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A nondescript sign along an anonymous road east of Dallas announces the location of bustling and urbane Caddo Mills Municipal Airport (former home of Southwest Soaring, phone number now obscured by time or paint). A passing traveler might overlook the large white hangar with the doors wide enough to admit the reaching wings of delicate glider planes.

1. NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis sits on Launch Pad 39A, 15 November 2009 2. NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis and the blackness of space, 18 November 2009 3. NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis flying above a blue and white Earth, 18 November 2009Photos and Captions Excerpted From http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-200911.htm(where links to the huge versions of the photos reside) 

This autumn, China and the U.S. began moving toward greater cooperation in space. As China lifted a little more of the veil covering its space program, U.S. officials expressed a greater desire to work together in exploring space. Presidential science adviser John Holdren floated the idea of increased cooperation in human spaceflight last spring. The Augustine committee raised the idea again, and Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao pledged to deepen space cooperation last week

BOULDER, Colo. – Call it Operation: Plymouth Rock. A plan to send a crew of astronauts to an asteroid is gaining momentum, both within NASA and industry circles. Not only would the deep space sojourn shake out hardware, it would also build confidence in long-duration stints at the moon and Mars. At the same time, the trek would sharpen skills to deal with a future space rock found on a collision course with Earth. In Lockheed Martin briefing charts, the mission has been dubbed "Plymouth Rock – An Early Human Asteroid Mission Using Orion." Lockheed is the builder of NASA's...

Scientists from Northern Illinois University and Nasa's Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston found dozens of valleys, shown in red, after using new software to analyse images of the surface and create the most accurate map to date. The valleys, first spotted in 1971, were caused by a network of rivers more than twice as extensive as previously mapped, pictured right. The new map shows water channels in a belt between the equator and mid-southern latitudes. Experts say this is consistent with heavy rain, and the presence of an ocean covering most of Mars's northern half. "It would also explain...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne today helped boost into orbit an Intelsat communications satellite that will provide data, voice and video services for the Americas, Europe and Africa. The satellite includes Intelsat’s first Internet Router In Space. The mission, AV-024, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket powered by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne’s RL10 upper-stage engine and the RD AMROSS RD-180 booster engine. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is a unit of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX). RD AMROSS LLC is a joint venture of...

There’s a tremendous opportunity in space right now, a rare alignment of technology and interests that only comes once every couple of generations. What’s missing is something to push it over the edge and get it flying, to pique people’s and industry’s interests in such a way that it takes off and is sustainable. In the wake of the Augustine report, many articles have been written discussing where to go and what launchers to use, but the most important aspect—the political one—has gotten scant attention. The Obama Administration is facing a spectrum of problems, most with more political prominence than...

In 2004, the European Space Agency released a design study called “Human Missions to Mars: Overall Architecture Assessment”. This study was undertaken after a decade of work, notably by David Baker, Jim French, and Robert Zubrin, which established that local propellant production using the Martian atmosphere would be a key technology for practical human access to the Red Planet.

Washington, D.C. – The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to announce the creation and initial membership of the Spaceports Council, composed of spaceports worldwide who seek to cooperate on issues of common interest such as airspace access, legal and regulatory frameworks, infrastructure, international policy migration, liability, and voluntary common operating standards.

United States President Barack Obama is preparing to make his first official trip to Asia this week, and a growing list of important economic and defense-related issues are on his agenda. From the time he touches down in Tokyo on Thursday until the time he flies home from Seoul - stops in Singapore, Shanghai and Beijing are also planned - Obama is going to be watched closely back home. Obama's visit to China is going through some last-minute changes due to recent remarks about China's plans for space by General Xu Qiliang, commander of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Air...

A radiation-resistant version of NRAM carbon-nanotube-based memory, developed jointly by Lockheed Martin and Nantero, was tested on a recent Space Shuttle mission. The NRAM was incorporated by NASA into special autonomous testing configurations installed into a carrier at the aft end of the payload bay. It was launched into space as part of STS-125, the May 2009 mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis that successfully serviced the Hubble Space Telescope. The project was managed by Dan Powell, Chief Nanotechnologist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).

President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia will prioritize the development of nuclear energy, especially the use of nuclear technology in spacecraft. Medvedev made the announcement Thursday during his annual address to the Federal Assembly. This was not the first time that Russia has suggested the development of nuclear-powered spacecraft. Anatoly Perminov, the head of Federal Space Agency Roscosmos, said last month that the agency has planned to develop spacecraft with a megawatt-class nuclear power set.

