The year 2008 in science involves some significant events, listed below.

Events

• January 15 - NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft makes its first of three flybys of Mercury at 200 km altitude, to decrease velocity enough to a 2011 orbit insertion.
• March 12 - Cassini Spacecraft is set to orbit within 100 km of Enceladus, its closest encounter of the sixth largest moon of Saturn.
• April 2 - A cross human-cow embryo survives a third straight day after being fertilized at Newcastle University, England. A director for embryonic stem cell laboratories at the Australian Stem Cell Centre said that the "99 per cent human" embryo could improve research within the field of human diseases. The Catholic Church in England however said that the creation was "monstrous" and says that the later destruction of it is unethical. (News.com.au)
• June - The proton-proton Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator and collider at CERN is scheduled to begin operations. It will be the world's largest particle physics laboratory.
• June 8 - NASA's Pluto probe New Horizons crossed the orbit of Saturn, after 2½ years journey. The Voyagers spent 3 to 4 years to get to Saturn.
• August 1 - Total solar eclipse: northern Canada, Siberia, Mongolia, northern China.
• October 6 - NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft makes the second of three flybys of Mercury.
• October 7 — 2008 TC3 became the first earth-impacting meteoroid spotted and tracked prior to impact.
• The Indian Space Research Organization plans an unmanned mission to the Moon.

Deaths

• April 13 - John Wheeler (b. 1911), theoretical physicist, coined the terms black hole and worm hole.
• April 16 - Edward Norton Lorenz (b. 1917), mathematician and meteorologist, coined the term butterfly effect.
• April 29 - Albert Hofmann (b. 1906), chemist, synthesizer of LSD.
• May 15 - Willis Lamb (b. 1913), physicist, winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics.
• August 5 - Neil Bartlett (b. 1932), chemist who prepared the first compound of a noble gas