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China’s first lunar rover has successfully separated from the probe that carried it into space has and made its first track upon the surface of the moon, Chinese state media reported Sunday. The so-called “Jade Rabbit” rover detached itself from the much larger landing vehicle early Sunday morning, approximately seven hours after the unmanned Chang’e 3 space probe touched down on a fairly flat, Earth-facing part of the moon. The soft landing—the term for a landing in which neither the spacecraft nor its equipment is damaged—was the first on the moon by any nation in 37 years. …

Nasa has announced plans to grow plants on the moon by 2015 in a project designed to further humanity’s chances of successfully colonising space. Plant growth will be an important part of space exploration in the future as NASA plans for long-duration missions to the moon. NASA scientists anticipate that astronauts may be able to grow plants on the moon, and the plants could be used to supplement meals. If successful, the Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team will make history by seeding life from Earth on another celestial body for the first time, paving the way for humans to set...

Lack of money and testing delays mean NASA will not be able to send astronauts into orbit until at least 2021, according to a report released Aug. 15 by the NASA Office of Inspector General. “NASA plans to delay delivery of several systems required to ‘human rate’ the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), and as a result, the Agency does not expect the spacecraft to be available for crewed operations until at least 2021,” said Paul K. Martin, NASA’s inspector general. Under current funding levels, astronauts will be limited to orbital missions, because the systems necessary for surface exploration have...

Having declared an end to the War on Terror, the US president no longer has any clear idea of his country's global role The West can no longer rely on American leadership in the world. For the remaining duration of the Obama administration, Washington’s judgment and effectiveness in foreign policy cannot be trusted. It is quite an achievement for the one remaining superpower to appear as ineffectual and wrong-footed as the United States has managed to do in the past week. But there it is. The president’s global strategy in his second term was based on two resounding premises. First,...

Russia will charge the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) $71 million to transport just one American astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard its Soyuz spacecraft in 2016. That’s more than triple the $22 million per seat the Russians charged in 2006, according to a July 8 audit report by NASA’s inspector general.

President Barack Obama on Saturday reiterated that the U.S. is not aligned with and is not supporting any particular Egyptian political party or group and again condemned the ongoing violence across Egypt. Obama made those points during a telephone conference with the National Security Council about developments in Egypt, according to a statement issued by the White House. He was spending the weekend at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. “The United States categorically rejects the false claims propagated by some in Egypt that we are working with specific political parties or movements to dictate how Egypt’s transition should...

WASHINGTON - The world - especially the Greater Middle East - has become less peaceful than it was five years ago, according to the 2013 edition of the annual Global Peace Index (GPI) released here Tuesday by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Consistent with that trend, the index also found that global peacefulness declined over the past year, chiefly due to the intensifying civil war in Syria; the rising number of homicides, especially in Mexico, Central America, and several sub-Saharan African countries; and increased military spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) in many nations. Led by...

China’s latest manned spacecraft successfully blasted off Tuesday on a 15-day mission to dock with a space lab and educate young people about science. The Shenzhou 10 capsule carrying three astronauts lifted off as scheduled at 5:38 p.m. (0938 GMT) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert. It is China’s fifth manned space mission and its longest. …

A new report documents the failures of Muslim outreach conducted by the U.S. government before and after the Sept. 11 attacks, faulting both Republican and Democrat administrations for reaching out to known terrorist funders and leaders. Published by the Israel-based Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center by Patrick Poole, a counterterrorism consultant and investigative reporter, the 14,000-word exposé details the federal government’s “long-standing policy of engaging extremists.” Among the many examples, Poole cites government leaders inviting radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki to the Pentagon, just months after one of his spiritual disciples had flown a plane into the Pentagon on...

Currently the Obama administration is facing three big scandals — the IRS targeting, the bugging of AP and Fox, and Benghazi. Now we have scandal Number Four, just as large in scope. For the last four years, the Obama administration has conducted a major “outreach” program to Islamic groups in the United States and in the Middle East. In a comprehensive article, investigative journalist and PJ Media contributor Patrick Poole now presents the full scoop and scope of what’s been going on. His article — “Blind to Terror: The U.S. Government’s Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S....