Dark energy isn't good for life in the universe. This mysterious substance, which cosmologists believe makes up around 70 percent of the universe, may eventually pull apart galaxies, then stars and planets, and finally atoms and molecules, in what some call the Big Rip. It’s ironic, then, that the search for dark energy might help in the search for life in the universe. That's because planet hunting through a technique called microlensing requires a similar sort of instrument as a dark energy mission.

Want to make a planet that can sustain carbon-based life? Don’t park it in orbit around a sunlike star. “For the long term, the sun may not be the best star,” says Edward Guinan of Villanova University in Pennsylvania, coauthor of a paper reporting a new model about the suitability of planets for life. Smaller, cooler stars called orange dwarf stars might be the most hospitable, he says.

WASHINGTON — America's once clear dominance in space is eroding as other nations, including China, Iran and North Korea, step up their activities, a panel of experts told the House subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics Thursday. "Others are catching up fast," said Marty Hauser, vice president for Washington operations at the Space Foundation, an advocacy organization headquarters in Colorado Springs. "Of particular note over the past decade is the emergence of China's human spaceflight capabilities."

LIBERIA, Costa Rica — Franklin Chang Diaz has great aspirations for his rocket: a mail-carrier for outer space, a garbage truck for orbital debris and, the ultimate goal, a shuttle to Mars. The Costa Rica-born physicist speaks nonchalantly about the day humankind will have moved entirely to outer space, while our precious Earth becomes “a protected park.” “Our great grandchildren will always be able to come back [to Earth] from wherever they happen to live and see where their ancestors and culture came from,” said the former NASA astronaut who is now president and CEO of the Ad Astra Rocket...

New Scientist magazine is generally regarded by the secular community as one of the top-ranked science magazines in the world. However, a published opinion by a regular columnist demonstrated how “unscientific” and anti-God some of their articles have become—something we have documented before (see Refutation of New Scientist’s Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions). Amanda Gefter wrote an article discussing multiverse theory, or the idea that our universe may be only one of many that currently exist. Such speculations attempt to explain away the appearance of design in the universe, because of, as we shall see, the spiritual implications. In an...

A new image of the bulge at the center of a distant spiral galaxy, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is giving astronomers insight into how these galactic paunches form. The image of NGC 4710 is part of a survey that astronomers have conducted to learn more about the formation of bulges, which are a substantial component of most spiral galaxies. When targeting spiral galaxy bulges, astronomers often seek edge-on galaxies, as their bulges are more easily distinguishable from the disc. The detailed edge-on view of NGC 4710, taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, shows the galaxy's bulge in...

- Names Ares "Invention of the Year" Based on Launch of Dummy Vehicle Citing Time magazine's selection of NASA's proposed Ares rockets "The Best Invention of the Year" based on a single purported "test flight" of the vehicle on October 28th, the Space Frontier Foundation congratulated NASA on its propaganda triumph. The Foundation pointed out that the rocket launched by NASA was not an Ares 1 at all, but a dummy vehicle cobbled together from pieces of other space systems, an elaborate mock-up shaped and painted to look like the actual vehicle, which isn't even scheduled to fly for another...

A new aviation business park and long, isolated runways in eastern North Carolina could be keys to attracting commercial space-travel companies here, according to experts who attended a forum Thursday at Elizabeth City State University. Leaders in the industry spoke during the daylong NewSpace Commerce Forum, including Jeff Greason, CEO of XCor Aerospace in California; Robert Richards, CEO of Odyssey Moon Lt d.; and Jeff Krukin, a consultant in the field who helped organize the forum.

Given the discovery of water on the Moon , suddenly the economics of lunar travel have changed dramatically for the better. The existence of water makes human operations on the moon far more feasible in the near future given that local water can now be used to produce oxygen, drinking water, and rocket fuel.

The latest object to shoot high-def video from the edge of space is…an arm chair. To promote its REGZA SV LCD TVs (LED backlight, local dimming), Toshiba trekked into the Black Rock Desert with a helium balloon. Watch the result: Click here to go to page with video. This is the first part of the ad. The second half for their Satellite T Series ULV laptops will come out next year. [Toshiba UK via Engadget] Facts about the shoot: • The shots were taken at a staggering 98,268 feet above the earth using Toshiba's own cameras • To reach the...

