As Robonaut's name suggests , it is not alone , there are currently four versions of the android with more in development , one of them is beingg trained on Earth , to find a pulse in a dummy's neck using ultrasound , then to stick a needle into a vein , once it can give an injection it will be able to find the same spot on a human body and use the   same angle for the needle again

Robonaut 2 was shipped up to the I.S.S.  as just a torso , head and arms , it is still waiting for a pair of legs to arrive on a forthcoming supply mission

The next stage is for it to learn to walk ,then go outside the station to do maintenance work , it's legs have seven joints and cameras in the feet , so it will be able to see where it's going

An underground ocean awaits on a Moon of Saturn , Astronomers have for the first time , measured the depth and extent of a subsurface sae on the ice covered Moon Enceladus , the findings shore up the notion that an underground reservoir feeds the Moon's ice geysers and raise qustions avout Enceladus's habitability

For a long time astronomers thought the 500 kilometer wide Enceladus was an unchanging , dead world , but Cassini space craft , which arrived in 2004 , found an active Moon 

Geysers shoot particles of salty ice water through fissures that dot the Southern hemisphere , the fissures expand and contract in rythum with the tides of Saturn

Heat wells up from the Moon's interior through cracks , putting these characteristics together , many astronomers suspected that a sea of liquid water lurked beneath the ice , but those suspicions were based on observations of the Moon's surface

To peek inside Enceladus , University of Rome's Aerospace Engineer looked at doppler shifts in Cassini's Earth bound radio signal during three flybys of the Moon, the doppler shifts , tiny changes in the frequency of the radio waves , track the spacecraft's speed,whenever Cassini passed over a part of the Moon with slightly more mass , the increased gravity accelerated the probe less and the Engineer used the changes in Cassini's speed to map Enceladus's interior structure

It was determined that a ten kilometer deep ocean must sit under 30 to 40 kilometers of ice and on top of the Moon's rocky core , extending from theSouth pole to mid Southern latitudes , the sea has a volume of water of Lake Superior

Encircling bands of material are more usually associated with  the giant planets such as Saturn and Uranus

Chariklo is just 250 km wide , observations made when it passed in front of a distant  star reveal the perssence of two distinct rings , the rings  are 7km and 3 km , separated by a clear gap of 9km and are composed of ice particles and small rock fragments

The best guess for the origin of  the rings , is that there was a collision on Charikio and that this collision injected a disc of material around the asteroid

Even Earth may have had such bands early in it's history if our  theory for the Moon's formation is correct

This describes an impact which threw matter into the sky , that then encircled the globe before eventually combining into what's now our Moon

Chariklo may also have experinced such a bombardment , but the rings in  this case are unlikely to form a Moon , the rings are nearby and there are forces called tides and every time the particles try to accrete and form a satellite , the tidal forces will disrupt them

Chariklo is technically known as a centaur , like the mythical beast , it exhibits a half way character , having the traits of an asteroid , but also looking very much comet like

Thhe Philaelander , which Europe hopes to put on the surface of a comet later this year , has been re activated after three years in deep space hibernation

The small probe is currently riding piggyback on the Rosetta Satellite , which was launched ten years ago in order to rendezvous with Comey 67P/ Churyumov-Geraimenko

After a period of mapping , Rosetta will then release Philae on its challenge to attach itself to 67P this November

Being only 4km across the comet gravitational field well be very weak , and the 100 kg box of instruments will use harpoons and ice screws to try and hold itself down

The German Sace agency (DLR) confirmed recipt of the activation message from Philae just after 14:00 GMT, 6:00 PST

Philae's wakeup is part of a sequence of commissioning activities taking place over the next few weeks , the main probe was sent so far from Earth to chase down 67P , that it went beyond the distance where solar panels could pick up enough energy to run all on board systems

Engineers took the decision to close down the satellite for a period of 31 months , now that Rosetta is moving closer to our Sun again , those systems and in particular , the various scientific instrruments are all being switched back on one by one , most will be switched straight back off again after an initial health check because power availability remains constrained in the short term , the key exception is Rosetta's imaging system , Osiris , it will stay on because it is needed to help plot the precise position of 67P in the sky

This leads to the next big event in the mission , the major manoeuvre that will start to refine Rosetta's trajectory to the comet , this will be initiated on the 21st of May with a seven hour 21 minute burn on the space crafts thrusters

Rosetta is currently 655 million km from Earth and about 3.8 million km from Comet 67P

The European Space Agency (Esa) has published the "long list" of eight sites under consederation as destinations for the ExoMars Rover

The 300 kg  vehicle will be put on the surface of the Red Planet in January 2019 to search for evidence of past or present life , it should operate for at least seven months and will carry a drill to probe up to six feet underground

The sites are generally clustered in a relatively tight zone close to the equator , they are : Hypanis Vallis , Simud Vallis , Mawrth , Oxia Planum , Coogoon Valles , Oxia Palus and Southern  Isidis

The ExoMars lnding site selection working group is meeting now in Madrid  to begin the process of downselection , the teams that proposed these locations will make their case dueing the Spanish gathering

It is hoped to have a shoort list of no more than four locations in June or July , these will then be intensively studied , calling on new high-resolution pictures and mineralogical data acquired by satellites in orbit at Mars

Astronomers have discovered a second icy world orbiting in a slice of the solar system where , according to their best understanding there should have been none

Intriguingly , the astronomers said that the details of the orbits hint at perhaps an unseen planet several times the size of Earth at the solar system's distant outskirts

The new planetoid , an estimated 250 miles wide , iis now 7.7 billion miles from our Sun , about as close as it gets , at the other end of it's orbit , the planetoid , which for now carries the unwieldy designation of 2012 VP 113 , loops out to a distance of 42 billion miles , Neptune , by contrast , is a mere 2.8 billion miles from our Sun

