HISTORICAL EVENTS 10th June 2003 NASA launches the rover Spirit to explore Mars and search for signs of past life on the planet. One of two rovers sent to Mars, its “twin” Opportunity landed three weeks later. Spirit studied the history of the climate and water at sites on Mars where conditions may once have been favourable to life. Spirit uncovered strong evidence that Mars was once much wetter than it is now and helped scientists better understand the Martian wind. In

This month . . . The Light Year. A unit of distance, not time. A light year is an astronomical measurement of the distance light travels in one year. A staggering 10 trillion kilometres per year. Because the universe is so vast, astronomers use the Light Year to measure distances between objects. It’s much easier to think of the Andromeda Galaxy, one of our nearest galaxies, as being 2.5 million light years away rather than 21,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometres, or 21 q

In this Issue: ORCS in Space Triffid Nebula Cosmic Encounters Solar Observations Damoiseau Crater Jupiter's Atmospher