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The U.S. space agency says blogs and tweets will be part of the upcoming launch of space shuttle Atlantis and its mission to the International Space Station. The shuttle is to lift off Monday, Nov. 16, at 2:28 p.m. EST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA said the STS-129 mission will be commanded by Charles Hobaugh and piloted by Barry Wilmore. Mission astronauts are Robert Satcher Jr., Mike Foreman, Randy Bresnik and Leland Melvin. Wilmore, Satcher and Bresnik will be making their first trips into space. Atlantis and its crew will deliver equipment to the International Space Station....

Why Evolutionary-Based Science Is A Menace To Scientific Research, Discovery, and Progress Evolutionary-based research always begins with the inaccurate and unscientific presupposition that the Theory of Evolution, i.e. the Big Bang, the spontaneous generation of life, and common descent, is true. Due to this systemic problem, scientific discovery and progress is severely hampered, not to mention the hundreds of millions of research dollars that are squandered every year. In a time in which almost ANY alternative thought is given a platform, the evolution industry is silencing dissenting scientific evidence, even when it’s from fellow evolutionists! See the growing list of...

It's blurrier than old MySpace snapshots, but it's there as expected. The Apollo Lunar Modules and the US flag left behind at the Apollo 17 landing site has been caught in a close-up image by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The lander as well as the flag, or rather the remaining flag pole, seen in the image above are exactly where they should be based on this shot by the Ascent Module "right after Apollo 17 lifted off the Moon": Going a step further, the location can be compared to more recent images of the landing site and everything still...

The Boeing Co. announced Friday it will lay off a third of its 1,000-member workforce at Kennedy Space Center next year. The layoffs will come in January, May and August as the shuttle program heads toward retirement. Some 330 workers will be laid off from Boeing's Checkout, Assembly and Payload Processing Services program, which has about 500 workers, spokeswoman Susan Wells said Friday. "Boeing is committed to preserving as many jobs as possible for our valued, highly skilled employees, and the company has taken aggressive steps to lessen the impact of these potential reductions," a company statement said. "These steps...

Many people make a distinction between the origin of life and the evolution of life. In this view, biological evolution refers to the gradual development of the diversity of living things from a common ancestor, while the ultimate origin of life is a separate question. This is a legitimate point, but evolution is about much more than just biology. The evolutionary worldview is that all of physical existence, both living and non-living, arose through purely natural processes. With this broad definition of evolution, abiogenesis--the spontaneous appearance of life from non-living matter--is a necessity. If life did arise on earth by...

Today we will attempt to launch the Space Shuttle replacement again... "today's launch is the first test of the Ares I rocket NASA is designing to carry astronauts after the space shuttle is retired. The unmanned test rocket, called Ares I-X, is powered only by a four-segment shuttle solid rocket booster. Everything above that is a mock-up." Wednesday October 28, 2009 6:46 James Dean

Ares I-X is (hopefully) about to come out of its 20 minute hold. Launch is predicted to take place around 08:30 (or later).

You would think that an unpiloted space plane built to rocket spaceward from Florida atop an Atlas booster, circle the planet for an extended time, then land on autopilot on a California runway would be big news. But for the U.S. Air Force X-37B project — seemingly, mum's the word. There is an air of vagueness regarding next year's Atlas Evolved Expendable launch of the unpiloted, reusable military space plane. The X-37B will be cocooned within the Atlas rocket's launch shroud — a ride that's far from cheap. While the launch range approval is still forthcoming, SPACE.com has learned that...

The latest report of arctic sea ice was released, since the September minimum has passed and ice is now reforming as winter approaches. The National Snow and Ice Data Center report states that this was the third lowest amount of sea ice on record, but I contend that is missing the point. In this era of dire claims of climate marred by the controversy of global cooling, public dissent, and early season snow, a NASA follow up report appears to ignore the good news: The arctic sea ice is actually expanding! --snip-- The first lines of a press release from...

