To help celebrate the 36th anniversary of mankind's most significant scientific achievement — the landing of Apollo 11 on the Moon and the first steps by a human upon another world — here is a look at some current scientific endeavors in the news.

Space Shuttle Safety Under Microscope

UPDATE: The space shuttle Discovery got the all clear and launched today, July 26, 2005 at 10:39 ET. The shuttle is headed for the International Space Station and is scheduled to return in 12 days.

If you've been keeping up with recent NASA coverage, you know that the first attempt in two-and-a-half years to send humans into space with the American Space Shuttle fleet has been delayed due to a technical glitch. The launch of shuttle Discovery was originally scheduled for last Wednesday, July 13, but an anomaly involving a low-level fuel-tank sensor forced Mission Control to stop the countdown. At a Monday evening NASA press conference, engineers said that they had been troubleshooting around the clock for days but still had no conclusions as to what went wrong. They were optimistic, however, that the anomaly could be identified and corrected this week, allowing Discovery to launch within the current window, which ends July 31. Otherwise liftoff may be delayed until September. "This team is persistent and energetic and we will conquer this problem," said Program Deputy Manager Wayne Hale.

The launch of this shuttle mission is under the microscope because it's the first since the Columbia tragedy on Feb. 1, 2003, which killed seven astronauts (related story). It's also the first to incorporate a wide range of new safety upgrades and new procedures to help avert another such disaster. NASA is determined to prove the viability of continued manned spaceflight, and refuses to let "launch fever" compromise safety. "A few days' delay to figure out what is going on and make sure we're safe is always the right answer," Hale said. Though the shuttle program faces significant budgetary concerns (related SpaceRef.com article), the integrity of the engineers and hands-on managers continues to ensure that the manned spaceflight program evolves into a robust and reliable path to the future.

Support for Space Exploration Strong and Growing

While the bad news may be that the nation's politicians have a hard time writing the checks to fully fund NASA's initiatives, the good news is that the American public is solidly in support of plans to boldly go where we've never gone before. According to a recent Gallup poll, more than three-fourths of respondents — 77% to be exact — say they support a plan for space exploration that includes returning the Space Shuttle to flight, completing the International Space Station, building a replacement for the Shuttle, and going back to the Moon and then on to Mars and beyond. That's up from the 68% level of support expressed a year ago.

According to the Coalition for Space Exploration, NASA's current share of the total federal budget is 0.7%, or about $58 per year for the average citizen. During the height of Project Apollo, NASA's share of the budget was about 4 percent. Complete information about the recent Gallup results can be found at SpaceCoalition.com.

Breaking the Ice

One of the most interesting and spectacular celestial encounters ever attempted by NASA/JPL was a huge success this past Fourth of July. The space agency sent a probe called Deep Impact into the path of a comet named Tempel 1. While the main flyby craft took pictures, a separate coffee table-sized impactor slammed into the comet surface, blasting a brilliant plume of primordial material into space. Scientists are now sifting through massive amounts of data, including 4500 pictures, sent back by the probe on the plume and the resultant crater in the comet nucleus, and it will take weeks if not months to adequately interpret it. But there are already some surprises: The brightness and opacity of the plume indicates the surface dust was extremely fine, "more like talcum powder than beach sand," said one mission expert. This may force some rethinking about the common label of comets as "dirty snowballs" or "icy dirtballs." Of course, it's also possible that the impactor inadvertently released an imprisoned Q entity ... but we may never know. ("Death Wish")

More images and other information can be found at the Deep Impact Mission page on NASA.gov, as well as at The Planetary Society. The Discovery Channel will air a one-hour documentary on Deep Impact called "Comet Collision!" on Sunday, July 31, at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT (check your local listings).

Set Your Directed-Energy Weapon to Stun

The phaser weapon — both hand-held and ship-based — is practically here already. According to a Wired News article, the U.S. military has for years explored a new kind of firepower that is instantaneous, precise and almost inexhaustible: beams of electromagnetic energy, or "directed-energy pulses" which can be throttled up and down depending on the situation ... much like phasers on Star Trek can be set to stun or kill.

These directed-energy weapons do away with chemicals and projectiles — their ammunition is light or radio waves, limited only by the supply of electricity. Research and development have yielded various incarnations of these weapons, including handheld lasers which induce temporary blindness; radio-frequency weapons which can sabotage the electronics of landmines, shoulder-fired missiles or automobiles; and ship- or plane-mounted lasers which can precisely obliterate targets from tens of miles away.

Such weapons are nearing fruition, but logistical and spending issues have delayed their battlefield debut. "It's very frustrating when you know you've got a solution that's being ignored," says one developer. "The technology is the easy part."

"Three suns ... Must make for some long days."

Every now and then a Star Trek guest alien — such as "Irina" in Voyager's "Drive" — will claim to be from a "trinary" star system, meaning their home planet has three suns. That was always a stretch of scientific plausibility, because scientists were not sure it was even possible for a planet to form under the gravitational conditions of a trinary system. But now it appears the Trek writers have been vindicated. A planetary scientist from the California Institute of Technology , Maciej Konacki, has found telescopic evidence of an extrasolar gas giant in a triple star system, 149 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The discovery challenges current theories about planet formation. "How that planet formed in such a complicated setting is very puzzling," says Konacki.

"The environment in which this planet exists is quite spectacular," Konacki adds. "With three suns, the sky view must be out of this world — literally and figuratively." Of course, just because a gas giant can form under such conditions, it remains to be seen whether a smaller, rockier world can exist there too, let alone one that could evolve and/or sustain life. But, given how rich and complex and vast this galaxy is, there probably is an Irina out there somewhere. See this Space.com article for more info.