Russia is in charge of building the rocket-powered landing system for the rover, which is designed to search for signs of past and present life on Mars. Thewill also drill up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) beneath the rust-colored Martian soil and look for biological markers encased in the planet's bedrock. There, the markers would be protected from the damaging radiation and chemical processes present at the planet's surface.

The ExoMars program comprises two missions, a Trace Gas Orbiter with a stationary lander set for launch in January 2016, and a 660-pound (300 kilograms) rover scheduled to depart Earth in May 2018. The missions have a collective cost of about 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion). []

"This latter mission remains unique, and when it's launched in 2018, it will be a major innovation compared with anything that's happened to date on the surface of Mars," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director-general of the European Space Agency (ESA).

Obama's endorsement of the bill, which easily passed both chambers of the U.S. Congress in June, risks angering China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan and generally opposes the island's efforts to join international organizations.

"The United States fully supports Taiwan's membership in international organizations where statehood is not a requirement for membership and encourages Taiwan's meaningful participation, as appropriate, in organizations where its membership is not possible," Obama said in a statement.

The statement said the Obama administration viewed the legislation "to be consistent with the 'one China' policy of the United States, which remains unchanged."

China claims Taiwan as a wayward province, though the two sides have been governed separately since defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war. China insists that its diplomatic partners recognize only one China, with its capital in Beijing.

There was no immediate response from China, which on Thursday wrapped up two days of high-level security and economic talks with the United States in Washington, during which the two countries pledges to deepen their economic partnership and maintain productive relations.

In 2009, Taiwan gained observer status at the World Health Assembly, the policy-making body for the U.S. World Health Organization, as "Chinese Taipei," the name the island uses in Olympic competition.

Taiwan's ICAO bid is expected to be decided when the agency holds its assembly in Montreal in September.

(Reporting by Paul Eckert and Steve Holland; Editing by Eric Walsh)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A small NASA telescope was launched into orbit on Thursday on a mission to determine how the sun heats its atmosphere to millions of degrees, sending off rivers of particles that define the boundaries of the solar system.

The study is far from academic. Solar activity directly impacts Earth's climate and the space environment beyond the planet's atmosphere. Solar storms can knock out power grids, disrupt radio signals and interfere with communications, navigation and other satellites in orbit.

"We live in a very complex society and the sun has a role to play in it," said physicist Alan Title, with Lockheed Martin Space Systems Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, California, which designed and built the telescope.

Scientists have been trying to unravel the mechanisms that drive the sun for decades but one fundamental mystery endures: How it manages to release energy from its relatively cool, 10,000 degree Fahrenheit (5,500 degree Celsius) surface into an atmosphere that can reach up to 5 million degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 million Celsius).

At its core, the sun is essentially a giant fusion engine that melds hydrogen atoms into helium. As expected, temperatures cool as energy travels outward through the layers. But then in the lower atmosphere, known as the chromosphere, temperatures heat up again.

Pictures and data relayed by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, telescope may finally provide some answers about how that happens.

The 4-foot (1.2-meter) long, 450-pound (204-kg) observatory will be watching the sun from a vantage point about 400 miles above Earth. It is designed to capture detailed images of light moving from the sun's surface, known as the photosphere, into the chromosphere. Temperatures peak in the sun's outer atmosphere, the corona.

All that energy fuels a continuous release of charged particles from the sun into what is known as the solar wind, a pressure bubble that fills and defines the boundaries of the solar system.

"Every time we look at the sun in more detail, it opens up a new window for us," said Jeffrey Newmark, IRIS program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The telescope was launched aboard an Orbital Sciences Corp Pegasus rocket at 10:27 p.m. EDT Thursday (0227 GMT Friday). Pegasus is an air-launched system that is carried aloft by a modified L-1011 aircraft that took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California about 57 minutes before launch.

The rocket was released from beneath the belly of the plane at an altitude of about 39,000 feet before it ignited to carry the telescope into orbit.

