NASA is piloting one of the robotic Mars Exploration Rovers into a mission which may be its last. The Opportunity rover, which has already survived more than 12 times its original expected life span of 90 days, is being directed to journey into the steep Victoria Crater on the Martian surface, and while NASA and JPL engineers have used orbital maps of Mars to guide Opportunity along the least risky path, there’s a chance the rover may not be able to climb out again. Opportunity spent six months (in Earth time) surveying Endurance Crater, but Victoria Crater is over five times wider, measuring half a mile across. The bedrock and outcroppings within the crater could yield valuable clues about the history of water on the Martian surface, so the engineers guiding Opportunity say it’s worth the risk if the rover is unable to climb out.
Sources: NASA/JPL

Continuing interest in what was thought to be a stillborn pilot for an Americanized version of a British favorite may be keeping former Xena star Lucy Lawless from reviving her Cylon character in Battlestar Galactica’s final season. ABC’s Football Wives, a proposed U.S. version of the popular British evening soap Footballer$ Wive$, didn’t make it past the pilot stage this season, but in an unusual move, ABC has extended its contractual option on the services of the show’s cast, including Lucy Lawless and former Night Stalker co-star Gabrielle Union. This prevents the cast from taking roles in other projects – which could mean that Lawless’ character may have to be left on ice during Galactica’s fourth and final season, which is currently shooting in Vancouver. Even if ABC still doesn’t pick up Football Wives, Fox or NBC may yet salvage it.
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, screenwriters of the next big-screen Star Trek, have publicly confirmed that the movie, produced and directed by J.J. Abrams and set for a 2008 release, will feature the first meeting of James T. Kirk and Spock, obviously played by younger actors (though rumors still run rampant of a “bookend” framing device with appearances by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy). Furthermore, Orci and Kurtzman deny any stories that the new movie will “reboot” the universe (a la the new Battlestar Galactica), but will instead fit within the existing mythology. More news has emerged that Paramount is scouting out Icelandic locations for the film.
Source: Trekweb.com

Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore, the authors of the outstanding “Liberation: the Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Blake’s 7″, are at is again, probing the depths of another inscrutible British cult classic: The Prisoner. Due for an August release, “Fall Out: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to The Prisoner” will look at the show’s episodes one-by-one, discussing the impact, subtexts and implications of each of Number Six’s adventures, as well as examining the various interpretations that fans and scholars alike have attached to the series as a whole. An introduction by Prisoner film editor Ian Rakoff is also included. We’ll have pre-order information for “Fall Out” as soon as it’s available.
Source: Telos

NASA’s Cassini space probe may have discovered evidence of more volcanic activity among the moons of Saturn. The icy moons Dione and Tethys, orbiting Saturn, have been fingered as the source of charged particles and potentially ejected material such as “molten” ice (i.e. water or another liquid) detected by Cassini on its approach to Saturn two years ago. Now the unmanned space probe’s future trajectory is being adjusted so it can pay closer visits to Dione and Tethys to determine if the two moons’ surfaces are truly active. Geyser-like activity has already been suspected on Enceladus, another Saturnian moon, and on Neptune’s massive moon Triton, while actual volcanoes have been seen erupting on the turbulent surface of Io, a moon of Jupiter, since the 1970s.
Sources: NASA/JPL

The third season of Stargate Atlantis is now available for pre-order on DVD, due this fall. The set will include all 20 of the third season’s episodes, some of which mark some pivotal changes in the show’s course and casting, complete with deleted scenes, outtakes, and commentarties from the show’s cast and creators on each episode. Also, MGM has announced that the first SG-1 direct-to-DVD movie, The Ark Of Truth, will not debut until early 2008, with the second movie, Continuum, following at a later date. You can pre-order the third season of Atlantis now from theLogBook.com Store, and every episode to date is available for download as part of our complete Stargate Atlantis episode guide.

Trooper T’Pol. Jolene Blalock’s next gig takes her back into deep space and straight to DVD. She’s signed up to play Lola Beck in the direct-to-DVD sequel Starship Troopers 3, which is in pre-production. As with the movie adaptation of Starship Troopers and its first direct-to-video sequel, the third installment stars Casper Van Dien and is written by Ed Neumeier. Troopers 3 will also star Amanda Donohoe, Marnette Patterson and Jon Falkow.

Torchwood gets Spiked. The second season of the BBC Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood is getting some international appeal; former Buffy/Angel star James Marsters – a.k.a. Spike – has signed on for a guest appearance in the second season, which will air on BBC 2 in 2008 (as opposed to the first season, which aired on the cable-only BBC 3). There’s no word yet on what role he’ll be playing, or what fate will befall him if he refers to John Barrowman as a wee little puppet man.

