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After six months of testing and very careful calibration, the European Space Agency’s GOCE satellite is sending back its first data sets as it now begins precisely mapping tiny variations in Earth’s magnetic field. How does one go about mapping the Earth’s fundamental force? As it turns out, very, very carefully.

Any Mars rover worth its wheels must prove itself capable of navigating safely on Earth, never mind millions of miles away on the red planet. British scientists took a prototype of Europe's ExoMars rover out for a spin around a quarry in Southern England last week.

The rover design by EADS Astrium has two front-mounted navigation cameras and four cameras at each corner to avoid close scrapes. A pair of scientific cameras also provides stereoscopic vision and depth perception, and lends the rover a bit of a WALL-E or Short Circuit appearance. Check out the robot's wanderings below:

The movies make space flight seem easy. A simple flip of the joystick or twist of the knob and any asteroid or space creature is done for. Sadly, the reality of space flight involves the constant monitoring of, and fiddling with, a near-endless set of dials, switches and buttons. In fact, so much of modern space craft are packed with gear and doodads that even astronauts have trouble keeping everything straight.

Herschel, the largest infrared space telescope yet flown, was launched a month ago by the ESA and was not expected to deliver images for another few weeks. It has, however, already produced images- in three colors- of M51, ‘the whirlpool galaxy,’ from a test observation run. The goal of the test was to get a large image and a sense of what Herschel will deliver in the future.

ESA astronomers announced this week that they've discovered two more exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, using the space-based COROT observatory. The two new finds are Jupiter-sized gas giants that orbit close to their parent stars.

But the astronomers also reported that COROT has picked up another object that they can't quite explain. This space oddity, COROT-exo-3b, looks to lie somewhere between a brown dwarf and a planet. It may even be a star, though if that's the case, scientists say it would be among the smallest ever detected.

ESA's Venus Express spacecraft has picked up evidence that the molecule hydroxyl is lurking in the dense atmosphere of the hot planet.

The molecule is considered to be a crucial component of any planetary atmosphere because it is highly reactive - scientists say it combats pollutants in Earth's atmosphere, and may prevent carbon dioxide from transforming into carbon monoxide above Mars.

A radar device aboard ESA's Mars Express orbiter has allowed scientists to peek beneath the surface from afar, and the success with this research is now prompting them to think up other spots in the solar system that would be ideal for this sort of examination.

The days of lugging around and pulling out hefty guide books could be nearing an end: The eyePhone, a program currently being developed in Europe, uses a combination of satellite information, object-recognition software and Internet data to provide information on landmarks in a scene captured through a mobile phone's lens.

The European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle, Jules Verne, successfully linked up with the International Space Station yesterday. The ship's mission is to deliver cargo, fuel, water and oxygen. But yesterday's success is also a coup for ESA in that the space agency has finally joined "the club": Now Europe can get to the ISS on its own, without help from Russia or NASA.

Soon, NASA's shuttle wont be the only workhorse servicing the International Space Station. In a little more than a week, it will be joined by the European Space Agencys Automated Transfer Vehicle, the Jules Verne, which is entering the final preparations before launch. The Jules Verne is the first of a series of such supply ships that will lift food, air, water, science supplies and other equipment to the ISS roughly once a year. ESA likens the ATVs to tugboats or river barges, albeit incredibly advanced ones.