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In the wee hours of August 1, the moon and the sun will pass each other for a breathtaking full solar eclipse, but U.S. residents won't be able to catch a glimpse of the phenomenon because of their location on the planet.

San Francisco's Exploratorium science museum is broadcasting the eclipse to the masses, however, combining science and technology by streaming the eclipse on virtual world Second Life.

In the real world, a team from the Exploratorium science museum will be traveling to the Xinjiang Province in Northwestern China, close to the Mongolian border, to stream a Webcast of the eclipse. The museum is staying open all night to bring the Webcast to museum visitors, as well as its online viewers and members of Second Life.

Second Life avatars view the 2006 full solar eclipse in the virtual world.

(Credit: Exploratorium)

Total solar eclipses happen usually only every 18 months or so, and the team must travel to China because the full eclipse is only visible on a narrow slice on the surface of Earth.

Second Life users can view the 45-minute Webcast, starting at 3:30 a.m. PDT August 1, on the virtual world's so-called Exploratorium Island. Avatars can also gather at the Pi Day Theater at the Sploland Sim, at the Science School Sim, and at the Spindrift Sim. The eclipse will be accompanied by video and commentary of Exploratorium and NASA scientists.

Starting July 1, Second Life members and their real-life makers can use Exploratorium Island to learn about solar eclipses, Chinese culture, and solar science.

The Exploratorium has previously paired with Second Life and NASA to deliver space news. In 2006, for instance, the team traveled to Turkey to broadcast the solar eclipse, and NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander team has created an avatar for the exploring robot in the virtual world.

Non-Second Life users can view the Webcast on the Exploratorium Web site, and the CNET News.com multimedia team will provide coverage of the event after viewing the live video in the Exploratorium.

On earth, people are beginning to use the sun's light to power their houses, office buildings, and even gadgets. Now, outside of our planet, the sun's energy is going to be utilized for something else--space travel.

If NASA can successfully implement solar sails, which have been referenced in some sci-fi books of the past, using the sun's energy for space exploration may become a reality this summer.

The NanoSail-D team shows off their solar sail, after a deployment test in April.

(Credit: Science@NASA)

According to a report by NASA Science, the Marshall Space Flight Center and the Ames Research Center have teamed up to make history, by deploying its first solar sail, the NanoSail-D.

The solar sail, made of aluminum and space-age plastic, has the ability to harness the radiation of the sun for movement. Since outer space is frictionless, the sail could potentially accelerate forever, traveling much faster and much farther than a rocket running on fuel. Travel back to Earth would require a turn of the sail.

This technology isn't the first of its kind. In 2005, The Planetary Society launched a solar sail spacecraft, hoping to be the first successful launch. However, later that day, there was no confirmation that the craft, names Cosmos 1, had entered orbit, and the mission was deemed unsuccessful.

If NASA's spacecraft makes it into orbit, it will unfurl the solar sail from its pod, and "use solar pressure as a primary means of attitude control and orbital maneuvering," said Sandy Montgomery of the Marshall Space Flight Center, housed in Huntsville, Ala.

NASA said it means big things for space travel. According to Montgomery, the speed of the solar sail would make it feasible for a spacecraft to leave our solar system in a decade, instead of the 30 years it took for the Voyager missions to get to the edge of the solar system. In theory, rockets would be used for short missions and sails would be used for longer missions.

The power of the sun has also been used on NASA's recent mission to Mars. The Mars Phoenix Lander gets its energy to explore the planet from two solar panels built into the robot.

The NanoSail-D will travel to space onboard the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket, launching from the Pacific Ocean as early as July 29. It will be brought on board in a 10-pound suitcase, and if successfully unfurled, it will measure at 100 square feet.

The sails will not harness enough energy to carry passengers in space, but Montgomery said with solar sails at thousands of square feet, "a number of interesting scientific missions are possible."

CNET News.com intern Holly Jackson is among the multitudes of space lovers sending their names into space with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

(Credit: NASA)

If you want to make it to the moon but don't have the chops to be an astronaut, the deadline is approaching to at least send your name around Earth's orbiting rock.

June 27 marks the last day to enter your information on the Web to send your name to the moon with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Your name will be incorporated in a database and loaded onto a microchip built into the LRO spacecraft. The service is free and comes with a printable certificate assuring you that you are indeed a part of the LRO experience.

LRO is the first step in sending humans back to the moon, according to Cathy Peddie, deputy project manager for LRO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The orbiter will scope out landing sites and resources, and also study the effects of lunar radiation on humans. The orbiter is slated to launch no earlier than November and will orbit for at least a year.

