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This image provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Thursday June 18, 2009 shows the highest resolution topography map to date of the moon's south pole. It was generated by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., using data collecetd using the Deep Space Network's Goldstone Solar System Radar located in California's Mojave Desert. The new map provides contiguous topographic detail over a region approximately 311 miles by 249 miles. The map will help Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission planners as they target for an encounter with a permanently dark crater near the lunar South Pole.

AP Photo/NASA - JPL

An Atlas V rocket blasts off the launch pad headed to the moon, carrying a pair of science probes that will scout out potential landing spots for astronauts, Thursday afternoon, June 18, 2009 in Cape Canaveral, Fla. One probe will orbit the moon and provide a 3-D relief map of the lunar surface. The other satellite will drop its spent upper-stage rocket into a shadowed crater at the moon's south pole. This satellite will measure the matter that's kicked up, send the data to Earth, then also crash into the surface. The goal is to determine if frozen water is present.

AP Photo/Florida Today, Michael R. Brown

Computer simulations show that a close approach or collision could occur between either Mercury, Mars or Venus and the Earth in the next few billion years, although the odds are small. Here, an artist's rendering shows the Earth being hit by a planet.

Space.com / IMCCE-CNRS

This galaxy, M87, above, might hold a key to understanding our universe. Scientists found the black hole there to be two to three times more massive than previously thought. Adjusting how other black holes are measured could help scientists better understand how galaxies form.

JHU / NASA

The bombardment of Earth by asteroids 3.9 billion years ago may have enhanced early life, according to a new University of Colorado study.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Handout

This planetary nebula, named Kohoutek 4-55, was photographed May 4 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The nebula contains the outer layers of a red giant star that died. The camera, which is the size of a baby grand piano, has captured several memorable images since it was installed in 1993.

NASA / ESA / JPL

Scientists said they discovered the most distant object in space, according to a Space.com report on April 28. The gamma-ray burst, seen above inside the white circle, is roughly 13 billion light-years away. "The burst most likely arose from the explosion of a massive star," said astrophysicist Derek Fox.

NSF / NASA

The same camera captured this image, dubbed 'Pillars of Creation,' on April 1, 1995. It shows columns of cool hydrogen gas in the Eagle nebula. The columns serve as incubators for new stars.

NASA / ESA

In March 2004, scientists unveiled this image from the camera. It was the longest and deepest picture of the universe at that time. The million-second exposure image shows the first galaxies to emerge from the universe's Dark Ages, the period after the Big Bang in which stars began reheating the universe.

NASA / ESA

New photographs released by NASA have captured images of a vast stellar formation resembling a human hand reaching across space. The image, taken by NASA's space-based Chandra Observatory telescope, shows an X-ray nebula 150 light years across. (Source: CNN)

NASA

A woman who gave birth in a Wal-Mart washroom in Prince Albert, Sask., and left the baby behind has been found not guilty of child abandonment, a judge has ruled. Queen's Bench Justice Neil Gabrielson released his decision Wednesday, June 24, in the case of April Dawn Halkett, 22. He said the Crown didn't prove its case. During her judge-alone trial in May, Halkett testified that she did not realize she was pregnant when she went to use the store's washroom during a shopping trip in May 2007.

CBC News

Schofield, a 35-year-old hairdresser, is now campaigning to make other mothers aware of the symptoms of the herpes virus and the dangers it poses to newborn babies. Doctors did not realize Jennifer had the virus until an autopsy was conducted. "She should be here today. It's such a treatable disease. I didn't know what I had," Schofield told the BBC. "It broke my heart to know what she died of." (Sources: BBC, Daily Mail)

Darren Andrews, Manchester Evening News

An inquest in Lancaster, northeastern England, heard that Schofield probably contracted the virus late in her pregnancy. Although she saw her doctor, the virus -- a common cause of cold sores -- is difficult to detect and Schofield had no idea she had it. "If I had known I was suffering from HSV and the risks of being near a newborn baby, then Jennifer could be here today," Schofield said, according to the Daily Mail.

Manchester Evening News

Thomas Beatie, a transgendered man, gave birth to his second child, a son, Tuesday. Here he appears his wife Nancy, left, and daughter Susan Juliette on a German TV show in December. Susan Juliette was born last June.

AP Photo

Reports in February said 13-year-old Alfie Patten, shown on the cover of a British newspaper, fathered his 15-year-old girlfriend's child. In March, DNA tests proved Alfie wasn't the dad. Tyler Barker told the May 20 edition of the Daily Mail that he is the father. The 15-year-old called having sex with the girl "the worst mistake I've ever made in my life."

AFP / Getty Images

Eighteen-year-old cancer patient Patrick McGill looks at a rack holding bags of IV chemotherapy while receiving treatment for a rare form of cancer at the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center Childrens Hospital August 18, 2005 in San Francisco, California. Researchers announced at a cancer conference on Sunday, May 31, 2009, they had found a cancer vaccine - which uses the body's immune system to fight the disease - which kept a common form of lymphoma from spreading for over a year.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Thirteen-year-old Daniel Hauser and his mother Colleen are shown during an interview with the Associated Press at the family farm Tuesday, June 23, 2009 in Sleepy Eye, Minn. Earlier a judge in New Ulm, Minn., rejected a family request to regain control of health decisions in regard to Daniel's cancer treatment.

AP Photo/Jim Mone

Anthony Hauser, shown, and his wife had cited religious reasons in stopping chemo for Daniel. The family is Roman Catholic, but they believe in natural healing practices suggested by a religious group called the Nemenhah Band, which says it follows American Indian beliefs.

AP Photo

Thirteen-year-old Daniel Hauser, left, returns to the family van with his sister Mary Ann, right, and mother Colleen, after a court hearing on Tuesday, June 23, 2009 in New Ulm, Minn., where a judge ruled that the 13-year-old boy who fled the state last month to avoid chemotherapy must continue getting the treatment because it appears to be working.

AP Photo/Jim Mone

Anthony Hauser, shown, and his wife had cited religious reasons in stopping chemo for Daniel. The family is Roman Catholic, but they believe in natural healing practices suggested by a religious group called the Nemenhah Band, which says it follows American Indian beliefs.

AP Photo