Pluto has mountains made of ice that are as high as those in the Rockies, images from the New Horizons probe reveal.

Mission scientist John Spencer told journalists that the first close-up image of Pluto's surface showed a terrain that had been resurfaced by some geological process - such as volcanism - within the last 100 million years.

Millions of people in the UK and northern Europe have glimpsed the best solar eclipse in years.

Scientific agencies had planes and even satellites gathering video to relay on the web and on television.

While scores of philosophers, scientists and futurists have prophesied the rise of artificial intelligence and the impending singularity, most have restricted their predictions to Earth. Fewer thinkers—outside the realm of science fiction, that is—have considered the notion that artificial intelligence is already out there, and has been for eons.

“Most people have an iconic idea of aliens as these biological creatures, but that doesn’t make any sense from a timescale argument,” Shostak told me. “I’ve bet dozens of astronomers coffee that if we pick up an alien signal, it’ll be artificial life.”

The European Space Agency has confirmed that the Philae probe has successfully landed on the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and established contact with headquarters. The harpoons have deployed and reeled in the slack, and the landing gear has retracted. (Edit: They're now saying the harpoons didn't fire after all.)

The crash of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft that killed one pilot and injured another scattered wreckage across a large area of the Mojave desert, but it also clearly rattled the “small” community of test pilots and technicians in the field.

The craft dubbed SpaceShipTwo was destroyed after it separated from its mother ship, White Knight Two, the company said.

A report from NASA's internal auditor, inspector general Paul Martin, says the space agency has underestimated the cost of keeping the International Space Station running until 2024. In particular, buying flights to the ISS from private companies rather than Russia is expected to increase costs.

NASA expects its annual spend on the ISS to increase from $3 billion to $4 billion over the next 10 years, with the largest increase coming from transportation costs.

The orbits were lower than planned, elliptical instead of round, and set at the wrong angle. Worse, it may not be possible reroute them.

If they cannot be rescued, ESA may use them for technology demonstrations.

Five years ago today, the Phoenix Lander started its descent towards the northern plains of Mars. I was following the live feed from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the Phoenix Science Operations Center in Arizona.

Perhaps the highest profile achievement of Phoenix was to dig down to a buried layer of ice just below the Martian surface. I was the scientist on watch who first recognised that the "white stuff" Phoenix was digging up was slowly disappearing.

If Curiosity, or any other mission, does find signs that there was once, long ago, life on Mars, Phoenix will at least deserve a nod for showing where to direct the search.

Astronomers M. Nikołajuk and R. Walter caught a black hole in the act of destroying and consuming part of a large planet or small brown dwarf. This event involved a supermassive black hole located in a relatively nearby galaxy, and emitted a burst of intense X-ray light that fluctuated over a short time span, then faded.

Typically, as matter falls onto a black hole at the center of a galaxy, it forms an accretion disk, a rotating region of material that heats to very high temperatures. The result is often strong emissions in gamma rays and radio light, with the output fluctuating only slightly.

Launched more than 35 years ago, Voyager 1 is the most distant man-made object from Earth. After making an incredible tour of the outer planets of our solar system, the probe was directed on a course away from the sun and is now more than 18 billion kilometers from our world.

Voyager 1′s instruments have detected a drop in radiation levels and a spike in cosmic rays. Whether or not this means the probe is outside the solar system or simply in a new, previously undiscovered area remains to be seen.