NASA's soon-to-be-of-drinking-age eye in the sky is set to get a new set of upgrades this 2008, and unlike the last five trips which were done just to keep it running, this new mission is set give the Hubble some cool new gear that'll vastly improve its performance. The first upgrade involves swapping out its main camera, the 13-year old Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, with a brand new Wide Field Planetary Camera 3. The new lens will carry all the functions the old camera had, only better.

The next major upgrade is a totally new tool for Hubble. It's a device called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and according to Popular Science Correspondent Michael Moyer's interview with NASA investigator James Green, the COS is designed to track normal matter in the universe - like the gas clouds that just float along and absorb light from nearby stars and quasars.

The COS will pick up how much light these gas clouds absorb, and from there identify what these clouds are made of; very much like how your typical lab spectrum analyzer works, only...IN SPACE! Speaking of space, the COS is currently undergoing vacuum and temperature tests for two straight months to verify if it can handles the extremes (IN SPACE!) before it's launched along with the Wide Field Camera 3 to the Hubble (IN SPACE!) in May.

NASA is hoping that with these two upgrades will keep the aging (and admittedly glitchy) Hubble running until 2013, the year it's finally retired and replaced with the James Webb Space Telescope.

Area 51: aliens, conspiracy plots, crashed weather balloons, experiments on alien corpses, Agent Scully... A lot of good stuff comes to mind when the name of the most famous classified base is mentioned. What else comes to mind? Agent Scully... Mmmm... let me get my head out of the gutter. What else comes to mind? Ah, yes, top secret airplanes, or "black planes."

Black planes can get really famous whenever the government reveals one of them. Think about the U-2 spyplane of the 1950s; a band's named after that plane now. Then there's the SR-71 Blackbird. The X-men's plane looks awfully similar to the SR-71. Then there's the F-117; during the first Iraq war, it literally became the poster boy for the whole war effort. The first Iraq war was around fifteen years ago. Only three aircraft have been introduced since. One was Polecat. Another was Northrop Grumman’s Tacit Blue, nicknamed "the Whale." The third was Boeing’s Bird of Prey, which tested visual stealth strategies, including shaping that minimizes shadows and contrast and, rumor has it, body illumination that allows it to blend into its background.

This does not mean, however, that the black-aircraft community is dormant. Google Earth reveals a newly constructed additional runway and multiple new hangars and buildings at the base. Increased activity? It may mostly be educated speculation but the nice folks at Popular Science have featured a list of probable planes that are currently being tested at the famous site.

Read on to see concept images of the planes and the evidence and details surrounding them (click on the Full Article link below).