You would think that an unpiloted space plane built to rocket spaceward from Florida atop an Atlas booster, circle the planet for an extended time, then land on autopilot on a California runway would be big news. But for the U.S. Air Force X-37B project — seemingly, mum's the word. There is an air of vagueness regarding next year's Atlas Evolved Expendable launch of the unpiloted, reusable military space plane. The X-37B will be cocooned within the Atlas rocket's launch shroud — a ride that's far from cheap. While the launch range approval is still forthcoming, SPACE.com has learned that...

Was our oldest ancestor a proton-powered rock? --snip-- The picture painted by Russell and Martin is striking indeed. The last common ancestor of all life was not a free-living cell at all, but a porous rock riddled with bubbly iron-sulphur membranes that catalysed primordial biochemical reactions...

The U.S. Senate gave final passage to an energy and water spending bill Oct. 15 that denies President Barack Obama’s request for $30 million for the Department of Energy to restart production of plutonium-238 (pu-238) for NASA deep space missions. The House of Representatives originally approved $10 million of Obama’s pu-238 request for next year, but ultimately adopted the Senate’s position before voting Oct. 1 to approve the conference report on the 2010 Energy-Water Appropriations bill (H.R. 3183). The bill now heads to Obama, who is expected to sign it. NASA relies on pu-238 to power long-lasting spacecraft batteries that...

This week Earth will be passing through a debris field left behind by Halley’s Comet, the Orionids. Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office says, “Flakes of comet dust hitting the atmosphere should give us dozens of meteors per hour. Since 2006, Orionids have been one of the showers of the year, with counts of 60 or more meteors per hour.”

The nation that made it to the Moon in 12 years now struggles to build a satellite in that time and is at risk of losing its preeminence in space. Those words come from one of the top four space intelligence lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, chairman of the House Select technical and tactical intelligence subcommittee, who spoke before an audience of some 1,200 intelligence practitioners and industry at the Geoint annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. Ruppersburger noted that 20 years ago the U.S. had 70 percent of the commercial satellite market which is now down to...

Oct 19, 2009 — Science news outlets have put out some bizarre headlines recently.  Readers can judge whether they should be blessed with the label “science” or belong instead at supermarket checkouts. Women are evolving fatter:  New Scientist and PhysOrg said that natural selection is making women shorter, plumper and more fertile.  “The take-home message is that humans are currently evolving,” said Stephen Stearns of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina.  “Natural selection is still operating.” Killer algae heading north:  Science Daily said that toxic algae was a key player in mass extinctions in the past, and...

There was a plume after all. Observers on Earth had their doubts after LCROSS and its Centaur booster rocket hit the Moon on Friday, Oct. 9th. The twin lunar impacts failed to produce visible plumes of debris, prompting speculation that something had gone wrong. On the contrary, members of the LCROSS science team are now calling the experiment "a smashing success." Fifteen seconds after the Centaur hit the shadowy floor of crater Cabeus, the LCROSS spacecraft flying 600 km overhead took the following picture of a plume measuring 6 to 8 km wide: "There is a clear indication of a...

NASA scientists have discovered a mysterious ribbon around our solar system —- a stripe made of hydrogen —- that defies all current expectations about what the edge of the solar system might look like. Richard Fisher, the director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, tells NPR's Guy Raz that this discovery is a big moment for the scientific community. "We thought we knew everything about everything, and it turned out that there were unknown unknowns."

News to Note, October 17, 2009: A weekly feature examining news from the biblical viewpoint (fascinating STEM CELL piece in story #5!)...

The global ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa contains about twice the liquid water of all the Earth’s oceans combined. New research suggests that there may be plenty of oxygen available in that ocean to support life, a hundred times more oxygen than previously estimated. The chances for life there have been uncertain, because Europa’s ocean lies beneath several miles of ice, which separates it from the production of oxygen at the surface by energetic charged particles (similar to cosmic rays). Without oxygen, life could conceivably exist at hot springs in the ocean floor using exotic metabolic chemistries, based on...

