Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) will soon be able to enjoy a special view. The 130th shuttle mission (STS-130) lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on 8 February 2010 at 10:14 Central European Time. Space Shuttle Endeavour carried the 'Cupola' (Italian for 'dome') and the 'Tranquility' (Node 3) station module into space. The Cupola has seven windows and will offer a previously unavailable panoramic view of Earth.

Designer fuels based on coal, natural gas and sustainable biomass could, in the future, replace kerosene in aviation. In the search for alternatives to crude oil, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) has been conducting research into new synthetic fuels for aviation for several years. Current results show that the future fuels may even be superior to kerosene with regard to environmental friendliness and engine reliability.

America is no longer a nation at risk, rather it is a "nation falling further behind," in science and engineering education said Rick Stephens, Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Administration at The Boeing Company.

Using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have, for the first time, created a demographic census of galaxy types and shapes from a time before the Earth and the Sun existed, to the present day. The results show that, contrary to contemporary thought, more than half of the present-day spiral galaxies had so-called peculiar shapes only 6 billion years ago, which, if confirmed, highlights the importance of collisions and mergers in the recent past of many galaxies. It also provides clues for the unique status of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

NASA will extend the international Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its planets to 2017. The agency's fiscal year 2011 budget provides a $60 million per year extension for continued study of the ringed planet.