When the International Astronomical Union recently issued official names for 71 asteroids that had previously only been known by numerical designations, one of them turned out to be Douglasadams, named after the late creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. (Somewhat amusingly, the asteroid’s original designation was 2001 DA42.) Douglasadams joins another Hitchhiker’s Guide-related asteroid, which was designated Arthurdent in 2001, not long after the author’s unexpected death. The asteroid’s orbit is not expected to intersect with the Earth’s at any point, so it will probably come as no surprise to you that it’s considered mostly harmless.
Sources: Sci-Fi Wire, MSNBC

With several U.S. television entities expressing an interest in the rights to the new Doctor Who series, BBC Worldwide has reportedly ceased all syndication sales of the classic series to U.S. outlets such as PBS stations. In the meantime, there’s still no hint as to who might be carrying the new series on this side of the Atlantic, or if repeats of the classic series might be part of the package.
Source: Outpost Gallifrey

North American Red Dwarf fans, it’s that time of year again – two more seasons are lurking just around the corner on DVD. Series V, featuring run-ins with everything from a Holoship to a Despair Squid, has already been released overseas and will be making its North American debut soon, while Series VI, featuring the International Emmy Award-winning episode Gunmen Of The Apocalypse, will debut more or less simultaenously. Both seasons are packed with extras (we highly, highly recommend Series V’s extensive featurette on the making of the failed U.S. Red Dwarf pilot), hilarious commentaries from the cast on every episode, and even fan commentary on selected shows, plus the usual outtakes, deleted scenes, special FX reels, and isolated music tracks. You can order both seasons from theLogBook.com, and you can find it – along with everything else Red Dwarf-related – in theLogBook.com Store, which we promise is completely free of lurking polymorphs. Really. We checked.

The end of the road has come for the DVD releases for Highlander: The Series – mainly because after the abbreviated sixth season, there’s no more show. (Anchor Bay has promised that a DVD box set of the one-season-wonder spinoff series Highlander: The Raven is in the works, though.) With only 13 episodes, the sixth season set boasts a jaw-dropping eleven hours of bonus material, including outtakes, character profiles, and the obligatory all-inclusive looks back at the series’ evolution from day one. You can pre-order Highlander Season 6 now, or order all sorts of other Highlander-related goodness from around the world in theLogBook.com Store.

So you’ve gone through all six Babylon 5 DVD box sets, and you’ve even watched Tron again for the first time in years, and you’re frantically searching for reruns of Scarecrow & Mrs. King? You, my friend, are suffering from Boxleitner withdrawal – and the Pax Network has just what you’re looking for. B5′s own Bruce Boxleitner has landed a new series gig, co-starring as Captain Duval in Pax’s new series Young Blades (Sundays at 8pm Eastern), essentially a younger, hipper take on the legend of the Three Musketeers. Sharing the screen with Boxleitner are none other than Michael Ironside as the villainous Cardinal Mazarin, Charles Shaughnessy of The Nanny fame as D’Artagnan Sr., and Sheena Easton (yes, that Sheena Easton) as Queen Anne. Bruce reportedly won’t be blowing anyone straight to hell with nukes in his new show. (As a side note, fellow B5 castmate Mira Furlan has recently turned up on ABC’s Lost as yet another mysterious castaway who’s been voted onto the island.)
Source: Pax Network

