3 Good reasons

Credit: NASA

For NASA to feel smug

1 It has just helped Stephen Hawking (pictured) get his first taste of weightlessness, flying aboard a 'vomit comet' in preparation for a planned space journey next year.

2 The STEREO mission has captured the first three-dimensional images of the Sun, which should make for better forecasts of the weather in space.

Credit: R. LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR/ZUMA PRESS/NEWSCOM

3 Officials are expecting a visit from Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, who will drop in at the Goddard Space Center next week as part of a US tour. A flight on the vomit comet is not thought to be on Her Majesty's official itinerary.

Scorecard

Victor Yushchenko

The Ukrainian president has pledged to rehabilitate those affected by the Chernobyl accident and to develop the territory contaminated by the blast 21 years ago...although he might have to wait for the radiation to dissipate first.

Anti-GM protestors

Red faces for British activists, whose meticulous plan to plant organic potatoes in a transgenic trial plot fell at the final hurdle — when they sabotaged the wrong field.

On the record

“It's like a Thomas Hardy tragedy.”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Leslie Perelman reacts to the resignation of the institute's dean of admissions Marilee Jones, who admits that she lied about her qualifications during her 28-year tenure.

Sources: NASA, Environment News Service, The Guardian, The New York Times