National Aeronautics And Space Administration

Rising over the battered surface of the moon, Earth loomed in a shimmering arc covered in a swirling skin of clouds. The image, taken in 1966 by NASA's robotic probe Lunar Orbiter 1, presented a stunning juxtaposition of planet and moon that no earthling had ever seen before. It was dubbed the Picture of the Century. "The most beautiful thing I'd ever seen," remembered Keith Cowing, who saw it as an 11-year-old and credited it with eventually luring him to work for NASA.

A NASA satellite designed to measure greenhouse gas emissions and pinpoint global warming dangers crashed Tuesday after a protective covering failed to separate from the craft shortly after launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The loss of the $278-million satellite came as a severe blow to NASA's climate monitoring efforts, as well as the builder of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va.

President Obama's selection Saturday of former astronaut Charles F. Bolden Jr. to head NASA gives a boost to the agency's manned space program and its stated goal of returning humans to the moon by 2020. During the presidential campaign, Obama had seemed lukewarm toward NASA and its hugely expensive human spaceflight program. Space enthusiasts were particularly worried after Obama staffers floated the idea of taking money from the agency to fund domestic programs.

One of the biggest problems facing America's space agency as it prepares to return to the moon is how to manage lunar dust. It gets into everything. Worse, it's sticky, adhering to spacesuits and posing a potentially serious health hazard to future colonists. Now, a scientist who has been studying the problem off and on over four decades thinks he may have untangled the mystery of why that dust is so sticky.

NASA announced plans Wednesday to embark on a mammoth 20-year project to send a spacecraft to Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa as its next flagship mission to search for life elsewhere in the solar system. The mission, which could cost as much as $3 billion, will be managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.

Late on Christmas Eve, one last wish was sent, by e-mail: Please let NASA Administrator Michael Griffin keep his job. It was from his wife. Rebecca Griffin, who works in marketing, sent her message with the subject line "Campaign for Mike" to friends and family. It asked them to sign an online petition to President-elect Barack Obama "to consider keeping Mike Griffin on as NASA administrator."

NASA on Monday released partial results of a massive air safety survey of airline pilots who repeatedly complained about fatigue, problems with air traffic controllers, airport security and the layouts of runways and taxiways. Reacting to criticism about its initial decision to withhold the database for fear of harming the airlines' bottom lines, NASA released a heavily redacted version of the survey on its website Monday afternoon.

A federal judge blocked the government from conducting background checks of low-risk employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after an appeals court said the investigations threatened the constitutional rights of workers. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright issued the injunction Friday after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his earlier ruling and issued a sharp rebuke to the judge.

NASA rescinded a directive Tuesday that would have forced millions of dollars in cuts from the popular Mars rover program, saying the budget reductions had not been cleared with NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin. James Green, head of NASA's Planetary Science Division, last week sent a private communication to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ordering $16 million in cuts to the Mars program, including $4 million in rover operations this year.

NASA said Friday that it terminated its contract with a Houston company selected in June to supply the space agency's next-generation space suit. NASA said it determined that an unspecified compliance issue required it to halt its contract with Oceaneering International Inc., best known for providing deep-water services and products to the oil and gas industry.