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Thanks to NASA's Kepler mission, we now know about three new super-Earth-sized planets that fall in the "Goldilocks" zone of a star's orbit,where the surface temperature of a planet could hold liquid water. The planets are spread over two different systems, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69, which each have multiple planets, but the ones you should be excited about are Kepler-62e, 62f, and 69c.

Today is launch day for the test flight of private company Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The launch is set for 5pm ET with coverage starting at 4pm ET on NASA TV. You can watch that live stream right here, or -- depending on where you live -- just go outside and look to the skies.

We do our very best here at Geekosystem to keep you apprised of what NASA is up to. It's something we're passionate about, and you all seem to enjoy it as well. We get comments and emails asking us follow up questions about some NASA stories, and we don't always have the answers. NASA Deputy Chief Lori Garver has the answers, and you can ask her anything on Reddit today.

Cyclone Imelda is currently in the southern Indian Ocean, and reached hurricane strength yesterday. The above image clearly shows the eye of the storm opening up, but an image of the storm taken today shows it filled in with heavy cloud cover. The storm has also elongated itself from east to west. The two images were captured by NASA's Aqua satellite, and when viewed together, it looks like the storm is winking. It's adorable.   Cyclone Imelda is currently in the southern Indian Ocean, and reached hurricane strength yesterday. The above image clearly shows the eye of the storm opening up, but an image of the storm taken today shows it filled in with heavy cloud cover. The storm has also elongated itself from east to west. The two images were captured by NASA's Aqua satellite, and when viewed together, it looks like the storm is winking.

NASA has a plan to wrangle an asteroid and park it in lunar orbit, or as we've come to know it -- the plan to to give the Moon a moon. One step in that plan is to send astronauts into space to visit the Moon's moon, and to do that, they'll need the Orion space capsule. To kickstart the mission, NASA has set an inaugural launch date for the Orion of September 2014, and they've been working double shifts to meet that goal. Why the rush? It might be that the whole plan could get scrapped if the proposed NASA budget doesn't get approved.

 

In 1971 , Russia put the first lander on Mars that survived its touchdown on the Red Planet, as Mars 3 was able to transmit data back from Mars to Earth -- for a grand total of nearly 15 seconds. After that amazing quarter of a minute, Mars 3 went dark for unknown reasons, and was never heard from again, becoming lost to the annals of space exploration. Now, though, a group of Russian Mars enthusiasts working with recent photos from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter think they've found the wreckage of the long lost lander.

The golden age of the American space program was all about beating Russia to important milestones. There's no longer that sense of competition based around our efforts in space. That's good, because we're about to get crushed. Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian government is putting $52 billion dollars into its space program and giving the program its own ministry. If you're curious, NASA's proposed budget for 2014 is only $17.7 billion.

The White House's 2014 budget proposal includes funding for a NASA mission to park an asteroid in lunar orbit. Besides being awesome, the mission will also put humans farther into space than we've ever been. It might even help us develop ways to deflect asteroids that threaten to impact the Earth and kill everyone on it, but Congress doesn't care about any of that. Congress wants a Moon base.

The El Hierro volcano was below the ocean's surface when it erupted last year, but it still managed to come out on top. Specifically, it won NASA's first ever Tournament: Earth photo competition. The contest put 32 photos of the Earth up against each other "March Madness" style, and even though El Hierro entered the tournament with an unimpressive number seven seed, it managed to take down all comers and win. Take a look at the full photo, and the ones it beat after the jump.

We've already spotted more than 800 exoplanets beyond our Solar System, and more than a hundred of these were identified by NASA's Kepler mission in the four years since its launch merely by observing one small swath of sky. But now NASA has its sights on even more worlds with the newly green-lit Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a spacecraft set to launch in 2017. Hit the jump to find out what makes this one so different.

NASA is known for its ambition and ability to inspire us to wonder what's possible -- usually. Sometimes NASA goes out of its way to point out what it says we shouldn't bother with. That was the case when NASA administrator Charles Bolden announced that NASA would not lead a manned lunar mission again in his lifetime (he's 66), though he did say he would support any other agency's missions to the Moon. NASA's stance on going to the Moon is now exactly the same as when my friends and I decide to go to Atlantic City but nobody wants to be the one to drive.

We first heard of the plan to capture a small asteroid and park it near our Moon, essentially giving our Moon a moon of its own, back in January, but now it seems all but official. Chairman of the Senate Science and Space Subcommittee, Senator Bill Nelson said on Friday President Obama will include $100 million in the 2014 budget for the asteroid project, calling it a "clever concept." I wonder what William Shatner will suggest we name it.

Some science news stories involve NASA. Some involve volcanoes, noxious vapors, or even drones. What are the chances of all of the above rolled into one? Exceptional, because NASA in fact sent drones flying over an active volcano in Costa Rica. The only thing this story is missing are some dinosaur bones or a comet. For now.

2013 is still young and has yet to prove its mettle, but 2014 is already looking to do some astronomical upstaging -- particularly with Mars. The Red Planet has been in the news a lot recently, mostly due to the Curiosity rover, but now a threat looms on the celestial horizon. In October of 2014, a massive comet could potentially hit Mars with the force of 35 million megatons of TNT. That's about one-third as powerful as the one that had the dinosaurs' name on it 65 million years ago. Nothing to sneeze at.

We need to get kids interested in space, obviously. We need many of them to grow up and become astronauts, or man the ground controls at NASA, or at least help counter future space funding cuts, but how, exactly, can we get kids to like space? Well, since we can't send dinosaurs into space, NASA is doing the next best thing: They've created an Angry Birds space exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center! Now kids have no choice but to go there and collaterally learn about the universe.