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The article discusses the Siding Spring comet, which was discovered in January 2013, and will pass very close to the surface of the planet Mars on October 19, 2014. Topics include the comet's origins in the Oort Cloud; questions regarding the comet's chemical composition; and the presence of the U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration's (NASA) Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) satellite and the Indian Space Research Organization's (ISPO) Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter Mission.

This article reports that the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration is calling for proposals from astronomers for its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (Sofia) airborne observatory. The modified Boeing 747SP airplane will make important tests during the month of May 2010, flying with the telescope bay doors open for the first time. This will be the first time that the telescope is exposed to the open skies in flight.

The article reports that scientists from Sweden, Canada, Finland and France have finally detected molecular oxygen in interstellar space, but at concentrations much lower than star-formation models predicted. The author said that this is not surprising, given the difficulty of finding the elusive molecule, which theorists believe helps radiate away excess heat as clouds of interstellar gas collapse into new stars.

The article informs that the Boeing and U.S. Air Force investigators are focusing on the design and performance of propellant measurement sensors, their associated circuits and software in the early shutdown of the liquid strap-ons and core booster during the first flight of the Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle on December 21. Such performance-related measurement avionics and software have been key suspects since the vehicle's first-stage elements cut off early during the development flight. A Yale University astronomy team has used Hubble Space Telescope data to map clumps of theoretical "dark matter" in galaxy clusters, finding "extremely good agreement" with the so-called concordance model of the Universe that predicts dark matter.

Features the University of Iowa physics professor Louis A. Frank's vision about a plethora of cometlike bodies streaking towards the earth. Description and characteristics of the objects; Skepticisms about its existence; Interest of some scientists despite the doubts; Evidence of its existence.

The article focuses on the efforts of Japanese research team to understand how the universe stores iron, and talks of iron formations in interstellar space, interaction of iron particles with silicates and carbonaceous grains in space, and researchers Yuki Kimura and Bruce T Draine.

The article reports on the identification of possible first molecule in diffuse interstellar bands. It cites the discovery made by Mary Lea Heger, an astronomy graduate student at the Lick Observatory in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, of a strange pair of lines in the absorption spectrum of a star. Astronomers and physical chemists are describing the molecule as a small linear species with a complex spectrum.

The article discusses a study which identified aminoacetonitrile in the dense molecular cloud Sagitarius B2, the galaxy's richest source of interstellar molecules. It notes that the report was significant because of the molecule's relationship to glycine and the use of the astronomical community's unofficial but rigorous standards for what constitutes an identification. The report was published in the 2008 issue of "Astronomy & Astrophysics."

The article discusses research by German astronomer Amaud Belloche, published in the periodical "Science" which revealed detection of a branched alkyl molecule isopropyl cyanide in interstellar space with the help of Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile.

The article discusses the possible existence of dark matter, mysterious invisible stuff in the universe and the implication of its chemical properties. Most scientists believed that this dark matter are the most common stuff in the universe and perhaps making up 90% or more of the total mass. Physicist Michael Levi of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that researcher have become increasingly convinced that there is a vast number of materials in the world that does not glow at all.

The article reports on the supercomputer simulation showing how dark matter, an invisible material of unknown composition, herded luminous matter in the universe from its smooth state into the web of galaxies and galaxy clusters that populate the universe developed by scientists at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. The Chicago researchers compared the results of its supercomputer simulations to the newest, most detailed astronomical observations available. Andrey Kravtsov, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics who predicted that galaxies of different luminosity or brightness clustered differently when the universe was young said that the distribution of galaxies in the Chicago team's cyberuniverse matched the real one.

Investigates the role of hydrogen ion in the occurrence of interstellar clouds. Influence of supersonic expansion ion on the improvement of interstellar conditions; Destruction rate of the ion; Factors determining the cosmic-ray ionization in the cloud.