A Chinese satellite navigation network created to eventually compete with America's Global Positioning System has started offering services to Asian users outside the country.

The network's spokesman, Ran Chengqi, said in a press briefing that the Beidou system is offering from Thursday services including positioning, navigation, time and text messaging to users in the Asia-Pacific region.

China expects Beidou to generate a 400 billion yuan ($63 billion) annual market for services to the transport, meteorology and telecommunications sectors.

China, and especially its military, have long been wary of relying on the United States' dominant GPS network, fearing that Washington might take the system offline in a conflict or an emergency.

At the moment it is a faint object, visible only in sophisticated telescopes as a point of light moving slowly against the background stars. It doesn't seem much - a frozen chunk of rock and ice - one of many moving in the depths of space. But this one is being tracked with eager anticipation by astronomers from around the world, and in a year everyone could know its name.

Comet Ison could draw millions out into the dark to witness what could be the brightest comet seen in many generations - brighter even than the full Moon.

It was found as a blur on an electronic image of the night sky taken through a telescope at the Kislovodsk Observatory in Russia as part of a project to survey the sky looking for comets and asteroids - chunks of rock and ice that litter space. Astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok were expecting to use the International Scientific Optical Network's (Ison) 40cm telescope on the night of 20 September but clouds halted their plans.

It was a frustrating night but about half an hour prior to the beginning of morning twilight, they noticed the sky was clearing and got the telescope and camera up and running to obtain some survey images in the constellations of Gemini and Cancer.

When the images were obtained Nevski loaded them into a computer program designed to detect asteroids and comets moving between images. He noticed a rather bright object with unusually slow movement, which he thought could only mean it was situated way beyond the orbit of Jupiter. But he couldn't tell if the object was a comet, so Novichonok booked time on a larger telescope to take another look. Less than a day later the new images revealed that Nevski and Novichonok had discovered a comet, which was named Comet Ison. A database search showed it has been seen in images taken by other telescopes earlier that year and in late 2011. These observations allowed its orbit to be calculated, and when astronomers did that they let out a collective "wow."

Superhero entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX venture is working on something called the "Grasshopper Project," and the technology looks pretty impressive.

"We've begun testing reusability with something called the Grasshopper Project, which is a Falcon 9 first stage with landing gear that can take off and land vertically," Musk told Wired in October.

"The stages go to orbit, then the first stage turns around, restarts the engines, boosts back to the launch site, reorients, deploys landing gear, and lands vertically."

Today, Musk tweeted out a couple videos of the Grasshopper being tested on December 17 at the SpaceX rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas.

It's a big step toward rocket reusability, which Musk said will be a "fundamental breakthrough that needs to occur in rocketry."

Watch the Grasshopper in action. It goes 40 meters up in the air, hovers for a bit, and then lands back on its feet:

MPEC 2012-Y30, issued 2012 December 26, reports our recovery of comet 26P/Grigg - Skjellerup. We found the comet on 2012 December 05.6 and December 14.5 at about magnitude 20. We imaged it remotely with the 2.0-m f/10 from the Siding Spring-Faulkes Telescope South.
This comet is named after the singing teacher and amateur astronomer John Grigg and after J. Frank Skjellerup, an Australian telegraphist working at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

On July 10, 1992, comet 26P was visited by Giotto spacecraft after its successful close encounter with comet Halley. The Giotto camera has been damaged in the Halley flyby and there are no pictures of the nucleus. In 1972 the comet was discovered to produce a meteor shower (first predicted by Harold Ridley), the Pi Puppids, and its current orbit makes them peak around April 23, for observers in the southern hemisphere, best seen when the comet is near perihelion.

Our recovery image (click on the image for a bigger version):

On 23 occasions over the past several years, wild dolphins were observed giving gifts to humans at the Tangalooma Island Resort in Australia. The gifts included eels, tuna, squid, an octopus and an assortment of many other types of different fin fish. While these gifts might not be your choice for a gift to find underneath your Christmas tree, some of the items that were offered to humans are highly valued food sources for cetaceans such as dolphins.

A report describing this rare form of food sharing behavior in wild dolphins was published on December 4, 2012 in the journal Anthrozoös: A Multidisciplinary Journal of the Interactions of People & Animals.

