The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This is an important step along the trail of finding the chemical biotracers of extraterrestrial life, as we know it.

The structural thermal model (STM) of the LISA Pathfinder science module has successfully completed a series of vibration tests at the ESTEC facilities in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. These tests are part of the spacecraft's system level mechanical verification.

On 26 November 2008, the Ministers in charge of space activities in the European Space Agency's eighteen Member States and Canada subscribed to the start of a new programme called Space Situational Awareness. The purpose of this programme is to help protect European space systems against debris and the influence of adverse space weather. But what is the science behind space weather?

Light-Toned Deposits (LTD) on the surface of Mars have been at the centre of scientific debate since their discovery by the Viking spacecraft in the late 1970's. In a recent paper, using data obtained with Mars Express, Angelo Pio Rossi and colleagues propose that several LTD are vestiges of large-scale spring deposits.

An IXO science meeting will be held on 28-29 January, 2009 in Cambridge, MA, USA, at the Royal Sonesta Hotel. Members of the scientific community are invited to participate. The meeting will focus on preparing for the upcoming U.S. Decadal Survey, and will feature presentations by the Science Definition Team, the Instrument Working Group, the Telescope Working Group, and the ESA, JAXA and NASA projects. There will be updates on the mission configuration from both the recent ESA Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) effort as well as the latest developments in the NASA Mission Studies. The overall science goals of the IXO mission will be discussed and the status of preparing the science case for submission to the Decadal Survey presented. Please see the mission web sites ( http://ixo.gsfc.nasa.gov/ and http://sci.esa.int/ixo) which will be updated shortly with details of the meeting, or contact Mike Garcia ( mgarcia@cfa.harvard.edu ).

It was only in 1995 that the first detection was made of another planet going around a main sequence star. Other detections swiftly followed, and as transiting objects were added the process of characterising them started. Early targets were, due to the relative ease of observation, close-in Gas Giants, but as detection methods have advanced "Super-Earths" (planets of a terrestrial rocky type, and only a few Earth masses) have begun to be added to the inventory. We can now start to think of characterising and even mapping these intriguing objects. We will look at what it is possible - now and in the foreseeable future - to detect their atmospheres and surfaces, and what modelling is starting to tell us of what we can expect of them.

A number of missions to the small bodies of the Solar System have flown or are foreseen in order to better understand the origin of the Solar System. The Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) technologies of the spacecraft are key to the success of the delicate and critical operations required for sample return missions to these small Solar System bodies. This workshop has the objective of gathering world-wide experts in all GNC-related disciplines to discuss and establish what the most feasible strategies are, based on the results from past small body missions, ongoing missions and studies, research work, hardware development, etc.