A radar on the belly of a airplane flying above the Southern California region is taking in detailed data for scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab so they can study faults' shifting, straining in relation to seismic energy. "The data from this project could help scientists figure out where the risk of earthquake activity is highest, though the data will never be so specific as to predict a day, location and magnitude of a quake, explained the LA Times. “This will help us with the five- to 10-year time horizons,” Donnellan said. “We can see hot spot maps and ... figure out where to target our retrofitting,” said Andrea Donnellan, a JPL geophysicist. more ›

Speaking of explosions, NASA, including the Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Lab, has plans for the weekend that involve crashing stuff (on purpose this time) into a comet and seeing what happens. The impact is supposed to occur around 10:52 pm this Sunday, July 3. There will be pictures on TV at some point, we're sure, and there will also be a "Comet Bash" viewing party in Glendora. more ›

Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Lab has successfully steered its Opportunity robot out of a Martian sandpit. The sandpit wasn’t the Mars mission’s first glitch: there was the time last year that Opportunity’s twin, Spirit, kept rebooting and wouldn’t phone home, a Mars Polar Lander that crashed in 1999, and, most embarassingly, a Mars Orbiter exploration satellite that crashed into Mars in 1999 because engineers measured some things in meters and others in yards. more ›