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The damage caused by ending the Space Shuttle Program prematurely -- before an alternative man-rated U.S. conveyance system was available – continues to build up. Not only do we not have an American-led way to get humans into space, we are now ending – or cutting short – our capacity to deliver national security assets into deep orbit. We are knowingly allowing a gap to emerge between launch capacity we have now – which depends on the RD-180 Russian-made rocket engine – and an uncertain future time, when we may have our own rocket engine to power heavy-lift rockets. Simply...

ULA was formed in 2006 as a 50:50 joint venture between aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing that combined their existing expendable rocket fleet families – the Atlas V and Delta IV – under one roof. According to Reuters, Aerojet Rocketdyne recently proffered a $2 billion cash offer to buy ULA from Lockheed Martin and Boeing. “Aerojet Rocketdyne board member Warren Lichtenstein, the chairman and chief executive of Steel Partners LLC, approached ULA President Tory Bruno and senior Lockheed and Boeing executives about the bid in early August,” sources told Reuters. ULA’s Bruno declined to comment on the story via...

(CNN)—NASA's rockets are astounding machines, capable of blasting into space at thousands of miles per hour and withstanding temperatures twice the melting point of steel. But they can't take off underwater. Rising sea levels caused by melting ice caps threaten to disrupt a handful of NASA launch sites along U.S. coastlines, the space agency warns. In the coming years, launch facilities at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and other places may need to be retrofitted or even moved inland, NASA says. "Every NASA center has its own set of vulnerabilities, and some are more at risk than others," NASA climatologist...

Christopher Russell, Professor of Geophysics and Space Physics at UCLA cannot discuss the new high resolution images from Ceres because they have been embargoed by the science journal Nature. ... Russell was able to discuss the issue of Ceres' strange bright spots, appearing prominently in both the large crater known as 'Occator', of which is 60 miles (90 km) across and 2 miles (4 km) deep, and on the slopes of an extremely strange, pyramid-shaped mountain that is 4 miles (6 km) tall. These spots, as described by professor Russell, appear to be a powdery substance that is deposited on...

There is something very odd about the NOAA claim of a very hot July, thanks to global warming: July was the hottest month on Earth since records began... Take the NOAA map above. Check Australia, said to have had average or above-average temperatures over much of the continent, apart from the much-warmer-than-average bits around Sydney and parts of Western Australia. Liberal MP Craig Kelly is curious: HOW DOES THE COLDEST MONTH IN 20 YEARS BECOME THE HOTTEST MONTH “EVER’’ ? July in Melbourne was widely reported as the ”Coldest July in 20 years” It also was reported at the start...

Explanation: From where do these neutrinos come? The IceCube Neutrino Observatory near the South Pole of the Earth has begun to detect nearly invisible particles of very high energy. Although these rarely-interacting neutrinos pass through much of the Earth just before being detected, where they started remains a mystery. Pictured here is IceCube's Antarctic lab accompanied by a cartoon depicting long strands of detectors frozen into the crystal clear ice below. Candidate origins for these cosmic neutrinos include the violent surroundings of supermassive black holes at the centers of distant galaxies, and tremendous stellar explosions culminating in gamma ray bursts...

Full Title: Buzz Aldrin developing 'master plan' to begin colonies on Mars by 2040 as he launches partnership with university Buzz Aldrin, 85, is partnering with Florida Institute of Technology. The Buzz Aldrin Space Institute will open in The Fall and focus on Mars Astronaut, the second man to walk on the Moon, has devised plan to get to the red planet using 'cycling pathways' and base on Mars's moon Phobos The second man to walk on the Moon is teaming up with Florida Institute of Technology to develop 'a master plan' for colonizing Mars within 25 years. Buzz Aldrin,...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fl. (Reuters) - Sea levels worldwide rose an average of nearly 3 inches (8 cm) since 1992, the result of warming waters and melting ice, a panel of NASA scientists said on Wednesday. In 2013, a United Nations panel predicted sea levels would rise from 1 to 3 feet (0.3 to 0.9 meters) by the end of the century. The new research shows that sea level rise most likely will be at the high end of that range, said University of Colorado geophysicist Steve Nerem. Sea levels are rising faster than they did 50 years ago and “it’s...

Miami (AFP) - Sea levels are rising around the world, and the latest satellite data suggests that three feet (one meter) or more is unavoidable in the next 100-200 years, NASA scientists said Wednesday. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than ever, and oceans are warming and expanding much more rapidly than they have in years past. Rising seas will have "profound impacts" around the world, said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division. "More than 150 million people, most of them in Asia, live within one meter of present sea level," he said. Low-lying US...

NASA employees were caught buying child pornography from a criminal ring in Eastern Europe that distributed images of minors as young as three, it can be revealed. An investigation by Daily Mail Online found 16 staff members from the space agency paid for pictures and videos of children in sexual situations, but were never prosecuted. Their names have never been released because of government guidelines which protect their privacy – prompting fears some of the culprits are still employed by NASA. The probe found that in 2010, the employees paid for the pornography using personal credit cards or PayPal while...

