London, August 28 : NASA has confirmed that a computer virus made its way into space, through a laptop carried to the International Space Station (ISS) in July this year.

According to a report by the BBC, the worm, known as Gammima. AG, was first detected on Earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games.

Space news website SpaceRef broke the story about the virus on the laptops that astronauts took to the ISS.

Washington, August 27 : The next sample of Martian soil being grabbed for analysis is coming from a trench about three times deeper than any other trench NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has dug.

On August 26, the spacecraft will finish the 90 Martian days originally planned as its primary mission and will continue into a mission extension through September, as announced by NASA in July.

Phoenix’s main task for Sol 90 is to scoop up a sample of soil from the bottom of a trench called “Stone Soup,” which is about 18 centimeters, or 7 inches deep.

Washington, August 23 : NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has scooped up a soil sample from an intermediate depth between the ground surface and a subsurface icy layer and delivered it to a laboratory oven on the spacecraft for analysis.

The robotic arm on Phoenix collected the sample, dubbed “Burning Coals,” from a trench named “Burn Alive 3.”

In part of the trench, the arm had dug down to the hard, icy layer about 4 centimeters (1.6 inches) below the ground surface.