IRIS, which cost about $145 million including the launch service, is designed to last for two years.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Eric Walsh)

After Commissioner John Swofford welcomed Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Notre Dame to the ACC at a news conference at the NASDAQ stock exchange in Manhattan, he said that further expansion isn't on the agenda.

"It's not a topic of conversation for us right now," he said. "I would not anticipate it being in the future, but we'll see. I don't predict the future much anymore, I've learned better. But it's not something that's on the table for discussion in our league right now."

Swofford was joined at the news conference by Florida State football coach Jimbo Fisher, Virginia Tech football coach Frank Beamer, Notre Dame basketball coach Mike Brey, Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim and former Pittsburgh great and now Arizona Cardinals star receiver Larry Fitzgerald. The group then took part in a closing bell ceremony at the stock market.

The ACC even brought the mascots to Times Square for an event it dubbed #ACCtakeNYC on Twitter. The fuzzy crew of costumed characters was bouncing around Manhattan on Sunday, posting pictures on Twitter from various tourist attractions.

The ACC does have one more lineup change scheduled for next year, when Maryland leaves for the Big Ten and Louisville joins.

The Cardinals were picked to replace the Terrapins ahead of Cincinnati and Connecticut. Both of those schools lobbied the ACC to be next out of the Big East and both remain in the newly renamed American Athletic Conference.

If the ACC ever does decide to go to 17 members 16 for football as Notre Dame will remain an independent in its flagship sport Cincinnati and Connecticut would make geographic sense and fit in perfectly with what is shaping up to be the most formidable basketball conference in the country. Syracuse and Pittsburgh have been perennial top-20 basketball programs in recent years, and Louisville is the defending NCAA champion.

"From an athletic perspective, I think it's more than fair to say this is the strongest collection of basketball programs that has ever been assembled in one conference," Swofford said. "And our potential from a football standpoint is truly unlimited."

On the football side, Louisville is coming off one of its most successful seasons, capped by a victory against Florida in the Sugar Bowl. Syracuse and Pittsburgh haven't been made much noise nationally in football for most of the last decade, though Fisher said ACC football is better with the arrival of the Panthers and Orange this year and Cardinals next.

"You're talking about a league that can compete for national championships," said Fisher, whose Seminoles are the defending ACC champions and finished No. 10 in the country last season.

But while conference realignment has mostly been driven by football and the enormous amount of revenue that comes with it, the ACC has been careful to continue to cultivate the sport that it is most famous for: men's basketball.

"Give the commissioner credit because when they went to expand this time, these were basketball decisions," Brey said.

ACC football has been generally perceived as the weakest of the five major football conferences. The league hasn't won a national title in football since Florida State in 1999 and its record in BCS games is 3-13.

"What we are striving to do is to be known as the strongest and best across the board," Swofford said. "Nothing wrong with being really good in both.

"I don't think the conference has to have a label per se. That usually has to do with where you've had the most success from a national perspective historically. Our league has had more national success historically in basketball than in football, though we've had our success in football as well."

For Pittsburgh and Syracuse the process of changing conferences started, at least publicly, in 2010. The ACC invited the two of them the weekend of Sept. 17.

Still, this day was anything but anticlimactic for the Panthers and Orange.

"As much as we've planned and we're excited about it, this became real for us today, and we're making a big deal about it," Pitt Athletic Director Steve Pederson said.

____

Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphdrussoap

The late-1970's audio recordings, which capture the critical approach and landing tests that preceded 30 years of U.S. space exploration, juxtapose the start of the with its final role located just a few more steps into the new pavilion as a public attraction and educational exhibit.

