Outer Space

Worried about the school-bus-sized satellite hurtling down from orbit? Keep up with the latest news on smartphone apps from NASA. News updates, videos, a Twitter feed...it's all here. And it's free for iPhone, iPad or Android users.

If you're an "Escape From New York" fan, you might have wondered about those rumors about a possible remake. Gerard Butler as Snake Plissken? Hmm. And how would they frame it, exactly, now that the Times Square of the 1981 "Escape" has morphed from hell into Disneyland? Well, wonder no more. Producer Luc Besson's action factory has beaten everyone to it, stylishly. They're just calling the thing "Lockout," and setting it in outer space. It's 2079, and Guy Pearce stars as Snake . . .

Bring the kids, by all means -- Misaki Kawai's "Space House" is nothing if not fun. Working with papier-mache, fabric, wood, paint, and other craft materials, Kawai has created a messy, colorful, suspended constellation of dollhouses in outer space inhabited by dozens of clumsily handmade people with big, '70s-style haircuts and faces made by photographic transfer. Also including lots of anthropomorphic, furry animals, it looks like the work of a dreamy and irrepressibly industrious pre-adolescent girl.

She thinks snowflakes will form differently in outer space. Emerald Bresnahan, a 17-year-old from Plainville, was one of 2,000 students around the world who designed experiments and submitted them online for a chance to have their theories tested at the International Space Station 250 miles above Earth. Bresnahan's experiment is designed to test her thesis that by studying the formation of a snowflake, much can be learned about the birth of a galaxy. It turns out that snowflakes and galaxies share something in common, at least when it comes to their birth and growth.

CAMBRIDGE -- When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's not necessarily amore. If you're the experimental director-auteur Robert Lepage, it's more likely to be a case of cosmic loneliness. In his highly individualized space probe, "the far side of the moon," Lepage takes us from the earth to the moon in the grandest of styles. Drawing on vocabulary that's poetic in both visual and verbal terms, Lepage meditates on personal loss and universal gain. The question is how we find meaning and happiness in a life that can seem devoid of both.

Summer took its sweet time getting here, but now that we’re in the dog days, it’s time to seek some relief. You could always sit on the lawn with the hose running over your head. Or you could try some of these alternative ways to chill in the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer (with a tip of the baseball cap to Worcester songwriter Charles Tobias). Planetarium show It doesn’t get much colder than outer space (try minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit), but there’s no need to worry about frostbite when you lounge back in the cool dark of this state-of-the-art planetarium theater at the ...

Space history books are often meat-and-potatoes affairs, rocket-powered adventure stories about daring test pilots and tense moments at mission control, all viewed through the rosy-colored sheen of optimistic Cold War patriotism. Enter the breezy, ever-snarky voice of Mary Roach. In “Packing for Mars,’’ when astronaut Rusty Schweickart suits up for a crucial test of life-support systems on Apollo 9, there are no bold proclamations about small steps or giant leaps. “Suddenly, I had to barf . . . and I mean, that’s not a...

The universe has been described as many things: vast, mysterious, awe-inspiring. But, with the discovery of a planet orbiting the pulsar known as J1719-1438, a mere 4,000 light years away, one more superlative can be attached to outer space: bejeweled. This newly discovered planet seems to be essentially one giant diamond, roughly the size of Jupiter. Such ostentatious display can never be in good taste, whether by a person or a pulsar. There needs to be some restraint, after all, in interplanetary bling.

Handsome James Caviezel crash-lands from space to Vikings-era Norway in "Outlander" and proceeds to help a tribe of heavily bearded crypto-medievals rid their community of the "Aliens"-caliber creature the spaceman brought with him. What's that? Handsome man? Medievals? Science fiction set in the distant past? I know, I know. But it's "Out-lander. " "Highlander" is something else. (Basically.) Both are high-concept effects adventures, but Christopher Lambert didn't spend five "Highlander" movies in a wetsuit the way Caviezel does here.

If you're an "Escape From New York" fan, you might have wondered about those rumors about a possible remake. Gerard Butler as Snake Plissken? Hmm. And how would they frame it, exactly, now that the Times Square of the 1981 "Escape" has morphed from hell into Disneyland? Well, wonder no more. Producer Luc Besson's action factory has beaten everyone to it, stylishly. They're just calling the thing "Lockout," and setting it in outer space. It's 2079, and Guy Pearce stars as Snake . . .