Food sharing is a fairly common behavior among animals of the same species, but it is a much rarer phenomenon between animals that are from different species. Perhaps one of the best known examples of inter-species food sharing occurs in domesticated cats that have a tendency to drop prey items at their owner's feet. Inter-species food sharing in wild animal populations has not been widely documented in the scientific literature.

There has been one observation of inter-species food sharing in false killer whales, a member of the dolphin family (Delphinidae). During an encounter that National Geographic photographer Flip Nicklin had in Hawaii, a false killer whale swam up to the photographer, released a large mahi mahi from its mouth and backed away. The photographer accepted the gift then, returned the fish to the whale. I suppose that is proper etiquette if a large cetacean offers you food while you're in the water with it.

Hoards of giant tropical Sunfish have invaded the North Sea because of strong winds, scientists have revealed.

The massive Sunfish - which weigh an average 157st each and measure 15ft by 12ft - have been spotted in Lincolnshire, Kent and Norfolk.

Large shoals of Sunfish - the largest bony fish in the world - have been tempted away from the mid-Atlantic by a massive hatch of jellyfish, which is their main food.

Marine scientists believe the sunfish, whose scientific name is Mola mola, have been carried round Scotland to the North Sea by strong prevailing winds and currents. Here they have been dying because they cannot easily tolerate water temperatures below 12C.

The British Marine Life Study Society has recorded significantly more sightings of sunfish on the East Coast than last year.

In January this year a sunfish was found on the beach in seaside resort Margate in Kent.
Then dog walker Matt Hyde, 44, found another while walking his Labrador Jimmy along The Sandilands beach near Sutton-on-Sea.

Wildlife enthusiast Carl Chapman made a third discovery of a dead sunfish on the beach in Overstrand, Norfolk, on December 9.

Meet Roboy, "one of the most advanced humanoid robots," say researchers at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Zurich.

Their 15 project partners and over 40 engineers and scientists are constructing Roboy as a tendon-driven robot modeled on human beings (robots usually have their motors in their joints, giving them that "robot" break-dance look), so it will move almost as elegantly as a human.

Roboy will be a "service robot," meaning it will execute services independently for the convenience of human beings, as in the movie Robot & Frank.

And since service robots share their "living space" with people, user-friendliness and safety, above all, are of great importance, roboticists point out. Which is why "soft robotics" - soft to the touch, soft in their interaction, soft and natural in their movements - will be important, and Roboy will be covered with "soft skin," making interacting with him safer and more pleasant.

Some ancient cultures referred to them as "the Menace of the Universe" and "the Harbinger of Doom." Comets have almost universally been viewed by the ancients as messengers or omens carrying bad news from the gods.

In the midst of our busy lives it's difficult to keep in mind that we reside on a ball that's corkscrewing through space around a ball of gas called our sun, which is also sweeping through our galaxy.

The ancients didn't have distractions like TVs and the Internet. They looked to the sky for clues and guidance for life on Earth, and comets brought mythology of angry gods and instilled fear in them.

Strangely, in more modern times, comets have been associated with actual dark events.

According to NASA:

Comets' influence on cultures is not limited simply to tales of myth and legend, though. Comets throughout history have been blamed for some of history's darkest times. In Switzerland, Halley's Comet was blamed for earthquakes, illnesses, red rain, and even the births of two-headed animals.

The Romans recorded that a fiery comet marked the assassination of Julius Caesar, and another was blamed for the extreme bloodshed during the battle between Pompey and Caesar. In England, Halley's Comet was blamed for bringing the Black Death. The Incas, in South America, even record a comet having foreshadowed Francisco Pizarro's arrival just days before he brutally conquered them.

Comets and disaster became so intertwined that Pope Calixtus III even excommunicated Halley's Comet as an instrument of the devil, and a meteorite, from a comet, became enshrined as one of the most venerated objects in all of Islam.

Discovery Date: December 18, 2012

Magnitude: 19.1 mag

Discoverer: Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research project

The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2012-Y18.

Discovery Date: December 12, 2012

Magnitude: 20.0 mag

Discoverer: Pan-STARRS 1 telescope (Haleakala)

The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2012-Y01.