Retired by NASA in 1985 and previously a part of the Smithsonian's collection, arrived at the Intrepid, a converted World War II aircraft carrier located on Manhattan's west side, in 2012. Enterprise's astronauts the same whose voices are heard inside the pavilion's new "soundscape" entranceway joined NASA, city and museum officials at the Intrepid to celebrate the last July. []

Then, just three months later, Hurricane Sandy hit New York City, flooding the pier where the Intrepid is docked. The museum's original Space Shuttle Pavilion relied on air pressure to maintain its shape, so when the "superstorm" knocked out all the power, the enclosure deflated and was ultimately damaged beyond repair.

Enterprise was damaged, too. Its vertical stabilizer, or tail, was caught by the punctured pavilion and its tip broke off. Fortunately, the piece was recovered and reattached.

Now, eight months later, in an expanded exhibit and new, metal-supported pavilion. []

On and above the flight deck

Wednesday's ribbon cutting for the included only a few local NASA center officials and none of the astronauts who were present for last year's opening. Though the fanfare was diminished, the enthusiasm was not, as the Intrepid's curators welcomed the waiting public inside.

"We are thrilled," Elaine Charnov, Intrepid's vice president of exhibits, told collectSPACE.com in an interview. "[This] establishes ... that we're recovering from Hurricane Sandy, but also continuing the educational venture that Intrepid is all about."

The shuttle pavilion sits on the aircraft carrier's flight deck. Enterprise itself, is mounted 10 feet (3 meters) above the deck, high enough that visitors can walk underneath it to view its deployed landing gear and mock heat shield tiles. Although constructed with an airframe identical to one of its space-flown sister ships, . It was only used for atmospheric flight tests and ground-based trials.

Guests desiring a closer view of the orbiter can ascend to an observation platform offering a nose-to-nose encounter with the test shuttle.

The previous pavilion provided a raised-level view as well, but it quickly became crowded. The new exhibit features a larger platform.

"The expanded viewing platform is to enable the public to get a little bit closer and to accommodate more people at a time," Charnov said.

Enterprise is also no longer the only spacecraft to look at.

"We are super excited that we've now brought Soyuz into the pavilion so we can tell the comparative story about the two different space vehicles, which to some extent shared parallel missions," said Charnov.

Moved up from one of the Intrepid's lower decks, Russia's Soyuz TMA-6 capsule sits nearby the much larger shuttle. The three-seat spacecraft visited the International Space Station in 2005. Its return crew included Greg Olsen, who paid his way to orbit as a so-called "space tourist." Olsen now owns the spacecraft and has loaned it to the Intrepid for display.

Enterprise's sister space shuttles were retired to other museums in 2011. Since then, NASA has relied on Russia's Soyuz to ferry its astronauts to and from the space station. The space agency intends to hire private space companies to resume U.S.-based manned launches as soon as the new commercial spacecraft become available in 2017.

Expanding Enterprise

During the months that Enterprise's pavilion was closed to visitors, the Intrepid set up a temporary exhibit of artifacts and memorabilia aimed at recounting the . Those objects and more have been incorporated into the newly-opened display.

"We had already intended, now that [Enterprise has been here] for a year already, to add new content and stories," Charnov explained, adding that the storm-forced redesign provided the opportunity for that expansion.

"In contrast with the last exhibition, which was really about telling a story through lightboxes and captive frame grabs all along the walls, this gave us the opportunity to pause and recognize that this pavilion is massive it's actually about a 19,000-square-foot stage and people are going to be experiencing it in their own way and their own time," she added.

Rather than have guests follow a single narrative exhibit, the displays are now divided into zones, with each sharing a different aspect about the space shuttle and Enterprise. New exhibit areas inside the pavilion employ artifacts and multimedia to provide a closer look at the interior of the orbiter's interior, examine the space shuttle's influence on pop culture, and illustrate the 30-year program's impact on everyday life.

The exhibit also highlights the team of people who worked behind the astronauts to make sure that each mission was a success, as well as provide visitors an updated look at NASA's current and planned activities.

"We are really trying to celebrate history but also connect the public to what is going on now and what are some of the visions for the future," Charnov said. "Because history should be active."

