Japan launched a satellite to circle the Moon. It did what it was supposed to do, and brought home incredible images. Now, it was time for it to go to sleep. It's too bad that it lands on the dark side of the moon, but the footage near the end must have been just feet above the surface. Very cool! Enjoy!

This is NASA WorldWind 1.4 and it makes Google Earth look like child's play. It just takes it to a next level. Besides exploring Earth, you can explore the Solar System's planets just like in Google Earth and see the volcanoes, craters and planet rings. It's plain awesome!

The transfer of data will be hundred of times faster than that by radio waves. The promise is made by the first tests conducted by a German institute. Receiving images in Google Earth or photos of the Hubble telescope in real time may soon be reality. A German institute has experienced a communication system based on lasers which will transfer data at a rate one hundred times higher than that possible with radio waves. The technology was developed by researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology in Aachen on the company's Tesat GmbH & Co. under a project funded by the German Aerospace Center (Dlr).

New mechanisms based on mercury and aluminum allow an accuracy ten times higher than the current systems. New generation atomic clocks have been developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Nist), an international collaboration which includes Luke Lorini also of the National Research Metrologica (Inrim) in Turin. The research appeared in Science magazine, and showed the ability to measure frequencies, and thus time, with 17 significant digits, reaching an unprecedented accuracy. The two new atomic clocks are based on atoms of mercury and aluminum. The first system had already been submitted in 2000, but the current version is definitely improved, the mechanism based on aluminum represents a completely new system.