The idea of sending your name into the cosmos, among other items, isn't new.

In August 2006, commercial space company Up Aerospace sent 110 pounds of souvenirs and science projects into space for 30 minutes. The Planetary Society has partnered with NASA and Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory for the "Messages from Earth" project several times before.

The current resident of Mars, the Phoenix Lander, also contains names of people who signed up to be a part of the mission. The last orbiter of the moon, Selene, also included names on a microchip. According to its Web site, "The Planetary Society is committed to bringing you on board each and every mission launched into space from Earth."

And if all the people in the promo video for NASA are to be believed, this will be a popular trip. A day after I signed up to join the mission, Nancy Neal Jones of the Goddard Space Flight Center said the number has topped 784,000. She said the project has gone international, with names submitted from all over the planet.

First it started tweeting, then it bore a twin.

NASA is trying all manner of Web 2.0 software to promote its science to the tech-savvy crowd. Months ago, the media director at the space agency's Jet Propulsion Lab began sending out Twitter messages, or 140-character digital notes, about the Phoenix Lander mission to Mars. Now, NASA has created a so-called cybertwin for the Phoenix rover in the virtual world Second Life.

Even though the term "cybertwin" sounds very Web 1.0, the technology is based on techniques in artificial intelligence, such as natural language processing. Instead of tapping NASA's media director for answers, the Phoenix cybertwin calls on a database of knowledge that's been programmed by scientists from JPL. That way, people can ask questions of the Phoenix chat bot to receive quasi-personalized responses about the rover's mission. (The cybertwin was developed by Australia-based start-up MyCyberTwin.)

As you might expect, the cybertwin comes off like a robot.

Q: What is your purpose?
[16:21] Phoenix: I'll be using instruments to probe the northern polar site's soil and ice and I'm here with three main objectives: to study the history of water on Mars, to determine if the Martian arctic soil could support life, and to study the Martian weather.

Q: What is your schedule?
[16:21] Phoenix: I have some pre-programmed commands but mostly I will wait for commands from Earth that arrive in the Martian morning and send my results back in the afternoon. So far I have had commands including the deployment of my robotic arm.

It's hard to gauge whether the Second Life bot will resonate with the virtual community, considering that NASA Web 2.0 promotions can be a mixed bag. So far, the Twitter page has drawn thousands of followers, but Facebook is another story. The Phoenix Lander page on Facebook has only 16 fans. Turns out, social networks can be a lonely place, just like in space.

You can find the Phoenix cybertwin on the NASA Island in Second Life via this address.

NASA and Google said Wednesday that the search giant will build a new high-tech campus at the space agency's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

As part of the 40-year agreement, Google will lease 42.2 acres of open field at NASA Ames close to its own headquarters in Mountain View for as much as $146 million over the life of the deal. By the end of 2013, Google said it will start construction on 1.2 million square feet of offices for research and development, in an effort to accommodate its growing staff of about 20,000. NASA Ames will oversee construction.

"This long-term lease agreement is a key component of Google's strategy for continued growth in Silicon Valley," David Radcliffe, Google's vice president of real estate and workplace services, said in a statement.

The agreement, which was negotiated over the last year, builds on other real estate dealings between NASA and Google. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin pay NASA about $1.3 million annually to house and land four jets, including a Boeing 747, at Moffett Field, where they will build a new campus.

The lease also extends an agreement that Google signed with NASA in September 2005 to collaborate on space and technology research. Although NASA Ames hosts 55 other private companies with offices on its research campus, Google's lease will be the first to involve newly built facilities.

When finished, the campus will comprise about 2 percent of NASA Ames' 1,800 acres.

NASA Ames director Pete Worden said in a recent interview that Google's lease for the airplanes and related public-private partnerships are a win-win for NASA. The space agency, for example, has had use of the Google airplanes for research, he said. "We're defraying government costs. And it's not really a sweetheart deal. The use of the facility is pretty expensive," Worden said.

As part of the deal, Google will pay NASA an initial base rent of $3.66 million per year, based on appraisals of the fair market value of the land. That rent has room for adjustments over the life of the 40-year lease, and Google has rights to renew its lease for up to another 50 years.

Google plans to begin the first phase of its construction by the end of September 2013. (It's still in the process of working up designs, according to a Google representative.) It will start the second phase by 2018 and the third by 2022. The company did not specify the parameters of construction during each phase, but it said that the lion's share of space will be devoted to office space and research and development labs. The company also plans to build some company housing, along with facilities for dining, sports, fitness, childcare, and conferences.

NASA will use the proceeds from the deal to improve its own property at Ames, according to the space agency.