Editor's note: this article was originally published in Space News and is reprinted here courtesy of its author. On behalf of myself and all of us at Bigelow Aerospace let me first congratulate you on becoming NASA administrator. I'm sure the joy you must feel in being entrusted with leading such an extraordinary organization is only rivaled by the difficulty of the decisions you are now facing.

InfoWorld Home / Applications / News / NASA plans Tweetup for next shuttle launch October 14, 2009 NASA plans Tweetup for next shuttle launch 100 Twitterers will be invited for two-day event surrounding Nov. 12 launch By Sharon Gaudin | Computerworld Share or Email | Print | Add a comment| Recommend This NASA is throwing a Tweetup for its next shuttle launch. The U.S. space agency announced this week that some of its @NASA Twitter followers will be invited to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida next month to view the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis in person. NASA...

Another Insult to Islam NASA Mission Condemned by thelastcrusade.org Muslims have expressed their outrage at NASA for crashing two rockets into the South Pole of the moon. One rockets was the size of a bus; the second of a compact car. The purpose of the mission was to determine if lunar craters contained cakes of ice. The rockets may not have dislodged ice, but they certainly fanned fires throughout the Muslim world. “America does not own the moon,” Shareef Abdel wrote on a blog. “It belongs to us. The moon has always belonged to Islam.” This sentiment was shared...

Enlarge ImageBoom or bust? This near-infrared image of Cabeus crater was taken from Palomar Observatory after the LCROSS impact today. Credit: Palomar Observatory/Caltech NASA officials and scientists spent the better part of an hour in this morning's press conference patting themselves on the back. The LCROSS mission in search of lunar water was a great success, they said, all the while ignoring a very large elephant in the room: No one among the millions watching as a 2-ton hunk of metal slammed into the moon could see the much-ballyhooed spray of dust and debris that they had been told...

LONDON — A Briton accused of hacking into US military and NASA space agency computers was on Friday refused permission to appeal to the new Supreme Court in London against his extradition to the United States. The High Court had turned down Gary McKinnon's extradition challenges and on Friday refused him leave to appeal, ruling that that his case did not raise "points of law of general public importance" -- a prerequisite of being able to pursue a cause in the Supreme Court. The 43-year-old could spend life in prison if convicted by a US court of gaining access to...

This just in from NASA, President Barack Hussein Obama face was found on the surface of Mars! Never before satellite photos have found Barack's face in the sand dunes of Mars and now NASA Scientist ponder how the likeness of Obama has come to form on Mars' surface.

WASHINGTON —  Take that, moon! NASA bulldozed two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed 4 minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash. But initial photos show that the moon didn't give the reaction to the double jabs that NASA expected. And the public definitely didn't get the live explosive views they may have anticipated from the mission called LCROSS, short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. Screens got fuzz and...

NASA spokesperson Rachel McDonald stated in a press conference today, that President Barack Obama was the first man to step on the Moon. McDonald stated, "Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't Neil Armstrong wasn't the first man to step on the Moon but was instead the President." She followed, "The first words he uttered were FIRE IT UP...READY TO GO!" FIRE IT UP .... READY TO GO!

Live stream: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

WASHINGTON (AFP) – NASA next week begins the most extensive aerial survey of Earth's surface to chart the impact of global warming, with six years of flights over Antarctica to understand the frozen continent's glaciers and ice sheets. The US space agency said the massive aerial survey, part of a program dubbed Operation Ice Bridge, will get underway on October 15. ... Space officials said the plane, crew and scientists depart October 12 from NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, California, and fly to Punta Arenas, Chile, where they will be based through mid-November. Some 50 scientists and support...

Oct 7, 2009 — Saturn has a newly-discovered ring to add to its decor – the largest of all. It’s so big, it makes Saturn look like a speck in the middle of it. The ring, located at the orbit of the small outer moon Phoebe, is inclined 27 degrees and revolves backwards around Saturn. This was announced today by...

