"Mysterious" debris trails space shuttle

American astronauts returning from the international space station have noticed a long, slender object following the space shuttle Discovery. NASA has now identified it as "a thermal clip from the shuttle's brake system." The object is described as being about 1 1/2 feet long and "shiny." Remember when the space toilet malfunctioned? And they got two Russians to fix it? People on the ground: Beware of falling packages wrapped in foil.

And they said the Cold War is over.

Was there life on Mars?

The Phoenix Lander touched down yesterday on the Mars Arctic Plains to a scene that resembled nothing so much as a giant litter box. The substrate appears to be made of clumping cat litter, and those little rocks? Well .... I think you can work that out. I'm providing this anatomical visual aid for the benefit of NASA scientists, who may need help articulating the bones of the skeletal remains they will surely discover.

My Martian cousins undoubtedly went the way of the dinosaur due to the polar conditions in the loo. A subzero sphincter can create a serious logjam, and we all know what happens when Meow Mix can't exit the lower GI tract.

The lovable Virgin Inc. mogul Sir Richard Branson and Google co-founder Larry Page are planning to send a spaceship filled with pioneers to colonize the red planet, and I have a bit of pre-trip advice for the passengers: Arrive at Virgle City with scoops and a generous supply of plastic baggies to make room for your huts. Oh, and lots of heaters for the latrine. Bon voyage!

The sky is falling. Again.

Well, it looks like we're gonna have some sleepless nights around here next month, as I have just learned that a large out-of-control, no-longer-top-secret U.S. spy satellite will crash into Earth, nowhere in particular, sometime in February. I am worried about where a cat might hide from such a thing, and Carla is beside herself.

She is having flashbacks to 1979, when she lay in bed at night wondering whether Skylab — NASA's space-station-gone-rogue — would drop through the roof. No one knew where it would land, and Earthlings were terrified.

Apparently Chicken Little was nowhere near the tiny town of Esperance in western Australia. Otherwise, the "chooks" in Elsie Thornton's chicken pen would've taken cover. Some charred remnants of Skylab littered her farm when it finally fell on July 11, and the chickens suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, Thornton told ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Company). They didn't lay eggs for the rest of the week, she said.

Can someone loan me a crash helmet?