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NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first-ever image of a single particle of Mars' ubiquitous dust, using its atomic force microscope.

The particle -- shown at higher magnification than anything ever seen from another world -- is a rounded particle about one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, across. It is a speck of the dust that cloaks Mars. Such dust particles color the Martian sky pink, feed storms that regularly envelop the planet and produce Mars' distinctive red soil.

A spokeswoman for the Phoenix Mars Lander mission says a hacker took over the mission's public Web site during the night and changed its lead news story.

Spokeswoman Sara Hammond says a mission update posted Friday was replaced with a hacker's signature and a link redirecting visitors to an overseas Web site.

Hammond says the site hosted by the University of Arizona has been taken off line while computer experts work to correct the problem.

NASA Thursday adjusted the target launch dates for two space shuttle missions in 2008. Shuttle Atlantis' STS-125 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope is now targeted for Oct. 8, and Endeavour's STS-126 supply mission to the International Space Station has moved from Oct. 16 to Nov. 10.

The final servicing mission to Hubble was moved from Aug. 28 due to a delay in deliveries of components, including the external fuel tanks, and the need to prepare Endeavour for a possible rescue mission approximately two weeks after STS-125 launches.

A small California aerospace company today unveiled a new suborbital spaceship that will provide affordable front-seat rides to the edge of space for the millions of people who want to buy a ticket.
The two-seat Lynx suborbital spaceship will carry people or payloads to where they will experience weightlessness and see the stars above and the Earth and its atmosphere below. This will launch XCOR into the emerging space tourism market, estimated at over a half-billion dollars.