Much farther out , a trillion miles , the solar system is believed to be surrounded by a sphere of icy bodies known as the Oort Cloud , where many comets are thought to originate  , but between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud , astronomers had expected empty space

At the Cervo Tololo inter-American Observatory in Chile , in November 2012 , VP 113 , follow up observations last year confirmed it was a Sednoid , scientists have come up with various ideas to explain such bodies , some thought is Sednoids were pushed there when our Sun was part of a dense cluster of stars , others suggest that a rogue planet , ejected from the inner solar system , dragged the Sednoids along as it flew through the Kuiper Belt

Computer simulations showed that the similarities could be explained by a planet with a mass of five times that of the Earth and about 23 billion miles from our Sun , too dim to be seen

A U.S. team studied a mineral called apatite , which is found in a variety of lunar rock types

Apatite , the name for which comes from a Greek word meaning deceit , may have misled scientists into thinking  the Moon is wetter then it actualy is, initiall analysis of lunar rocks brought back to Earth by Apollo missions suggested the Moon was "Bone Dry"

But in the last decade , studies of volcanic gasses and apatite in lunar rocks have revealed them to be hydrogen rich , building a compelling case for significant water having been present on the Moon as different minerals crystallised from cooling magma

The abundance of water in lunar rocks has important implications for the prevailing theory of the Moon's formation , known as . the giant impact model , according to the theory , several billion years ago , a planet sized object called Theia , collided with Earth , blasting rock into Earth's orbit

This material then coalesced to form the Moon , but the fiery origin story requires that voilatile elements were boiled off , leaving the Moon , depleted of water relative to Earth , so less watery Moon ties   in better with this theory

The "Shrapnel"generated by small space rocks that periodically hit the Moon , may pose a larger risk to lunar missions than previously believed

A relatively  small impact on the Moon last year , hurled hundreds of pieces of rocky debris out thw crater , many were travelling at the speed of a shotgun blast, the meteroid strike sprayed small rocks up to 30 km from the initial impact site

Usually lunar impacts have a veryshort duration , just a fraction of a second , but this impact lasted over eight seconds , and it when viewed from Earth was almost as bright as the Pole Star , which makes this the brightest ever recorded from Earth

The lump of rock weighing about 400 kg (900 lb) and travelling at 61,000 km/h (38,000 mph) slammed into the surface of the Moon

Unlike the Earth the Moon has no atmosphere to shield it from meteorite collisions and it's surface shows a record of every strike

Scientists have developed a skin tight space suit to try to stop Astronaut's spines expanding

They hope the lightweight elastic material will mimic the force of gravity on the Astronaut's spines can lengthen by up to 3 inches (7cm) with no gravity to compress the bones painfully pulling on musclesss and nerves

Using designs by MIT scientists at King's College , London are refining the tailor made suits for testing in Space

As Astronaut's bones and muscles do less work to keep them upright once they experience weightless ness , they can also start to waste away

All these factors can make them more likely  to  experience long term back and other health problems on return to Earth

The researchers say these issues are likely to pose an even greater challange on extended missions such  as proposed journeys to Mars 

India's Mangalyaan spacecraft is on it's way to Mars , but the Country is already planning it's next major Space Exploration Mission

The Country visited the Moon in 2008 , and launche a budjet Mars rocket in late 2013

But the next step is a mission to the Sun which could begin an early as 2017 , the twelve million dollar mission would be called Aditya-1 , and will launch between 2017 and 2020

While preparations have been made for the mission scince 2008 , India's Space Agency now has a clearer picture of what the mission will intail , Aditya-1 will study coronal mass ejection , events and the parameters that govern space weather

Waves in the very fabric of the cosmos are allowing us to peer further back in time than anyone thought possible showing us what was happening in the first slivers of the seconds after the Big Bang , if confirmed , the discovery of these primordial waves will have rippling effects throughout science , it backs up key predictions for how the Universe began and operates , and offers a glimmer of hope for tying together two foundational theories of modern physics , it might even net the discoverers a Nobel Prize

The Waves in question are called gravitational waves and are produced when a massive object accelerates through the fabric of space-time , causing ripples they appear in Einstein's highly successful theory of general relativity , although they have never been directly detected

Naming landmarks on Mars isn't just for scientists and rover drivers anymore , starting Wednesday  anyone with an internet connection and a few dollars to spend will be able to name one of the Red Planet's five hundred thousand or so un named craters , as part of a mapping project set up by Uwingu

Putting your tag on Mars isn't free , Naming the smallest of the craters will put you back the tidy sum of five dollars , with prices going up as the size of the crater increases

Uwingu will use the money raised by the project , which could be more than ten million , if people name every available Martian crater , to fund grants in Space Exploration

To name your crater for this low sum , go to Uwingu site @ http://www.uwingu.com , get there early before prices go up

This week Great Britain had a unique view of the Aurora Borialis or Northern Lights as they are also known , this is a shot of how this light show looked from space via N.A.S.A.

The Science team sifting thru the data from Nasa'a Kepler telescope , says it has identified 715 NEW planets beyond our solar system

Kepler's latest bounty orbit only 305 stars , meaning they are multi planet systems , a vast majority , 95% are smaller than our Neptune , which is four times the radius of our Earth

Four of the new planets are less than 2.5 times the radius of the Earth , and they orbit their hosts Suns in the "Habitable Zone" the region around a star where water can keep it's liquid state

Whether that is the case on these planets cannot known for sure , Kepler's targets are hundreds of light years in distance , and is too far away for very detailed investagation

The Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009 on a budget of $600 million (£360) million pounds , mission to access the likely population of Earth sized planets in our Milky Way Galaxy