Senator Hutchison cool to SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch; concerns remain about Obama NASA policy June 5, 8:25 AMHouston Space News ExaminerMark Whittington Falcon 9 Courtesy NASA The near universal acclaim that SpaceX has acquired for the successful launch of the first Falcon 9 is not shared within the United States Congress, which is still skeptical of many aspects of the Obama space plan, which includes reliance on companies like SpaceX for Earth to Low Earth Orbit transportation. The reaction illustrates for all the technical triumph that SpaceX has accomplished with the Falcon 9 launch, it still faces political problems. Typical...

Space agency kills off internet rumour by confirming an asteroid strike will not wipe out humanity in the next few weeks, or years, or decades.Good news for those with plans for October and beyond: the Earth will still be in existence. NASA has confirmed – after rumours swept the internet about an imminent asteroid strike expected between 15 and 28 September – that the two-week period in question will be entirely free of Earth-destroying space attacks. The likelihood of any known potentially hazardous asteroid striking the planet within the next 100 years stands at 0.01%, the space agency said in...

NASA has apparently been stripping and reusing parts from old spacecraft, because when you have lofty goals and a limited budget, you gotta do what you gotta do. For instance, it's salvaging the four water tanks installed on the space shuttle Endeavour this week, so the agency can use them to build a new storage system for the International Space Station. Those tanks can store 300 liters in all that can last for 25 to 27 days: they're expected to help free more time for the crew to spend on their experiments. Also, according to NASA spokesperson Daniel Huot, they...

The Astronaut Wives Club, the summer series from ABC that depicted the race to the moon as a kind of “Desperate Housewives of NASA” ended its run Thursday with the episode dealing with the Apollo moon landing and the epic adventure of Apollo 13. What began with soap opera triteness ended in a dash of ugliness. The episode sought to remind the viewer that not everyone regarded the moon landings with awe and wonder. Some reacted to the greatest technological feat in the history of humankind with rage.

20 km Space Tower ====================================================================================================================== Exploring space while seated on Earth, gazing up on screens in museum theaters or at home via VR headsets. is exciting but the top imagination-grabber is the very idea of finding a way to access space. This is the present-day realm of creative thinking over space elevators, in the use of a giant tower to carry us to space. Scientists working on space elevators are thinking about materials and designs that can be used to access space as an alternative to rocket technology. A sign of the times is the upcoming Space Elevator Conference...

Buddy, can you spare 16 seconds? Bjorn Jonsson, a 3D computer graphics expert, used publicly available photos on the New Horizon’s website to create a zippy flyby of Pluto that gets you in and out in just seconds. But hold on! If you use the pause button, you’ll see something amazing — Pluto’s dark backside illuminated by sunlight reflecting off its largest moon Charon. Even at Pluto’s enormous distance from the sun of over 3 billion miles, enough sunlight falls on its 750-mile-wide moon Charon to provide a faint illumination on one hemisphere of the dwarf planet. The ring you see around Pluto...

Because of my unshakable belief in the Bible and its uncanny track record of predictions of future events, I have been accused of being an apocalyptic doomsdayer. It’s not accurate, because I see a glorious future for planet Earth – the restoration of all things including complete justice and real world peace. What I found remarkable today is that secular people, atheists, agnostics and materialists seem to be the real doomsdayers in our world. It was just about a year ago that Noam Chomsky, all of the above plus a radical left-wing idealist, wrote that the world was facing imminent...

Donald Trump, the mercurial real estate tycoon and media personality who, much to the surprise of one and all, has become the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president opened his mind just a little about his attitude toward space exploration, according to a Saturday story in Forbes. In an answer to a question put to him about sending humans to Mars, the current focus at NASA, Trump said, ““Honestly, I think it’s wonderful; I want to rebuild our infrastructure first, ok? I think it’s wonderful.” In other words, dreams of going to Mars must take a back seat to...

The spacecraft will haul approximately 3,600 kilograms (4 tons) of material in a pressurized cargo module to the International Space Station in December 2015. This is the fourth Commercial Resupply Services cargo run by Orbital Sciences (OA-4). The Cygnus spacecraft is developed and produced by Orbital Sciences. Historically, it has always launched on an Orbital Antares rocket, but that rocket is still grounded for safety upgrades following the unscheduled rapid disassembly last fall. Instead, the Cygnus will be launched by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. It will also be launching from a new pad — Cape Canaveral instead...

(Aug. 13) successful test firing of an RS-25 main stage engine for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) monster rocket currently under development, the program passed a key milestone advancing the agency on the path to propel astronauts back to deep space at the turn of the decade. The 535 second long test firing of the RS-25 development engine was conducted on the A-1 test stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi – and ran for the planned full duration of nearly 9 minutes, matching the time they will fire during an actual SLS launch. All indications...