Future lunar bases could be built from concrete made directly from Moon dust, which would be much cheaper than transporting materials from Earth to Moon. NASA hopes to send four astronauts to Moon for seven days by 2020. The plan is to eventually build long-term Moon bases.

We talk about “habitable zones” around stars being confined to predictable regions, where temperatures are not too cold and not too hot, so that planets can retain liquid water and support life as we know it. But perhaps there’s more leeway than we thought. A new study has discovered that some extrasolar planets that we assumed were too cold to host life could in fact be livable.

Amino acids are organic molecules that form proteins. Proteins, essential to cells, are one of the first steps in the creation of life. Several — but not all — types of amino acids have also been found in meteorites – chunks of rock that reached Earth from space. Scientists are studying meteorites, like the Murchison meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969, to see if they can give clues to how amino acids link to form the structure of proteins.