Google is launching a virtual stargazing program called Sky. It will allow users to explore millions of stars, and will support layers for things such as views from the Hubble Space Telescope. One has to wonder how long it will take the Trekkers to start mapping out Gene Roddenbury's universe in this thing...

Three people were killed after an explosion during an oxidizer test at Scaled Composites this week, two yesterday when the explosion happened, one today from complications afterwards. Scaled Composites is the company that won the X-Prize for the successful sub-orbital flight of its spacecraft, SpaceShipOne. The crew had been testing engine components for SpaceShipTwo, the private craft being built for Virgin Galactic, the suborbital spaceflight arm of Virgin Atlantic.

We'll never get to explore along side John Carter on Mars, but it's always nice to know that worlds as weird as anything Edgar Rice Burroughs might have imagined do exist ... minus the warlords and Martian princesses of course. NASA's Cassini space probe has found good evidence of large seas on Titan, Saturn's moon methane-shrouded moon. The photo above shows one such sea, which is about as large as Earth's own Lake Superior.

You know we're living in the future when you see things like Orbital Express being launched. It's a pair of robots designed to find, dock with and repair satellites in orbit, replacing faulty parts, refueling spent containers, and generally helping the sky birds to stay flying for a few more years. It's funded by the U.S. military and NASA, and its initial goal is to help extend the lives of expensive spy satellites. If it works though, I wouldn't be surprised to see these things tackling commercial jobs as well.

According to Space.com, NASA is funding engineering physics undergrad Daniella Della-Giustina's proposed research into using asteroids and perhaps comets to shield spacecraft from harmful solar radiation during trips to and from Mars. Astronauts could either burrow into the asteroid or simply hide themselves behind it. What help this would be with interstellar radiation, such as cosmic rays, isn't addressed in Space.com's article.

It's official -- you can now wax nostalgic with your kids about the days when there used to be nine planets. Space.com reports that Pluto has been demoted from planetary status, leaving the solar system with eight planets. The diminitive body, as well as its moon and dozens of other objects lying beyond the orbit of Neptune, will now be known as dwarf planets.

An earlier proposal to keep Pluto a planet by relegating it to a subcategory called "plutons" proved exceedingly controversial and was ditched in favor of a new definition that downsized the nineth planet.

The International Astronomical Union proposes to end the debate over what is and isn't a planet by creating a new two-part definition: the body must orbit a star, and it must be sufficiently large to be forced into a spherical shape by gravity. Read the full story on Space.com.

There's much debate over this proposal however, as it turns Pluto's moon into a planet (actually, the pair end up as a double planet) but giant moons that dwarf Pluto but orbit larger worlds (like Earth's moons, or Jupiter's Galileo satellites) would still be moons. The definition would also mean that the asteriod Ceres would now be considered a planet, as would the newly discovered Kuiper Belt object informally called Xena. The formal name of these diminutive orbs would be "plutons", but they'd still be considered planets, and there could be a lot of them. One estimate says we could end up with as many as 24 planets in the solar system if the IAU goes with this definition.

Space.com provides a rundown for Jeff Bezos' New Shepherd Reuseable Launch System, a vertical launch and landing vehicle similar to the Delta Clipper design from the mid-1990s. The ship would fly from a private spaceport in Texas, and be fueled by a mixture of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide and kerosine.

The ultimate goal is to fly paying tourists on suborbital flights. No hardware exists yet, but its always cool to hear about new space tourism possibilities.