NASA's Lunar Prospector first detected some hydrogen signatures in craters on the dark side of the moon in 1999. Ever since, researchers have been keen to confirm the presence of water on the moon. The Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is tasked with crashing through the mists of speculation and conjecture and discover the truth. And you can watch all the action as it happens. LCROSS was launched on June 18th and executed a fly-by of the moon five days later before entering into a wide orbit. On Friday October 9th, the craft will start to make...

An enterprising robotic explorer will smash into the lunar frontier Friday in search of water ice hidden deep inside the darkest corners of the moon, spewing hundreds of thousands of pounds of dust high above the surface in a celestial event visible from Earth. Just four minutes will decide the outcome of three years of preparations, four months of space travel, and a $79 million investment put into the bold mission. Four minutes is the time that nine science instruments on the LCROSS probe will be able to directly study a cloud of dust thrown high above the moon by...

LOS ANGELES – Earth can breathe a sigh of relief. NASA on Wednesday downgraded the odds of an 885-foot asteroid striking the planet in 2036. Scientists initially believed there was a 1-in-45,000 chance that Apophis could hit the planet on April 13, 2036. But the threat was lowered to a 1-in-250,000 chance after researchers recalculated the asteroid's path. "It wasn't anything to worry about before. Now it's even less so," said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Get ready for a unique cosmic collision! Early this coming Friday morning (Oct. 9), NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will end its mission with a bang — literally. Currently carrying with it the upper stage of the rocket that launched it on its way to the moon on June 18, the game plan is to send that spent rocket motor on a course to smash into the lunar surface. But just not anywhere on the lunar surface, but to a thoroughly scrutinized crater called Cabeus that lies near the moon's south pole and is enveloped in perpetual...

Back in January of this year, just after Obama was sworn in as President, he got into a controversy by saying the $787 billion stimulus bill would save construction equipment maker Caterpillar from having to cut 20,000 jobs. The stimulus bill has come and while going, it has not saved those jobs at Caterpillar nor at numerous other business and industries.   One way to actually stimulate Caterpillar and the economy is to spend those billions going to the moon, Mars and beyond.   John F, Kennedy said we should not go to the moon because it is easy, but...

Funding for NASA's commercial crew and cargo work has been slashed from $150 million to $90 million with just $1 million for a human rating study contract that was announced and withdrawn in September. The original $150 million was going to be spent with $80 million for a crew transport programme and $70 million for supporting work. That has been torn up and the $90 million is split four ways. There is $50 million for the Commercial Crew Development programme, $24 million for launch site and test infrastructure, $15 million for docking system development, and the $1 million human rating...

With NASA Administrator Charles Bolden taking tentative steps toward more free market possibilities for America’s space program—and even mentioning the once-unspeakable topic of “space tourism”—a clown from Canada is already orbiting the Earth. An Associated Press story entitled “Canadian circus billionaire heads to space station” notes that "a Canadian circus tycoon, an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off in a spacecraft from the Kazakh steppe Wednesday on a journey to the International Space Station." The AP account continues: A Canadian circus tycoon, an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off in a spacecraft from the Kazakh steppe...

Outer Limits Not Lively Sept 29, 2009 — One of the “cosmic coincidences” cited in the intelligent-design treatise The Privileged Planet1 is the “galactic habitable zone” – a fairly narrow region of the galaxy where planets can form and exist safely.  The outer regions of the galaxy were described as lacking the heavy elements necessary for planet formation. Score one for the authors.  New Scientist reported on a planet search by astronomers at the University of Tokyo who failed to find planets in the outer reaches of the galaxy.  “Astronomers have long doubted that life could exist there,” the article...

NASA is running out of the special kind of plutonium needed to power deep space probes, worrying planetary scientists who say the U. S. urgently needs to restart production of plutonium-238. But it's unclear whether Congress will provide the $30 million that the administration requested earlier this year for the Department of Energy to get a new program going. Nuclear weapons use plutonium-239, but NASA depends on something quite different: plutonium-238. A marshmallow-sized pellet of plutonium-238, encased in metal, gives off a lot of heat. "If you dim the lights a little bit, it glows a little red, because it's...

