Welcome to the 344th Carnival of Space

Welcome to this week's Carnival of Space. Let's see what's going on in the Universe and those who write about it.

Over at the Urban Astronomer, they cover what the Curiosity rover has been doing on Mars for the past year and how it's faring in reaching its science goals.

The Everyday Spacer blog talks about the need for a Kickstarter campaign for Space Pioneer, a space game that claims to be a real time strategy game that uses real physics.

This past week, Chandra's blog had a few stories, including a spectacular composite image from Hubble and Chandra of the runaway galaxy ESO 137-001. There are also entries on a new result directly measuring the spin of a supermassive black hole, as well as a very cool photo of women astronomers just in time for the start of Women’s History Month in March.

On his blog, Dr. Paul Spudis discusses the process of naming names in space through the International Astronomical Union, or IAU.

At the Facebook page for the Lunar and Planetary Institute, they are trying to solicit more "likes" in advance of the upcoming conference from March 17-21.

The CosmoQuest team is planning 36 hours of astronomy and space science awesome (as they put it), and their blog this week tells folks to set aside April 26-27 for it. They also have a post on images of China's Lunar Orbiter called Chang’e from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Cosmoquest also has a post on "Cupcake Geology" -- tasty and educational stuff all at the same time!

Universe Today posted a report on how Hubble watched as an asteroid disintegrated as it traveled through space. They also wrote about the 2015 budget that could adversely affect Sofia.

The Meridiani Journal reports on the announcement that scientists using Kepler have confirmed at least 700 new exo-planets.

The Next Big Future chronicles the lunar space elevator that Liftport hopes to have operational by 2019. There's also a report in an Ars Technica piece on a theoretical rescue of Space Shuttle Columbia by the Space Shuttle Atlantis as well as something on Spiderfabs.

Finally, the blog for the Astronomy Club Toutatis has a report on touring Cambodia.

-Megan Watzke, CXC