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FILE - This December 1968 file photo provided by NASA shows Earth as seen from the Apollo 8 spacecraft. The images provided by the NASA mission were the first to how the planet in its entirety. NASA, the agency that epitomized the "Right Stuff," looks lost in space and doesn't have a clear sense of where it is going, an independent panel of science and engineering experts said in a stinging report Wednesday. (AP Photo/NASA, File)

Lights across the earth are pictured in this NASA handout satellite image obtained by Reuters December 5, 2012. This new image of the Earth at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite over nine days in April 2012 and thirteen days in October 2012. It took 312 orbits and 2.5 terabytes of data to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth's land surface and islands. REUTERS/NASA/Handout.

A combined NASA handout image shows the sun's innermost atmosphere as seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) inside a larger image provided by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft (SOHO) taken November 8-9, 2012. A coronal mass ejection can be seen traveling away from the sun in the upper right corner. REUTERS/ESA/NASA/Handout

This image provided by NASA shows a shadow self-portrait taken by NASAís Opportunity rover on the Martian surface. The solar-powered spacecraft has been exploring a huge crater in the Martian southern hemisphere and has detected what appear to be clay minerals. (AP Photo NASA)

This artist's rendering provided by NASA shows the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. NASA announced Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012, it plans to send another Curiosity-like rover to Mars in 2020. (AP Photo/NASA)

This image released by NASA shows the work site of the NASAís rover Curiosity on Mars. Results are in from the first test of Martian soil by the rover Curiosity: So far, there is no definitive evidence that the red planet has the chemical ingredients to support life.Scientists said Monday, Dec. 3, 2012 that a scoop of sandy soil analyzed by the rover's chemistry lab contained water and a mix of chemicals, but not the complex carbon-based compounds considered necessary for microbial life. (AP Photo/NASA)

This artist rendering provided by NASA shows Voyager 1 at the edge of the solar system. NASA said Monday, Dec. 3, 2012 that the long-running spacecraft has entered a new region at the fringes of the solar system thought to be the last layer before the beginning of interstellar space, or the space between stars. Mission chief scientist Ed Stone says it's unknown when Voyager 1 will finally break through to interstellar space. Once that happens, it'll be the first manmade object to leave the solar system. (AP Photo/NASA)

The Sun erupted with two prominence eruptions, one after the other over a four-hour period, as pictured in this NASA handout photo taken on November 16, 2012. The action was captured in the 304 Angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. It seems possible that the disruption to the Sunís magnetic field might have triggered the second event since they were in relatively close proximity to each other. The expanding particle clouds heading into space do not appear to be Earth-directed. REUTERS/NASA/SDO/Steele Hill/Handout

The Mars rover Curiosity drove 6.2 feet (1.9 meters) during the 100th Martian day, or sol, of the mission on November 16, 2012 in this panoramic image courtesy of NASA. The rover used its Navigation Camera after the drive to record the images combined into this view. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout

Roiling storm clouds and a swirling vortex at the center of Saturn's famed north polar hexagon is seen in an image from NASA's Cassini mission taken November 27, 2012. The camera was pointing toward Saturn from approximately 224,618 miles (361,488 kilometers) away. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Handout

In this image provided by NASA, the United States of America is seen at night from a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012. The image was made possible by the new satelliteís ìday-night bandî of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe dim signals such as city lights, gas flares, auroras, wildfires, and reflected moonlight. (AP Photo/NASA)

The moon Tethys (in the upper left of the image) is seen next to Saturn in this NASA handout image from the Cassini spacecraft taken August 19, 2012 and released December 3, 2012. Saturn's rings appear to dwarf Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across) although scientists believe the moon to be many times more massive than the entire ring system combined. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.5 million miles (2.4 million kilometers) from Saturn. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Handout

In an undated handout image, a composite image of Mercury's north pole. New findings from the Messenger spacecraft indicate that the Mercury's poles are home to large swaths of frozen water. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington via The New York Times)

Multiple dust plumes are seen blowing off the coasts of Iran and Pakistan in this NASA handout image taken November 29, 2012 and released December 3, 2012. These images document the movement of the plumes southward over the Arabian Sea. REUTER/NASA/Jeff Schmaltz/Handout

Retired space shuttle Endeavor is carried on the back of a NASA jet as it approaches the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California September 21, 2012. Endeavor will be moved to its permanent home at the California Science Center mid-October. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

