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The past 12 months has seen a dramatic influx in announcements proclaiming the discovery of Earth-like planets. It was only a few years ago that the detection of any kind exoplanet was cause for celebration, but these days news of a potentially habitable planet has become routine. But as astronomer and astrobiologist Caleb Scharf now notes, we need to relax and take a deep breath; just because these rocky exoplanets reside within a solar system's habitable zone doesn't mean they're anything like Earth.

From The New York Times: "In New Space Race, Enter the Entrepreneurs": Four years from now, the company plans for real modules to be launched and assembled into the solar system’s first private space station. "Every astronaut we have come in here just says, ‘Wow,’ ” said Robert T. Bigelow, the company founder. “They can’t believe the size of this thing.”

When mankind finally makes the big leap from Earth to space, it's probably not going to be the time-warping black holes or mouth-raping aliens that do him in. In fact, tomorrow's astronauts will be on the lookout for dangers that are laughably mundane. For every one dude who gets awesomely exploded by lasers or asteroids, hundreds will die of ...

"We aim to show the world that human space flight can be different from the usual expensive and government controlled project," the Copenhagen Suborbitals website states. "We are working fulltime to develop a series of suborbital space vehicles — designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft."

Hollywood has some weird ideas about how easy it is to survive falls from great heights and, say, explosions that occur 10 feet away from the hero. But it's almost stranger the way movies and TV exaggerate the dangers of other things. For some reason, it's not a big deal to jump away from an erupting fireball, but we're supposed to believe that encounters with the following are certain death...

Now that the last space shuttle has landed back on Earth, a new generation of space entrepreneurs would like to whip up excitement about the prospect of returning to the Moon.

On April 30, 2012, if everything checks out, SpaceX will send an unmanned Dragon capsule, launched from its own rocket, to dock with the International Space Station. If successful, this would mark the first time a privately-owned spaceship docks with a space station in orbit. And it will pave the way for private, manned space travel.

June 4, 2010: Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th.

On April 13, 2009 the National Archive Records Administration made available almost 250,000 pages of documents from President Reagan's administration. A curious comment found in President Reagan's Diary for Tuesday, June 11, 1985 (page 334) reads:

"Lunch with 5 top space scientist. It was fascinating. Space truly is the last frontier and some of the developments there in astronomy etc. are like science fiction, except they are real. I learned that our shuttle capacity is such that we could orbit 300 people."