One good thing about covering space is that it puts what's happening to this Big Blue Marble into proper perspective.

See if you don't agree:

• Closer to the Big Bang -- Space is a time machine. When you detect light that has been traveling 13 billion years to reach Earth you're really reaching back that far in time. And now we have. The particular picture on offer is of a supernova that occurred 12.6 billion years ago, or 1.1 billion years after God likely said "let there be light."
• The third "space tourist," Greg Olsen, is scheduled to go up on a Soviet rocket October 1. Olsen founded Sensors Unlimited, and is paying $20 million for the trip, which helps keep the Soyuz program going. American astronaut William McArthur says Olsen's engineering background makes him a real asset on the Space Station. (In more ways than one.)

• The Japanese space probe Hayabusa, launched in 2003, has gotten within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of its target, an asteroid named Itokawa. The probe hopes to gather samples from the asteroid, but is going to have to do most of the work itself, since it's 10 light-seconds from Earth.
  
• A solar storm has begun on our Sun, with the first flare already doing damage to satellites and more expected. Neither the President nor Democrats deserve blame for it.
  

We now return you to your regular big blue marble already in progress.