NSF: For decades, scientists have accumulated ever-larger datasets that suggest an enormous space rock crashed into the ocean off the Yucatan Peninsula more than 65 million years ago, resulting in the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction.

ESA: The Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potentially life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel is led by the European Space Agency with important participation from NASA.

NSF: Geologists have found evidence that sea ice extended to the equator 716.5 million years ago, bringing new precision to a "snowball Earth" event long suspected to have taken place around that time.

Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and led by scientists at Harvard University, the team reports on its work this week in the journal Science.

IMAGE: Scanning electron micrograph of the nanofossil Chiasmolithus from about 60 million years ago. This genus arose after the Cretacious Paleogene boundary mass extinction. The size about 8 microns.

Arabidopsis seedlings on seed cassette baseplate. Image Credit: Tom Trower/NASA

NASA scientists hope to better understand exactly how and why plants grow differently in space in an experiment named, Tropi. Future astronauts may be able to grow plants as part of life support systems on long-duration space missions to the moon or Mars.

Space is a hostile environment for living things, but small organisms on the Expose-E experiment unit outside Europe's Columbus ISS laboratory module have resisted the solar UV radiation, cosmic rays, vacuum and varying temperatures for 18 months. A certain lichen seems to be particularly happy in open space!

Astronomers have discovered a new ground-based technique to study the atmospheres of planets outside our Solar System, accelerating our search for Earth-like planets with life-related molecules. Their work is reported today (3 Feb. 2010) in the journal Nature.