NASA will set off its own Independence Day fireworks during a series of nighttime rocket launches from July 2 to 20 from the Wallops Flight Facility on the Atlantic coast in Virginia. Designed to study "space weather" ? the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere ? the experiments seek to improve our understanding of electrically charged atoms at the edge of space.

NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) was lofted into space at 7:15 p.m. PDT today atop a U.S. Air Force Titan II launch vehicle from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. During the next two weeks, QuikScat will fire its thrusters as many as 25 times to circularize and gradually fine-tune its polar orbit. The primary mission is scheduled to continue for two years.

Scientists and government agencies in New York City have joined forces to meet the challenges climate change is expected to have on the city. Cynthia Rosenzweig of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies says results from a new study will help city agencies make decisions to help mitigate future problems with aging roads, public health, coastal erosion, water supply, and wetlands.

The QuikScat satellite, to be launched on June 18, will be NASA?s next "El Ni�o watcher" and will be used to better understand global weather abnormalities. The mission will help scientists determine the location, structure, and strength of severe marine storms, which are among the most destructive of all natural phenomena.

Why are winters warming up so much faster over Northern Hemisphere continents than over the rest of the globe? A new study by NASA researchers in the journal Nature is the first to link the well-documented large degree of North America and Eurasia winter warming and the associated wind changes to rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

Blobs of electrified particles spew violently from the Sun, zoom at "warp speed" toward Earth?s magnetic field, and trigger an unusual form of aurora, scientists have discovered using an ultraviolet camera on NASA?s Polar spacecraft. These auroras appear at high noon, when they would usually be obscured by the Sun.

New results from the South China Sea Monsoon Experiment have moved researchers a step closer to being able to forecast the summer monsoon and help reduce loses of life, livestock, agriculture, and property. The study has uncovered clues to the cause, timing, and evolution of the massive East Asian summer monsoon, which has caused devastating floods in southern China.