Europe and Russia have launched a joint mission to explore the atmosphere of Mars and hunt for signs of life on the red planet.

A visit to Mars is still the stuff of best-selling fiction and big-budget Hollywood movies. But a North Idaho woman has played a real role in imagining the human experience on the fourth planet from the sun. University of Idaho graduate Sophie Milam participated in a NASA-funded project that simulated a Mars mission and studied the biological, social and psychological challenges of being isolated and confined for a prolonged period. She and five others spent eight months living in a small dome on the slope of Mauna Loa, a volcano on the Island of Hawaii.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Mars appears to have flowing rivulets of water, at least in the summer, scientists reported Monday in a finding that boosts the odds of life on the red planet.

Each week more than 100 adults pour into a downtown Spokane church, unshaken by the knotty departure of their lead pastor, Mark Driscoll, and the recent news that their church wouldn’t be a Mars Hill Church satellite after all.  The Spokane church had been planning to officially open its doors to the community in January as the 16th Mars Hill church branch. The plan had been to live-stream Driscoll’s sermons on Sunday mornings.

It all started with Geordi La Forge. When Kobie Boykins was growing up, he had to engage in one of the crucial decisions facing young people interested in science and space: “Star Trek” or “Star Wars”? Boykins was a fan of both, but he was a “huge” fan of the second-generation Star Trek series, and in particular of La Forge, the chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise played by LeVar Burton.

SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle megachurch founder Mark Driscoll, who has been under fire amid questions about his leadership style and falling membership in his Mars Hill Church, has stepped down, the church announced on its website Wednesday.

Seattle’s controversial Mars Hill megachurch has had a tough summer. Its flamboyant pastor has stepped away temporarily in the wake of some boorish comments about women and conflicts within the church. Mars Hill has recently closed and consolidated churches, and new internal battles are being reported almost daily on the West Side.

If you haven’t taken advantage of the summer months to see some live music, the week ahead presents plenty of opportunities. We’re inching closer to the last gasp of summer, and in anticipation of the end of festival season, the music gods have granted us a week so jam-packed with music that it’s almost overwhelming. Here are some of your best live music options in the coming days, from burgeoning local artists to Grammy-winning superstars.

If you haven’t taken advantage of the summer months to see some live music, the week ahead presents plenty of opportunities. We’re inching closer to the last gasp of summer, and in anticipation of the end of festival season, the music gods have granted us a week so jam-packed with music that it’s almost overwhelming. Here are some of your best live music options in the coming days, from burgeoning local artists to Grammy-winning superstars.

Dozens of demonstrators picketed outside Mars Hill Church in Bellevue on Sunday, with some former church members calling for the resignation of the megachurch’s charismatic founder, Mark Driscoll. The church Driscoll founded started as a Bible study class in his rented Seattle home in 1996. Today, the church says it has 6,000 members and some 13,000 attendees in 15 locations in five states, including 11 in Washington. The newest is to open this winter in downtown Spokane.

Fan-demanded and fan-financed, “Veronica Mars” represents some sort of new movie-making paradigm. If you love something so much that you’d “pay to see that,” you can now turn that dream project into a big-screen reality by ponying up a piece of the production financing yourself. From a fan’s standpoint, that’s kind of cool. This movie caters to them.

Mars Hill Church – the Seattle-based megachurch made famous by its rapid expansion, high-tech outreach and its sometimes-controversial pastor Mark A. Driscoll – has plans to open its 16th satellite campus in downtown Spokane. “We just want people to meet Jesus,” said Miles Rohde, who will be the lead pastor of the Spokane church. “Spokane is getting younger, with lots of college kids coming and raising their families there. We have a message of the Gospel we want to communicate and we have an amazing lead pastor in Mark Driscoll and the message he’s able to convey biblically, and we want to share that in Spokane.”

Four billion years ago, rivers and lakes dotted the surface of Mars, their waters reflecting puffy clouds drifting in a blue sky, scientists believe. Now, it’s a dry, rusty rock that’s subject to fierce sandstorms, withering blasts of radiation and freezing temperatures that have frozen carbon dioxide to the planet’s poles.

Elementary students taking summer school in the Central Valley School District have been learning about space and our solar system during the district’s annual STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) Academy. On Wednesday, fourth- and fifth-graders used robots to simulate the Mars Rover. They maneuvered the robots through a series of obstacles and answered questions about space.