Of course it’s great that we’re exploring Mars, but why aren’t we giving this attention to the moon? The moon is much closer- we can get there in days, not months- and we’ll probably have to establish ourselves there before Mars becomes feasible for anything resembling a permanent presence. NASA sometimes has a conqueror’s attitude- “we already planted our flag there- let’s go mark our territory somewhere else.” At least someone’s going, though:
India’s moon probe being fitted with instrument suite

To be fair, NASA’s got something lined up for later this year, but it’s the only lunar project on a long list of current and future missions.

Everyone’s covering the plumbing problems on the space station, but the imminent arrival of the Japanese science lab is really the big story:
Discovery heads to space station with Japanese lab

And I’ve been saving up my robot stories all week:

Dean Kamen’s Robot Arm Grabs More Publicity
(he’s building it for the military, of course)

Two more stories about military robots:
War Without Soldiers and Military Recruits Thousands More Warbots for New Unmanned Surge

And finally, one for the civilians. Civilian monkeys, sure, but you gotta start somewhere:
Monkeys Think, Moving Artificial Arm as Own

OK, we should be back with the usual depressing geopolitical headlines tonight.