Within hours of the Boston Marathon blasts, government officials and Muslims in Boston called each other to offer assistance. These calls were the fruits of years of cultivating such relationships in an effort to ultimately prevent the very type of attack Boston experienced April 15. But the calls following the explosions were not about the unfolding investigation. Representatives from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security offered support to Muslim communities in case they suffered backlash or threats,

Planet-hunting scientists were dealt a major blow Wednesday when NASA officials announced that a crucial wheel on the Kepler space telescope had ceased to function and that the craft had been placed in safe mode. Even as NASA officials raised the possibility that they could get the telescope back up and running, scientists began mourning the potential loss of a spacecraft that they said had fundamentally altered our understanding of alien planets in the Milky Way—and Earth’s place in an increasingly crowded galaxy. “Tears are coming to my eyes on and off,” said UC Berkeley astrophysicist Geoff Marcy, a co-investigator...

On Friday, March 30, 2012, Hisham Y. Altalib visited the White House. According to visitor logs, Altalib was received by Joshua DuBois, the director of President Obama's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Four days later, White House officials welcomed a foreign delegation of the radical Sharia-enforcing Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt. The White House meeting with overseas Muslim Brotherhood leaders was reported in April by a few mainstream journalists and questioned loudly by conservative media. But the White House confab in March with U.S.-based Altalib -- which appears to be a prep session with the global Muslim Brotherhood's American...

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday unveiled a report on last's year attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that blames then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for lapses in security. The 46-page report by the five committees of jurisdiction concludes that reductions in security levels prior to the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, including by Clinton herself.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden has dismissed the idea that the space agency will attempt another manned Moon mission. Speaking with contemporaries, Bolden said "NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission... probably in my lifetime." Bolden added that if the next administration reverses NASA's decision it would set back the manned space program in its entirety. He warned that, should we divert resources towards a manned moon mission in the future, we would probably never "see Americans on the Moon, on Mars, near an asteroid, or anywhere" in our lifetimes, explaining that "we cannot continue to change...

NASA, the agency that epitomized the "Right Stuff," looks lost in space and doesn't have a clear sense of where it is going, an independent panel of science and engineering experts said in a stinging report Wednesday. The report by a panel of the distinguished National Academy of Sciences doesn't blame the space agency; it faults the president, Congress and the nation for not giving NASA better direction. At the same time, it said NASA is doing little to further the White House's goal of sending astronauts to an asteroid. In one withering passage, the panel said NASA's mission and...

In the Obama Administration’s latest move to bond with Muslims, a strong supporter of a radical Islamist theologian and a renowned jihadist ideologue has been sworn in as a special adviser to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano proudly announced this month that she swore in three new members of her new Advisory Council, a panel comprised of local government officials, academics and private citizens who make recommendations and advise her on a variety of issues relating to national security.Among its new members is Mohamed Elibiary, a backer of the Ayatollah Khomeini and a...

Twitchy headline says it all.Context provided by Erick Erickson at Red State: In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly today the President of the United States declared that the future does not belong to practicing Christians. Already, the media and the left are in full denial, probably based on their general lack of understanding of theology. This would have been a gaffe had Mitt Romney said it. But with Barack Obama, he’s just speaking bold truths. His bold truth declares that the future does not belong to practicing Christians. Pay careful attention to what he says: "The future...

I spoke with a well-placed journalist last night whose sources describe the situation at the State Department in one word: “Chaos.” The working assumption is that several American embassies may have been penetrated, or are vulnerable to attack, because so many of them rely on local residents for staff needs at the embassy, and as such may be in a position to breach security if they have been recruited by Al Qaida. ...The consulate in Benghazi was an interim facility, with only a standard door lock for security, and worse, Ambassador Stevens was traveling with only a light security detail,...

Today I went out into the field here in Chicago looking to talk to some of the striking teachers but no one in a red-shirt was anywhere to be found (or, if they were wearing one, they had nothing to do with the teachers’ union strike). A journalist friend of mine asked me to nose around and see if I could uncover anything about slain Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was rumored to be gay. A former “roommate” of Stevens by the name of Austin Tichenor lives and works in Chicago and while making calls to friends of mine in the...