Scientists are still in the early stages of analyzing the findings of the Huygens probe from Saturn’s enormous, cloud-enshrouded moon Titan, but one thing they do know is that they’ve found one of the most interesting and dynamic surfaces in the entire solar system. Despite a surface temperature of -291 degrees Fahrenheit (-170 degrees Celsius), there are rivers, seas and rain on Titan – but at that temperature, water ice freezes solid, so the bodies of liquid on Titan are most likely liquid methane or ethane (what we know on Earth as natural gas). This would normally make for an incredibly volatile atmosphere, but the absence of oxygen eliminates the possibility of ignition. Aerial photos taken during Huygens’ descent proved to be almost more valuable than the snapshots taken from the ground, because they allowed scientists to see another surface in the solar system shaped largely by erosion, with rivers, streams, islands and coastlines; Dr. Martin Tomasko, Principal Investigator for the DISR camera and instrument package, has even said that “the physical processes shaping Titan are much the same as those shaping Earth.” (Other dynamic surfaces have been seen elsewhere in the solar system, but until now those have all been due to volcanism of one kind or another rather than weather erosion.) Sensors aboard Huygens detected a thin surface crust with an underlying layer with “the consistency of loose sand” (or, as another scientist put it earlier last week, the consistency of creme bruleè). Scientists will undoubtedly continue analyzing the Huygens data for some time to come; at this time, no follow-up mission to Titan has been planned by the European Space Agency (which built Huygens) or NASA.
Sources: ESA, NASA

For the first time, a meteorite has been observed on the surface of another body in the solar system. The Mars Rover Opportunity, returning to the vicinity of the site where it landed over a year ago, found what appeared to be a freshly-fallen meteorite near its discarded heat shield. Named Heat Shield Rock, the meteorite is described by NASA as basketball-sized, and analysis has revealed it to be composed largely of nickel and iron, making it more metallic than most meteorites that make to Earth’s suface. Though it appears to be new to the terrain, NASA and JPL scientists have yet to determine if it really is freshly fallen, or just freshly unearthed by wind and erosion.
Sources: NASA / JPL

Of all the cast members of the original Star Trek, it seemed like the late DeForest Kelley was the most reticent about revealing details of his personal life – and, for the gossipers out there, was the hardest member of the cast to dig up any kind of dirt on. Author Terry Lee Rioux finally gives the low-key actor his due with “From Sawdust To Stardust”, covering his life from his Georgia childhood through a solid career as a guest star on nearly every western series of the 60s, to his Star Trek stint and beyond. “From Sawdust To Stardust” is now available from theLogBook.com Store.

The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe successfully landed on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, on Friday, gathering measurements and taking mind-boggling images from the sky all the way down to the surface. Perhaps the biggest “wow” discovery of the initial pictures was the aerial view of what appeared to be tributaries leading to a large body of liquid – an almost delta-like region as viewed from the sky. Huygens itself managed to touch down on dry land, on a plain scattered with chunks of ice, slowed to only 15 miles per hour by parachutes during its descent (despite upper-level winds estimated at around 300mph). Even if Huygens had splashed down in a body of liquid, the probe was designed to stay afloat. A communications problem between Huygens and the Saturn-orbiting Cassini appears to have had an impact on the mission, however: Huygens was designed to transmit its data back to Cassini on two channels, and Cassini only appears to have been programmed to receive data on one of those channels. As a result, only about half of the 700 or so pictures snapped by Huygens on its way down to Titan’s surface and from the surface itself made it back to Earth. NASA and ESA will investigate this apparent miscommunication in the months ahead. In the meantime, however, there are plenty of extraordinary pictures to see and even sounds to hear, recorded by Huygens’ on-board microphone.
Sources & photos courtesy: ESA / NASA / University of Arizona

Another NASA mission, Deep Impact is on its way to make a mark on a comet. The unmanned space probe will meet up with Comet Temple I this summer, and on July 4th an “impactor” vehicle fired by the main spacecraft will blast a hole in the comet’s surface so Deep Impact and earthbound observers can watch the results and try to determine what the comet is made of. The study of the impact may also give scientists a better understand of what it might take to deflect a comet or an asteroid away from Earth. Upon reaching orbit, Deep Impact unexpectedly entered a “safe mode” caused by automatic detection of an onboard fault, but the problem appears to have been corrected and the probe is functioning normally.
Sources: NASA / Space.com