Worden also recently said that NASA is in discussions with a consortium of universities to build a campus at Ames. He said the group includes the University of California, Santa Clara University, Foothill College, and Carnegie Mellon University.

"The idea is to have a campus devoted to some of the specific expertise that's needed to power Silicon Valley. And this is an ideal location for it," Worden said.

CNET News.com's Daniel Terdiman contributed to this report.

Updated at 12:10 p.m. PDT to include more detail and quotes.

A NASA representative said that the Google campus will be located on 4.2 acres on the northwestern side of Ames' 1,800-acre lot.

(Credit: Google Earth)

The Web site for the Phoenix Mars Lander mission was hacked over the weekend with readers of the main news article redirected to an overseas Web site, a spokeswoman for the mission said on Monday.

Someone was able to access the site Friday night and change the "read more" link to connect to an outside site that was in a foreign language, said Sara Hammond, spokeswoman for the mission being led by the University of Arizona. She was not sure what language it was.

Several hours later another attempt to hack the site was made and site administrators took the site down for nine hours to fix the problem, she said. The site was back up on Saturday afternoon.

"We're taking the appropriate steps to identify who it is, and we've improved our security on the site," she said.

The Phoenix Mars Lander vehicle touched down on Sunday and will use a robotic arm to dig through the ground and bring back soil and water samples for analysis. The goal is to study the history of water in the Martian arctic and search for evidence of a habitable zone.

The Web site for the Phoenix Mars Mission was hacked over the weekend.

(Credit: Phoenix Mars Mission)

The Phoenix Mars Lander's robotic arm touched the planet's terrain for the first time on Saturday.

The effort, which came seven days after the lander touched down, is part of NASA's efforts to scoop up Red Planet specimens for experiments on the lander.

A behemoth "footprint" was left behind by the robotic arm's touch in the King of Hearts area of Mars. The mark, which was captured by the camera attached to the lander, looks like it could have been made by the mythological Himalayan snowman. In reference to this, NASA dubbed the impression area "Yeti."

Here is the 'footprint' left by the lander's robotic arm on Saturday.

(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizone)

The lander's camera also took more images of the area under the lander, which has been nicknamed the "Snow Queen" site.

Images of the "Snow Queen" site further support NASA scientists' assumptions that the area in and around the lander is composed of ice, according to a statement from Uwe Keller, the robotic arm camera's lead scientist from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.

NASA's photos from this latest event in the Phoenix mission also offer a more philosophical thought about the future of space exploration. Man's first "footprint" on Mars was made by a robotic swipe, not a human step.

The Mars Phoenix Lander parachutes down to Mars on Sunday, in this image captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona )

The first images from the Phoenix Mars Lander have confirmed that the solar panels needed for its energy supply unfolded as planned and that masts for its camera and weather station are in position.

A successful touchdown late Sunday was followed by the first pictures about two hours later. More images are expected Monday evening.

This is one of the first images captured by the Phoenix lander, showing the vast plains of the northern polar region of Mars. The image was taken in black and white, with the approximate color inferred from two filters.

(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

The pictures "show a beautiful Martian landscape," Brent Shockley, Phoenix configuration and information management engineer, wrote in his blog Sunday night.

The landing of NASA's machine concluded a 422-million-mile journey that began last August. The Phoenix is on a three-month mission to determine whether ice below the surface ever thaws and whether some of the chemical ingredients needed for life are preserved in the soil.

"It's liquid water we're looking for," Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona at Tucson and principal investigator for the Phoenix mission, said during a press conference Monday on NASA TV. "Does the ice melt?"

Smith noted that the ground looks like the "active surface of the Arctic regions of Earth." Cracks in the soil show that surface is "active" because no dust or sand has filled in the cracks.

One particularly interesting photo comes from the NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which actually captured the lander as it was parachuting to Mars in the last leg of its long journey. Barry Goldstein, project manager of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, called that image "spectacular." The orbiter will act as a middleman communicator between the Phoenix and NASA.

At some point over the next few days, the lander's 7.7-foot robotic arm is scheduled to begin functioning. The robotic arm is set to collect the first soil samples in about a week.

The lander is expected to function for about 90 days with energy generated by the solar panels.

"Seven minutes of terror will be followed by three months of joy," a jovial Goldstein said during Monday's press conference, referring to the seven minutes of the final stage of landing.

But it is possible that the lander will function longer.

"We are going to operate till Mars freezes over," Goldstein joked.

Here is one of the octagonal solar panels, which open like handheld, collapsible fans on either side of the spacecraft. Beyond this view is a small slice of the north polar terrain of Mars. The image has been geometrically corrected, according to NASA.