In May, President Obama set up a panel to study and propose the how, when and if for future US space flight efforts. Considering Obama’s current shilly-shallying on his Afghan War policy, we should worry whether any American space program will be left when he finally makes up his mind. Since NASA was formed by politics instead of pure scientific need due to Sputnik's launch by the USSR in 1957, one would not be surprised at its sinister, shaky hand at the throttle and purse strings. However, John Kennedy was most eloquent and gallant when he defined why we would...

Sept 23, 2009 — Imagine never having to wash your windows again. That would be a huge boon not only for window washers on skyscrapers, but for astronauts on the space shuttle or space station. It may become a reality, thanks to the lotus plant...

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will host a media teleconference at noon PDT on Thursday, Sept. 24, to discuss new research results from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The findings will be reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science. NASA will stream audio from the teleconference online.

Earth's aged, crater-pocked, and bone dry-appearing moon may well sport a wet look. That outlook is gaining momentum via a treasure-trove of new scientific measurements gleaned by an international armada of moon-orbiting scientific scouts, including a report last week that craters near the lunar poles, always in shadow, may harbor water ice. What's more is that such a prospect could fuel those eager to return human explorers to the moon, to establish a base camp there, and to hone talent and hardware for jumping off to other destinations.

Reliable sources report that there will be a press conference at NASA HQ at 2:00 pm this Thursday featuring lunar scientist Carle Pieters from Brown University. The topic of the press briefing will be a paper that will appear in this week's issue of Science magazine wherein results from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) aboard Chandrayaan-1 will be revealed. The take home message: there is a lot of water on the Moon. Stay tuned.

Sept. 21, 2009 -- Lured by millions of dollars in prize money, teams of private firms aren't waiting for NASA to figure out if, when and how to get back to the moon. They're preparing to go themselves. The first $1 million prize for demonstrating a lunar landing system is due to be awarded at the end of October. The front-runner is Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace, which this month made back-to-back flights of a vehicle named Scorpius. Two other contenders plan to enter the NASA-backed competition before this year's cutoff on Oct. 31. Contestants for the top prize are judged by...

Here are just a few more things to fear that you might not have considered fearing. If you're one of those oblivious people who's not living in constant fear of these things, you need to wake up and put on your pants one leg at a time or expect to pay the pied piper. Killer asteroids. According to Julie Luck, there are 20,000 asteroids just flying like crazy around our solar system ready to slam into Earth at any moment and either completely pulverize the planet or, hopefully, merely wreak massive death and destruction from the skies. A June 2003...

Shadow icebergs of the lunar antarctic???? NASA says that its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) probe in orbit around the Moon has detected neutron signatures indicating possible frozen water deposits hidden in craters at the lunar south pole. Tough country for ice mining. One of the LRO's main missions is to find water on the Moon, which would make it far less expensive and difficult to establish manned bases there. The deep crater bottoms of the lunar antarctic are considered to be a particularly promising place to look, as they are permanently in shadow - never receiving any sunlight which could...

China said Thursday its rapidly growing space programme was the crowning achievement of the nation's high-tech transformation and pledged to continue to develop it to close the gap with Western countries. "I believe a space programme represents a country's high technology and I believe China has already become a major country in high technology," Vice Minister of Science and Technology Li Xueyong told reporters. "Our success shows not only the progress of the space programme but also our overall level of science and technology," he said at a press briefing. Li said China will invest 35 billion dollars in high-tech...

Pasadena, CA, — Today, Norman Augustine, the Chair of the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, testifies to the U.S. Congress to present the summary of their final report to the Obama Administration. The Committee made a number of important conclusions and suggestions for changes in Constellation, the currently planned U.S. human spaceflight program.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is starting to come together. A major component of the telescope, the Integrated Science Instrument Module structure, recently arrived at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. for testing in the Spacecraft Systems Development and Integration Facility.