With Stargate SG-1 having just ended its ten-year run in the U.S., the producers of the show are offering fans some of the few remaining copies of an illustrated book handed out to the cast and crew, celebrating a decade in production. The book, “Stargate SG-1: A Celebration of 10 Years,” is being sold exclusively through über-fansite Gateworld.net for a hefty price tag (there are fewer than 1,000 copies available, and we’re pretty sure the show has more than a thousand fans). Sample page are available for viewing, and if you’re lucky you can still order a copy, at Gateworld. SG-1′s saga continues this fall in the first of a series of direct-to-DVD movies, The Ark Of Truth.
Source: Gateworld.net

As we reported just a few days ago, the soundtrack from the eagerly-awaited direct-to-DVD movie Babylon 5: The Lost Tales is on the way, and you can now order it in theLogBook.com Store. The Lost Tales music has naturally been composed by Christopher Franke, who gave original series its sound through 110 episodes and four TV movies (as well as a rescored, re-edited version of the 1993 pilot movie). The soundtrack CD is being released on July 24th by Varese Sarabande label. The movie itself – which you can already pre-order – is due on July 31st, and you can now pre-order The Lost Tales CD and any other Babylon 5 soundtrack you’re looking for in theLogBook.com Store.)

A recent interview with Roberto Orci, co-writer and executive producer of Paramount’s upcoming big-screen revival of classic Star Trek, indicates that the script is finalized, casting is underway, shooting begins in November and major casting announcements could be made at the Trek movie panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Orci also claims that the movie’s title will not have a numerical suffix, but will simply be Star Trek. The movie is still slated for a 2008 theatrical release, and will be directed by Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams.
Source: IESB.net

AtariAge.com has announced the general release of three new homebrew games that it premiered at the recent Midwest Gaming Classic. All three titles are for the Atari 2600: Elevators Amiss by Bob Montgomery (author of the excellent Go Fish! homebrew), the tense adventure game Encaved by veteran homebrew programmer Simon Quernhorst, and the undersea action of Chris Read‘s GoSub. All three games sport original label artwork and colorful manuals, and they’re now available in the AtariAge Store. A limited print run of new Beef Drop cartridges for the Atari 7800 has also been made available, complete with the 7800-compatible POKEY custom sound ship.
Source: AtariAge.com

Walter Koenig and some of his behind-the-scenes cohorts from the upcoming fan film Star Trek: Of Gods And Men are already hard at work on their next project, a Koenig-written independent movie called InAlienable. The movie stars Richard Hatch (Battlestar Galactica), Star Trek/Babylon 5 veteran Koenig, Marina Sirtis (Star Trek: The Next Generation) and Erick Avari (Stargate). Those wishing to become extras in InAlienable are asked to contact karunaemac.com; the next location shoot will be on Sunday, June 24th.
Source: Star Trek: Of Gods And Men

After several days of being offline due to an unknown glitch, computers aboard the International Space Station have resumed their function of governing the station’s oxygen and water supplies and the station’s ability to point its newly installed solar panels toward the sun. The shuttle and station crews are still performing last-minute checks on those systems before disembarking. (Curiously, the computers which caused so much concern were made by EADS Astrium, whose next space venture we reported on recently.) The shuttle has also been declared safe for re-entry after repairs were performed on thermal shielding material covering one of its rear engine housings.

Something else has broken aboard the station, however: station crewmember Sunita Williams has broken the records for the longest unbroken space flight by a woman and the longest spacewalk by a woman. Her stay on the station, which was extended by ongoing difficulties at the shuttle’s launch site this year, has surpassed the previous record of 188 days and four hours, set by astronaut Shannon Lucid aboard Mir in 1996. Her record-setting spacewalk is also a doozie, regardless of the gender of the person inside the spacesuit: Williams performed a 22-and-a-half hour spacewalk during her tour of duty on the station. She’ll be returning to Earth later this week aboard Atlantis.
Sources: Associated Press, BBC News

NASA’s next generation Mars lander, Phoenix, is being prepped for launch at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will lift off in August for a trip to Mars lasting several months. Unlike the Sojourner and Mars Exploration Rovers, Phoenix will be staying put at its landing site. Aimed at the planet’s ice cap, Phoenix will take samples from beneath the surface to check for the present of water ice, believed to be readily available in the Martian polar regions. Phoenix will be launched by a Delta II rocket during a launch window that opens on August 3rd.
Source: NASA

EADS Astrium, the European company which fabricates and launches the European Space Agency’s Ariane rockets, is taking steps to launch manned passenger flights into space. A full-scale mock-up of the company’s planned suborbital vehicle has been unveiled to the public in Paris, looking very much like a small private plane except with a padded interior section for the weightless portion of the flight. The current plans for the vehicle call for takeoff and landing at a conventional airport, with total flight time of around an hour and a half, a passenger capacity of four people – and ticket prices well past the $200,000 mark. Unlike SpaceshipOne, the American-designed vehicle which will serve as the basis for the competing Virgin Galactic suborbital passenger service, the EADS Astrium vehicle will be a self-contained, single-stage vehicle with no additional boosters, with a four-year development program that could cost a billion Euros before the first flight is made.
Source: BBC News

Babylon 5 returns in July, and so does its signature musical sound, courtesy of composer and former Tangerine Dream member Chirstopher Franke. The soundtrack from The Lost Tales will be released not by Franke’s own Sonic Dreams label (which released all of the previous Babylon 5 music, including the “episodic” score CDs), but on the well-regarded Varese Sarabande label. The movie itself – which you can already pre-order in theLogBook.com Store – is due on July 31st, with the music from it hitting the stores a week earlier (we’ll have pre-order information as soon as humanly possible; of course, all of the previously released Babylon 5 music is already in the Store.)
Source: Varese Sarabande