This week in science: Mars, bitches!

Dream Chaser, a shuttle replacement vehicle under development by Sierra Nevada Corporation. Click image for more info at the Wiki. I'm getting really nervous just thinking about tomorrow night. Reentry, parachute deployment, heat shield ejection plus all the systems that have to work on a rover, there's already plenty that can go wrong. But added to all that, Curiosity will be lowered to the surface by spools of cable attached to a platform suspended a couple of dozen meters above the alien surface by little bitty retrorockets with a few seconds of fuel onboard. That's scary! So, time permitting, I hope to be around liveblogging this Rube Goldberg contraption starting tomorrow evening. Maybe starting with a placeholder post in the diary section, and we'll see what happens after that. It shouldn't be too hard to get info: This may end up being the most high traffic science event of all time. Landing time, press conferance schedule and other resources, and live stream URLs posted here.

• Saturn's moon Iapetus is a weird, weird place.
• Louisiana's tea party knuckle draggers are determined to keep the state a laughing stock and violate the U.S. Constitution by forcing schoolkids to hear pseudo-religious bullshit presented as science.
• Hiding for eons under the ice and earth of Antarctica, an ancient rain forest.
• A new study finds, as has long been suspected, that stem cells gone awry fuel the most persistent, metastatic cancers.
• Last but certainly not least, NASA doled out a cool billion for three companies to accelerate the development of new space craft. One of the winners was Sierra Nevada Corp., which is currently developing this sleek shuttle-like ground to orbit number shown above.