* Astronomy

New Scientist has launched a new website focused solely on space and astronomy to capitalise on its growing online audience.
The international weekly science magazine has had a dedicated website, NewScientist.com, for 10 years. The parent site has about 8 million page impressions and 1.8 million unique users per month, according to New Scientist.
The new website, NewScientistSpace.com, covers news from around the world, including human space flight, space technology, the solar system and astronomy, along with special reports such as the Cassini mission to Saturn and the return of the Space Shuttle.
John Macfarlane, New Scientist online manager said the main site had a large number of regular users, which generated advertising revenue and drove subscriptions for the magazine.

“NewScientist.com has been a huge success for us. Now we are expanding the brand into the exciting area of space. With the Shuttle poised for a return to flight, remote missions to Mars and Saturn providing stunning insights into our planetary neighbours, and an exciting new era of private space-flight emerging there is no better time to expand our coverage of space.” - John Macfarlane

Macfarlane added that it was the perfect week to launch with the release of the new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith.
NewScientistSpace.com, which launched yesterday, is image heavy and has a different design to the main site, with a dark background to complement the astronomy photography. New Scientist journalists will generate the content, along with new specialists from the US to ensure strong coverage of Nasa’s activities.

Content will include polls and a newsletter service and, like its parent site, NewScientistSpace.com has both free access and subscriber-exclusive content.

New Scientist, which is published by Reed Business Information, is using 24/7 Search to ensure the site has prominence on search engine results and plans to follow this with further external promotion.

Cached NewScientistSpace.com webpage
(if you got problems loading the site)

(hehe, same info here first though...)