The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum is located at Pier 86 (46th Street and 12th Avenue) in Manhattan. Access to the Space Shuttle Pavilion costs $7 for adults and $5 for children ages 3 to 17, in addition to regular admission. The Intrepid is hosting a public SpaceFest, July 25-29, 2013, with NASA astronaut appearances, free movie screenings, hands-on demonstrations and more to celebrate all things space.

Follow collectSPACE.com onand on Twitter at @. Copyright 2013 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

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2. OIL HITS A 14-MONTH HIGHWest Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices for August delivery rose $1.83 to $105.36 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Wednesday, after the Oil Energy Information Administration reported that inventories dropped 9.87 million barrels, three times more than Bloomberg analysts predicted. The news supported speculation that an oil glut in the central U.S. is thinning faster than expected. The price is the highest it's been since May 2012. []

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3. JUDGE FINDS APPLE GUILTY OF PRICE-FIXING E-BOOKSA judge found Apple guilty ofto illegally lift the prices of e-books, boosting titles that Amazon set at a bargain-basement price of $9.99. "The plaintiffs have shown that the publisher defendants conspired with each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise e-book prices, and that Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy," Judge Denise Cote wrote in her 159-page decision. []

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4. CHINA OPENS THE LARGEST BUILDING IN THE WORLDChina's second largest city, Chengdu, opened the doors of the largest building in the world, the , which houses a beach, a seaside resort, a 14-screen Imax cinema, an Olympic-sized ice rink, two five-star hotels ,and a Mediterranean shopping village. The building is 5.5 million square feet, and 620 miles from the nearest ocean. []

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5. SEC LIFTS BAN ON HEDGE FUND ADSThe Security and Exchange Commission voted, 4 to 1, in favor of allowing hedge funds to advertise in public, ending a decades-old prohibition. The change is part of the Jumpstart Our Business Startup Act (JOBS), and in theory could make it easier for new companies to raise money, thereby creating new jobs. []

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The show's producer said Monday that Jenner will be paired with a different co-host for each episode of the daytime show, titled "Kris."

Others in the lineup include Kathie Lee Gifford, Morris Chestnut, NeNe Leakes, Tom Bergeron and Ryan Seacrest, who produces "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," which features Jenner and other family members.

Khloe Kardashian-Odom, one of Jenner's daughters, also will be a "Kris" co-host.

The talk show gets a trial run starting next week on selected Fox stations.

There was no word from producer 20th Television on whether another Jenner daughter, new mom Kim Kardashian, will get a co-host slot.

Francis has been waging a campaign to root out corruption and power plays in the Vatican's bureaucracy and to keep sight of what is essential in the church he was elected in March to lead.

The Argentine-born pontiff offered the encouragement for renewal in a homily during Mass Saturday at the Vatican City hotel where he lives. Francis told Catholics "not to be afraid of renewing some structures" to accord with "the places, the times" and the people, but he didn't specify what needed to be changed.

He said, "In Christian life, even in the life of the church, there are ancient structures, transient structures: It is necessary to renew them!"

Later, he gave an off-the-cuff lecture to a Vatiacn auditorium full of seminarians and novices, and to thunderous applause, told the future priests and nuns to keep "freshness" and "joy" in their lives, and took to task seminarians and novices who "are too serious, too sad. Something's not right here," Francis told his rapt audience. "There is no sadness in holiness," said Francis, saying that such clergy lack "the joy of the Lord."

"If you find a seminarian, priest, nun, with a long, sad face, if it se ems as if in their life, someone threw a wet blanket over them," you should conclude "it's a psiatric problem, they can go, 'buenos dias,''" Francis said, opting for a word in his native Spanish to indicate those clergy are not suited for their vocations.

He cautioned the future priests and nuns that he he wasn't talking about superficial joy -- "the thrill of a moment doesn't really make us happy." Francis warned his audience against seeking "the joy of the world, the latest smart phone, the fastest car."