(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona))

Artist's montage shows NASA's Phoenix spacecraft en route to and landing on Mars. For a gallery of images of the lander, click on the picture.

(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

Updated 6:31 PM PDT with initial information from the arrival of Phoenix on Mars and then again at 7:20 PM PDT with one of the first images from the lander. That follows an earlier update to reflect the Phoenix lander's acceleration as it approached Mars and to clarify its speed and course in traveling through space.

NASA said Sunday evening that radio signals have been received from the Phoenix spacecraft on the surface of Mars.

The Phoenix Mars Lander is the latest embodiment of humankind's quest to learn whether life might once have been sustainable on the Red Planet and to prepare for eventual human exploration there.

But before it can dig into the surface, Phoenix first had to traverse the Martian atmosphere. Those seven minutes of descent, the very last leg of the months-long journey, are what could have been the killer: the lander, its developers say, faced "seven minutes of terror" before touching down. Of 11 total previous attempts by several nations to put a spacecraft on Mars, according to NASA, only five had been successful.

In entering the thin Martian atmosphere and heading to the surface, Phoenix faced these tribulations: "aeroshell braking" via friction with the atmosphere that would heat it to thousands of degrees, a parachute opening that would give the lander a hard jerk to slow it further, and pulsing retrorockets tasked with making a soft touchdown.

Because it takes 15 minutes for signals to travel between Mars and Earth, Phoenix was designed to land autonomously. The confirming signal came shortly before 5:00 p.m. PDT Sunday.

"We've passed the hardest part and we're breathing again, but we still need to see that Phoenix has opened its solar arrays and begun generating power," Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement Sunday. Batteries are providing power at the moment.

How's the weather on Mars? In the days just before Phoenix's arrival, a dust cloud passed over the landing area but Sunday's descent was expected to take place in clear Martian skies.

(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/MSSS )

NASA said that it expects to learn the status of the solar arrays later Sunday night, along with information on whether the stereo camera and weather station have been moved into their deployed positions, as Phoenix relays signals via the Mars Odyssey orbiter. The first attempt to use the 7.7-foot robotic arm will come in a couple of days.

In the final day or two before landing, all was well.

"The spacecraft is in good health," Brent Shockley, Phoenix configuration and information management engineer at NASA, wrote in the Phoenix Mars Lander blog on Saturday. On Sunday, NASA reported that it had decided not to make any final adjustment to the spacecraft's trajectory.

In its approach to Mars, the vehicle had been traveling at an incredibly high rate of speed--though exactly how fast depends on the point of reference. Shockley wrote Friday: "Phoenix is currently traveling 75,400 miles per hour with respect to Earth. With respect to the sun, however, Phoenix is traveling 44,300 miles per hour. With respect to Mars, Phoenix is traveling a modest 6,090 miles per hour."

At midday Sunday, NASA said things were accelerating: "The spacecraft's speed relative to Mars increased from 6,300 miles per hour at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time to 8,500 mph at 12:30 p.m., headed for a speed higher than 12,000 mph before reaching the top of the Martian atmosphere."

Shockley joked in his blog about the spacecraft's energy efficiency. "At a time when gas prices are soaring," he wrote, "Phoenix is getting good fuel economy at about 2 million miles per gallon."

The lander is now about 170 million miles from Earth--after having traveled 422 million miles through space after liftoff from Earth in August.

This screen grab from NASA TV is a raw, or unprocessed, image taken Sunday by the Phoenix lander on Mars.

(Credit: NASA)

Using its robotic arm, Phoenix will dig into the surface to bring up both soil and ice. In its platform structure, the lander will then analyze those samples to help scientist on Earth create models of Mars' historic climate and to predict future atmospheric conditions.

Water on Mars exists only in solid and gaseous form, though previous missions to and around the planet have suggested that it once flowed in liquid form--as recently, NASA says, as about 100,000 years ago.

Scientists are also hoping that Phoenix can help determine "habitability" properties of the soil such as pH and saltiness.

The Stereo Surface Imager atop the lander, meanwhile, will produce panoramic images of the surface with a resolution of 1,024 x 1,024 pixels.

Even with a successful landing and initial operation, the Phoenix machinery isn't likely to have more than a short-term mission. Besides simply operating in the extreme cold of the Martian arctic and facing a potential onslaught of dust storms, it is not expected to get back into operation after the Martian winter when its solar panels will be rendered ineffective by complete darkness.

That said, no one expected the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity to last more than a few months, and they ended up sending back data for a number of years.