Your friends at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory would like to send you to Mars. Sort of.

You see, the JPL is sending the Mars Science Laboratory rover to the red planet in 2011, and among the things they’ll be taking with them is a microchip containing the names of anyone who submits their information to this website. It’s easy and takes just a minute… simply type in your name, country and zip code, hit ‘Submit’ and you’re on your way to Mars.

So far, more than 186,000 people in the U.S. have submitted their names (and more than 490,000 worldwide). You can see the breakdowns here and here. Go ahead and tag along. Mars awaits.

Wanna hear what the longest continuous thunderstorm in the solar system sounds like?

A team of astronomers has been studying a storm on Saturn that has been raging since — get this — January. (So if you’re planning on taking a trip to Saturn anytime soon, pack accordingly.) The storm is more than 1,800 miles in size, with lightning flashes 10,000 times stronger than those on Earth. That’s impressive.

… And in other news today, it’s worth noting that scientists have found the first rocky planet outside our own solar system. However, even though it may be Earthlike in the sense that it is a rocky planet (and not gaseous like, say, Jupiter or Saturn), it is also incredibly close to the star that it orbits. So close, in fact, that the typical daytime temperature is about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Sheesh. Talk about global warming.

Okay, okay… so maybe this is a little silly. It’s not exactly breaking news. But we still like it.

Follow this link to find out how many people are orbiting planet Earth at any given time, and in what vessel. We like to check in from time to time, just to make sure no one’s gone missing.

NASA’s website is a gold mine for cool images and interactive features, and there are some other sites that we regularly link to because their content is consistently fun. But you know who has very quietly put together some of the best space and science content on the web? MSNBC, actually. And yes, we were surprised, too.

The picture you see here is from their monthly feature of the best images taken from (or of) space. As always, there’s a ton of great pictures to enjoy. You can also visit their Space home page by following this link. There’s plenty to see and do, and they update it regularly. Bookmark it in your browser and check back from time to time. You’ll be glad you did.