"It hurts my heart when I see a priest with the latest model car," Francis said, then joking that his audience will think "now we have to go by bicycle."

"Cars are necessary. But take a more humble one," said Francis, who from the day he took office declined to move out of the hotel during the conclave of cardinals and into the ornate Apostolic Palace that is the traditional home to pontiffs. "Think of how many children die of hunger" and dedicate the savings to them," Francis said.

While there have been calls within the church for the Vatican to ease the requirement for celibacy for priests, nuns and brothers, Francis praised chastity. "We are victims of a culture of the 'temporary,'" Francis said, adding that celibacy vows for those becoming priests or nuns should be a "definitive choice."

The Vatican allows married clergy in strictly limited cases: married men in the Eastern rite church can be ordained priests, and married Anglican clergy who later convert can stay married after joining the Catholic church.

At one point he turned to an aide and asked how much time he had with the young future priests and nuns. Told that he could stay there "until tomorrow" if he wanted, Francis joked to his audience that they would need "sandwiches and Coke if we go till tomorrow," drawing roars of laughter. In the end, he spoke for about an hour with the seminarians and novices, and will celebrate Mass in St. Peter's Basilica on Sunday morning.

During his remarks, Francis praised Mother Teresa, the late nun who cared for the most impoverished sick of Calcutta, India, and held her up as a courageous example. "I would like a more missionary church," the pope told the young people, who seemed to hang on his every word. "Not so much a tranquil church, but a beautiful church that goes forward."

His lauding the nun will likely be seen as an indication that Francis will be eager to see Teresa made a saint. On Friday, the Vatican announced that Francis had decided to canonize later this year two predecessors, John Paul II, and John XXIII, even though the required miracle attributed to John XXIII's intercession and, according to church rules needed for sainthood, hadn't been certified. Bestowing sainthood on John Paul II, who died in 2005, will put him on a much faster path to canonization than Teresa, who died in 1997 and is widely considered a candidate for rapidly-conferred sainthood.

Francis' decision to OK sainthood for John XXIII without the second miracle pleased that late pope's family in northern Italy.

"We're happy. We were waiting for it for a long time," said Emanuele Roncalli, a great nephew of John XXIII, who was born Angelo Roncalli near Bergamo. "Even though you can still call him, not blessed, not saint , but just Pope John" in keeping with the late pontiff's stress on humility, said the great-nephew in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

In waiving the miracle requirement, Francis was essentially agreeing with the late pope's personal idea that "sainthood is lived during all of one's life," said Roncalli.

A journalist for the local daily L'Eco di Bergamo, Roncalli had written in Saturday's edition that his great-uncle, who died in 1963 when Roncalli was 2 years old, "wanted to be a holy man, in the fullness of the term." His great-uncle's concept of sainthood "could be defined as an available sainthood if not actually reachable by all," Roncalli wrote.

The late pope's notion of sainthood "isn't the sainthood of miracle workers, of healers," the great-nephew wrote.

But full details remain under wraps. The Singapore-based group leading the project says only the QE2 will be refitted in a Chinese shipyard before being moored in an undisclosed Asian port as a 400-room hotel.

The ship has sat idle in Dubai for more than 4 years after its purchase by the state investment company Istithmar World for $100 million.

Khamis Juma Buamin, chairman of shipyard operator Drydocks World, told reporters Sunday the 46-year-old QE2 is undergoing upgrades in Dubai before its planned Oct. 18 departure. It will stop in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Additionally, the source told Access that it was the blond bombshell who called things off.

"Stacy broke things off recently. She has a lot on her plate here in LA and he's also very busy with work until at least the end of the year," the source explained.

Contrary to other reports, the source also said Stacy's decision to go their separate ways had "nothing to do with kids or wanting to get married."

Despite the breakup, it appears the couple split on good terms.

"They're both confident that they'll remain friends," the source added.

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