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February 6: More than 6,300 individuals applied to become a NASA astronaut between Nov. 15, 2011 and Jan. 27, the second highest number of applications ever received by the agency. After a thorough selection process, which includes interviews and medical examinations, nine to 15 people will be selected to become part of the 21st astronaut class.

February 6: ESA's Mars Express has returned strong evidence for an ocean once covering part of Mars. Using radar, it has detected sediments reminiscent of an ocean floor within the boundaries of previously identified, ancient shorelines on Mars.

February 1: NASA's Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland will host a special event on March 2 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's first orbital flight by an American. NASA also will invite 100 people for a behind-the-scenes Tweetup at GRC in advance of the celebration event.

January 23: Big sunspot 1402 erupted today, Jan. 23rd, producing a strong M9-class solar flare and a fast-moving coronal mass ejection. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab say the CME should reach Earth tomorrow afternoon. Keep an eye out for auroras over the next few nights.

January 20: Active sunspot 1401 erupted yesterday, Jan. 19th, for more than an hour around 16:00 UT. The long-duration blast produced an M3-class solar flare and a Coronal Mass Ejection that appears to be heading toward Earth. Watch out for auroras during the weekend.

January 19: Twin NASA spacecraft that achieved orbit around the Moon New Year's Eve and New Year's Day have new names, thanks to elementary students in Bozeman, Mont. Their winning entry, "Ebb and Flow," was selected as part of a nationwide school contest that began in October 2011.

January 19: Members of the public are being asked to join the hunt for nearby planets that could support life. Volunteers can check time-lapsed images of 150,000 stars, taken by the Kepler space telescope. A BBC viewer found such a planet yesterday!.

January 19: In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope's 'Pillars of Creation' image of the Eagle Nebula became one of the most iconic images of the 20th century. Now, two of ESA's orbiting observatories have shed new light on this enigmatic star-forming region.

January 16: The High Frequency Instrument on ESA's Planck mission has completed its survey of the remnant light from the Big Bang. The sensor ran out of coolant on Saturday as expected, ending its ability to detect this faint energy.

January 12: An exceptional galaxy cluster, the largest seen in the distant universe, has been found using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation-funded Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile.

January 11: Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of development. It is the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early universe.

January 11: This video presents the key events in 2012 for the European Space Agency (ESA).

January 9: After 16 years in space, NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) has made its last observation. The satellite provided unprecedented views into the extreme environments around white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes.

January 3: The annual Quadrantid meteor shower peaks on Wednesday morning, Jan. 4th, when Earth passes through a narrow stream of debris from a comet thought to have broken apart some 500 years ago.

January 3: The second of NASA's two Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has successfully completed its planned main engine burn and is now in lunar orbit. Working together, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will study the Moon as never before.