Scientists on Earth may miss out on a large chunk of data from space probes like Cassini over the next half year, thanks to a failed set of bearings on a huge dish antenna based near Madrid. The ‘scope will need repairing, which will take until early 2007, and that knocks out one third of NASA’s ‘Deep Space Network’, which normally allows us to watch space in any direction at any time. Not all of the data will be lost, but probe mission planners will have to choose carefully and set priorities on the omost important objectives.

Good news for people who make a living creating virtual copies of real-world objects – the ZScanner700 is the world’s first handheld 3D scanning device, capable of digitising real surfaces quickly and easily. Needs no tripod, nor any positioning equipment – just point and scan. The CAD crowd will be pleased, but not half as much as game designers and Second Life afficinados, I’m thinking.

Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, has put a moratorium on further launches involving Dnepr boosters, at least until the causes of last week’s failed CubeSat launch have been thoroughly researched. The crash scattered huge amounts of rocket fuel over a wide (but fortunately unihabited) region of Kazakhstan, a mishap that may cost $10m to clean up behind.

Still no mention of definite manned missions yet, but this week Beijing in China is the location for a big conference of Lunar planners, where an international coalition is being hammered together for the purpose of exploring our nearest neighbour with robotic probes. The successful ESA SMART-1 probe, currently rounding up its data-gathering, will be followed shortly by devices from Japan, China and India, with more to come.

Fingerprint scanning? Sooo last year, man. The hot new science-fiction-flavoured tip for biometric security is scanning the iris of the eye – it seems to have worked in penal institutions so far, at least. No doubt the hacking community will be on the case right away, but it’ll probably take more than gummi bears to get round this idea.