NEWT GINGRICH'S proposal for a privately funded outpost on the moon revived questions about this nation's 21st-century space agenda — but not the most pressing one. The most immediate issue about space is not technology, money, or aliens. It is governance. There is none. Under international rules, each country is responsible for its own space program. That was workable when only the United States and Russia were up in the air, but now 11 counties have the capacity to launch satellites.

Worried about the school-bus-sized satellite hurtling down from orbit? Keep up with the latest news on smartphone apps from NASA. News updates, videos, a Twitter feed...it's all here. And it's free for iPhone, iPad or Android users.

The universe has been described as many things: vast, mysterious, awe-inspiring. But, with the discovery of a planet orbiting the pulsar known as J1719-1438, a mere 4,000 light years away, one more superlative can be attached to outer space: bejeweled. This newly discovered planet seems to be essentially one giant diamond, roughly the size of Jupiter. Such ostentatious display can never be in good taste, whether by a person or a pulsar. There needs to be some restraint, after all, in interplanetary bling.

THE FUGITIVE ***½ (Comcast Movies: All Movies) With his eyes that seem always to be looking for a way out, Harrison Ford represents ideal casting as the Chicago doc fleeing the cops so he can find his wife's real killer and overturn his unjust conviction for the crime. Ford's hunted look, Tommy Lee Jones's obsessive relentlessness as the cop and director Andrew Davis's breakneck pacing make this a hugely entertaining adrenaline rush of a thriller. (PG-13; runs through Dec. 31)

MUSIC Lowell: Grammy-winning indie folk rockers the Indigo Girls perform Thursday and Friday, 7:30 p.m. at Boarding House Park, 40 French St. Tickets $27 in advance, $35 day of concert. 978-970-5200. Medford: At the Doo-Wop Explosion, the Chevalier Theater turns back the clock with the Drifters and original band member Charlie Thomas. The show will include Shirley Alston Reeves of the Shirelles and the Crystals. Vito Picone, the founder of the 1958 doo-wop band the Elegants, also brings his original music and harmony to Medford.

WASHINGTON — NASA and its top scientists are distancing themselves from a space agency researcher who concludes that he found alien bacterial life in meteorites that were collected many decades ago. Richard Hoover of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., claims that he found fossils that look like the remnants of bacteria in at least two meteorites. His research paper, published online Friday in the Journal of Cosmology, concludes these must have come from outer space.

WASHINGTON — NASA and its top scientists are distancing themselves from a space agency researcher who concludes that he found alien bacterial life in meteorites that were collected many decades ago. Richard Hoover of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., claims that he found fossils that look like the remnants of bacteria in at least two meteorites. His research paper, published online Friday in the Journal of Cosmology, concludes these must have come from outer space.

MUSIC Lowell: Grammy-winning indie folk rockers the Indigo Girls perform Thursday and Friday, 7:30 p.m. at Boarding House Park, 40 French St. Tickets $27 in advance, $35 day of concert. 978-970-5200. Medford: At the Doo-Wop Explosion, the Chevalier Theater turns back the clock with the Drifters and original band member Charlie Thomas. The show will include Shirley Alston Reeves of the Shirelles and the Crystals. Vito Picone, the founder of the 1958 doo-wop band the Elegants, also brings his original music and harmony to Medford.

Pink may or may not be the navy blue of India, as Diana Vreeland famously declared. Red is definitely the navy blue of Mars. Or so it would appear from the latest excursion undertaken by the antic expeditionary force that is Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick. Their “Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea’’ runs at Carroll and Sons through Oct. 23. Photographers and conceptual artists, Kahn and Selesnick work at the visual intersection of what-might-be, you-must-be-kidding, and well-why-not.

Space history books are often meat-and-potatoes affairs, rocket-powered adventure stories about daring test pilots and tense moments at mission control, all viewed through the rosy-colored sheen of optimistic Cold War patriotism. Enter the breezy, ever-snarky voice of Mary Roach. In “Packing for Mars,’’ when astronaut Rusty Schweickart suits up for a crucial test of life-support systems on Apollo 9, there are no bold proclamations about small steps or giant leaps. “Suddenly, I had to barf . . . and I mean, that’s not a good feeling,’’...