The new series of Battlestar Galactica has just premiered in North America, but the response to the show’s U.K. broadcast premiere late last year (Rupert Murdoch’s Sky One satellite network bankrolled part of the show’s production costs and got to broadcast it first) and good vibes from the Sci-Fi Channel reportedly have executive producer Ronald D. Moore and his writers working on the first six scripts for season two already. Moore believes that a green light for more episodes could come as early as February, once the series has begun airing the U.S.; there’s still no official word on an early renewal from Sci-Fi.
Source: Sci-Fi Wire

According to Sci-Fi Wire, Daily Variety reports that a remake of Disney’s 1982 movie Tron is in the works. Writers Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal have been brought on board to refashion the original film’s plotline – which was over quite a few people’s heads in ’82 but is almost simple with today’s standard of computer savvy; this would be a remake from the ground up, and not a sequel. There is no word of any involvement from Steven Lisberger, who wrote and directed the original Tron, or any of the original movie’s cast members.
Source: Sci-Fi Wire

In an announcement that already has quite a few purists up in arms, Atari has announced that it’ll release a package of its classic arcade hits, Retro Atari Classics, for the new Nintendo DS handheld (the successor to the Game Boy). The games will make use of the DS’ touch-screen capability as well as both of its dual screens, but where the die-hard classic fans are concerned is with Atari’s announcement that the games will be given a makeover by “today’s top New York City graffiti artists.” There’s no indication as to whether or not the collection will include an option to play the games with their original graphics (and in any event, the DS plays Game Boy Advance cartridges as well, including Atari Anniversary Edition, which plays several of these titles in their original form). The games included on Retro Atari Classics will be Pong, Missile Command, Asteroids, Sprint, Space Duel, Tempest, Warlords, Breakout, Centipede and Gravitar. Atari also promises multiplayer games, including four-player wireless gameplay (bring on the Warlords wackiness!). A release date is still pending for Retro Atari Classics.
Source: Atari

Renowned SF artist (and 11-time Hugo winner) Frank Kelly Freas died on January 2nd. Perhaps best known to the general public for his painted cover art that adorned Mad Magazine from 1955 through 1962, “Kelly” Freas painted the cover art for such pulp SF magazines as Planet Stories, Science Fiction Quarterly, Weird Tales and especially Analog, to which he contributed cover art many times over five decades. He painted book covers for the works of Arthur C. Clarke, Joe Haldeman, A.E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Frederik Pohl, Poul Anderson and Ursula Le Guin, among others. He was commissioned by the crew of the first Skylab mission to design their mission patch, and painted the cover of the hit album News Of The World for the rock group Queen. Mr. Freas was 82.
Sources: Sci-Fi Wire, KellyFreas.com

The composer who created much of the music for the animated series Robotech has died. Arlon Ober‘s film credits included composing music for Eating Raoul, Nightbeast, In The Shadow Of Kilimanjaro, and The Incredible Melting Man, and he worked on sound design and orchestration for such movies as DeepStar Six and Child’s Play. Mr. Ober was 61.
Sources: IMDb, MST3Kinfo.com

NASA is launching a mission to blast a hole through a comet. Deep Impact will blast off from Cape Canaveral on January 12th, at least according to the current launch plan, on its way to rendezvous with Comet Tempel I on July 4th of this year. During that close encounter, the proble will separate into two components: the flyby vehicle will follow the comet, while the 820-pound impactor will blast a crater into the surface of Tempel I, hopefully revealing new material beneath the surface which the surviving flyby probe can study from a safe distance of about 300 miles; it’ll take pictures of the event as well as observing the results spectroscopically. The crater left on Tempel I’s surface by the impact could be as large as a football field, and it is hoped that astronomers will even be able to see the event from Earth-based telescopes. It is hoped that by learning more about the composition of comets, scientists can get a glimpse into the formation of the solar system, and can even learn a little bit about the possibility of deflecting comets or asteroids from Earth’s orbit. (The impact of the Deep Impact probe isn’t expected to alter Comet Tempel I’s course.)
Source: NASA