This October 30, 2012 image from the Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity rover shows the upper portion of a wind-blown deposit dubbed "Rocknest." The rover team recently commanded Curiosity to take a scoop of soil from a region located out of frame, below this view. The soil was then analyzed with the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument, or CheMin. The colors in the image are unmodified, showing the scene as it would appear on Mars, which has a dusty red-colored atmosphere. The rounded rock located at the upper center portion of the images is about 8 inches (0.2 meters) across. NASA downplayed on November 21, 2012 talk of a major discovery by its Martian rover after remarks by the mission chief raised hopes it may have unearthed evidence life once existed on the Red Planet. Excitement is building over soon-to-be-released results from NASA's Curiosity rover, which is three months into a two-year mission to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. Its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments have been sending back information as it hunts for compounds such as methane, as well as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, that would mean life could once have existed there. = AFP PHOTO / NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/

The Milky Way and other galaxies in the universe harbor many young star clusters and associations that each contain hundreds to thousands of hot, massive, young stars known as O and B stars shown in this NASA image obtained on November 12, 2012. The star cluster Cygnus OB2 contains more than 60 O-type stars and about a thousand B-type stars. Deep observations with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have been used to detect the X-ray emission from the hot outer atmospheres, or coronas, of young stars in the cluster and to probe how these fascinating star factories form and evolve. About 1,700 X-ray sources were detected, including about 1,450 thought to be stars in the cluster. In this image, X-rays from Chandra (blue) have been combined with infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (red) and optical data from the Isaac Newton Telescope (orange). HO/AFP/Getty Images

This image obtained from NASA shows a new global view Earth’s city lights which is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite. The data was acquired over nine days in April 2012 and 13 days in October 2012. It took 312 orbits to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth's land surface and islands. This new data was then mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet. AFP PHOTO / NASA

In this image obtained from NASA, on October 13, 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime view of the Nile River Valley, its Delta (C), the Sinai (C-R) and the rest of the Middle East. This image is from the VIIRS “day-night band,” which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as gas flares, auroras, wildfires, city lights, and reflected moonlight AFP PHOTO / NASA

FILE - In this June 29, 1995 file photo provided by NASA, the space shuttle Atlantis is docked with the Russian space station Mir as the two spacecraft orbit the Earth. NASA, the agency that epitomized the "Right Stuff," looks lost in space and doesn't have a clear sense of where it is going, an independent panel of science and engineering experts said in a stinging report Wednesday. (AP Photo/NASA, File)

This NASA still image released December 4, 2012 shows the Plosky Tolbachik volcano, in Russia's far eastern Kamchatka peninsula, which erupted on November 27, 2012 for the first time in 35 years, sending clouds of ash almost 10,000 feet (about 3,000 meters) into the sky. Two nearby scientific camps were destroyed by lava flows, and schools in nearby villages were closed as a precaution. In this composite image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft, a scene from July 19, 2012 provides the background, with vegetation in red, older lava flows in dark gray and snow in white. A nighttime thermal infrared image, acquired December 3, 2012, is overlaid on the visible image, and highlights the hot lava flows in bright yellow. The image covers an area of 20.5 by 17.4 miles (33 by 28 kilometers) and is located at 55.7 degrees north latitude, 160.2 degrees east longitude. HO/AFP/Getty Images

Astronaut Ed White moves away from his Gemini 4 capsule as his golden tether unreels from a black bag in which it was kept until he emerged from the spacecraft. He somersaulted away for most of the tether's length, then maneuvered back with the aid of an oxygen rocket gun. This picture was made by White's fellow astronaut, James McDivitt, June 8, 1965, with a Hasselblad camera. (AP Photo/NASA)

FILE - In this July 20, 1969 file photo from NASA, Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, is photographed walking near the lunar module during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity. (AP Photo, NASA ,file)

In an undated handout image, a composite image of Mercury's north pole. New findings from the Messenger spacecraft indicate that the Mercury's poles are home to large swaths of frozen water. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington via The New York Times)

This NASA handout picture taken on July 20, 1969, shows one of the first steps, astronaut Buzz Aldrin's bootprint, taken on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. With one small step off a ladder, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, before the eyes of hundreds of millions of awed television viewers worldwide. With that step, he placed mankind's first footprint on an extraterrestrial world and gained instant hero status. Joined by fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Armstrong spent about two and a half hours exploring the landscape around the landing site. AFP PHOTO / NASA