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Climate Change: The agency that put Americans on the moon can't tell you the temperature that day. It isn't returning to the moon, but it will fix the brakes on your car. Two senators want to know what's going on. The scandal unfolding at the nation's space agency is worse than the climate scandal, where researchers with Britain's Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia manipulated, destroyed and doctored climate data so that it supported the preordained conclusion that climate change was an imminent threat caused by man. If there is any doubt, just ask NASA. E-mail messages...

What's become known as "Climategate" may be about to explode on this side of the pond as well. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has threatened a lawsuit against NASA if by year-end the agency doesn't honor his Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for information on how and why its climate numbers have been consistently adjusted for errors. "I assume that what is there is highly damaging," says Horner, who suspects, based on the public record, the same type of data fudging, manipulation and suppression that has occurred at Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU)....

Science: For two years, our space agency has refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has repeatedly corrected its climate figures. A leading researcher threatens to sue to find more inconvenient truths. What's become known as "Climate-Gate" may be about to explode on this side of the pond as well. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has threatened a lawsuit against NASA if by year-end the agency doesn't honor his FOI requests for information on how and why its climate numbers have been consistently adjusted for errors. "I assume that what is there is highly...

BARNAUL, Russia (Reuters) - A shepherd is suing Russia's space agency for compensation after he said a 10-foot-long chunk of metal from a space rocket fell into his yard, just missing his outdoor toilet. Boris Urmatov, who is asking for 1 million roubles ($42,000) from the Roskosmos agency, lives in a small village that lies underneath the flight path of rockets taking off from the Baikonur launchpad Russia leases in nearby Kazakhstan. "Something woke him up in the night, like something exploded. Since he's visually handicapped he didn't notice the fallen rocket parts," Urmatov's sister Marina told Reuters from the...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The head of NASA said on Tuesday that the U.S. space agency has had to scale back its plans even since he took the job in April because of "daunting fiscal realities." In early 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush outlined a vision of returning humans back to the moon by 2020 and eventually to Mars. Some had hoped such a program would reignite public interest in the space program that has waned since the 1960s and early 1970s. "We must also acknowledge the plain fact that we cannot do everything that was on our plate...

DARMSTADT, Germany - A European space probe plunged into the hazy, mysterious atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan on Friday, and elated mission controllers said it had opened its parachute to slow its descent as it gathers data. The Huygens probe had successfully restarted its systems and the mission, which could provide clues to how life arose on Earth, was going well, said Roberto Lo Verda, a spokesman for the European Space Agency. "It has entered the atmosphere, and entered it correctly," Lo Verda said. "We know the batteries are switched on, the parachute has deployed and it has slowed down...

MOSCOW - An unmanned European spacecraft — poised for launch Monday on a Russian rocket — will orbit Mars for nearly two years and search for signs of life on the planet. AP Photo The Mars Express spacecraft is to be launched by the Soyuz FG booster rocket from the Russian-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:45 p.m. Monday (1:45 p.m. EDT), according to the Russian Space Forces, which runs the launchpad. The European Space Agency vehicle, which cost $350 million, will initially be put into the Earth's orbit. About 90 minutes later, it will be given a final push...