Now that human-induced climate change is on us, all our ideas and behaviors have to be re-examined, including our daily habits, our infrastructure and our economic system. This is such a huge project that it will become the major part of our efforts as a global civilization for the next century at least. So what about space, which used to be the very emblem of our future? What is it we think we’re doing up there? And does it still make sense in the age of climate crisis?

TIRUPATI: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan has said exploration of Mars will take a tangible shape by 2030. He called it the “next logical frontier in space” after Chandrayaan-II, which will be put in place by 2013 with robots and rovers to study the surface of the moon. Speaking after receiving the prestigious ‘Dr. Y. Nayudamma Memorial Gold Medal’ at the second Andhra Pradesh Science Congress, jointly conducted by the Andhra Pradesh Akademi of Sciences and Sri Venkateswara University here on Saturday, Dr. Radhakrishnan spoke of ISRO’s latest initiative on interplanetary exploration and the study on ensuring...

NASA, at age 50, is having a midlife crisis. What should it do after it retires the shuttle? Can it, should it, recreate the glories of its youth? Or should it mature into a wise enabler of technological and institutional leadership? The 2003 Space Shuttle disaster, underfunding of President George W. Bush’s call to go to the “Moon, Mars and Beyond” and the advent of a new presidential administration have caused NASA to re-evaluate its mission at a truly fundamental level. The President’s Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, led by retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, was...

NASA claims definitive detection of Moon water in the Solar System's 'attic'.On the way to a wet landing.N. GRUMMAN, W. FURLONG/NASA The debate is finally over. Lunar scientists have detected water for certain near the north pole of the Moon, after the impact of a NASA projectile kicked up water vapour along with a plume of dust. But it's not just about the water, say the scientists, who found hints in the plume of other, more exotic molecules, ranging from organic hydrocarbons to mercury. Increasingly, the scientists are viewing the polar craters as the 'attics' of the Solar System, repositories...

LOS ANGELES – For NASA's stuck Mars rover, the Spirit may be willing, but the wheels could prove too weak. The space agency on Thursday outlined a rescue plan to try to free the rover Spirit, which has been bogged in a sand trap on the red planet for half a year. The risky operation is expected to last several months. "If it cannot make the great escape from this sand trap, it's likely that this lonely spot straddling the edge of this crater might be where Spirit ends its adventures on Mars," said Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars...

Dear NASA, I love you, but come on... Monkey radiation tests? What is this? The 50s? Are you going to resuscitate J. Edgar Hoover next? Didn't you guys see Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt saving the monkeys in Project X? That's what NASA is planing to do: Use squirrel monkeys to test the possible effect of radiation in humans for long-term space missions. This is the first time the agency is going to test with monkeys since the days of the Mercury Project.

Evolutionary philosophy is a bottom-up storytelling project: particles, planets, people. Naturalists (those who say nature is all there is) believe they can invent explanations that are free of miracles, but in practice, miracles pop up everywhere in their stories. This was satirized by Sidney Harris years ago in a cartoon that showed a grad student filling a blackboard with equations. His adviser called attention to one step that needed some elaboration: It said, "Then a miracle happens." Examples of miracles in evolutionary philosophy include the sudden appearance of the universe without cause or explanation, the origin of life, the origin...

"There could be as much ice on the moon as in all of Lake Erie," When NASA's Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission crashed into Cabeus Crater on the moon's south pole, October 9th, the team did find water in the form of, "Ice as we know it," according to multiple sources within the agency. "It will change the way we think about the moon. It is something we want to share with the world."

A group of engineers working on a novel manufacturing technique at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., have come up with a new twist on the popular old saying about dreaming and doing: "If you can slice it, we can build it." That's because layers mean everything to the environmentally-friendly construction process called Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication, or EBF3, and its operation sounds like something straight out of science fiction. "You start with a drawing of the part you want to build, you push a button, and out comes the part," said Karen Taminger, the technology lead for the...

Carrying the most powerful telescopic camera ever flown to another planet, the satellite was launched in August 2005. Older observer satellites flown on previous missions to space were able to identify space objects no smaller than a London bus. But the state-of-the-art camera on-board Orbiter can spot something the size of a dinner table

IF LIFE is to be found beyond our home planet, then our closest encounters with it may come in the dark abyss of some extraterrestrial sea. For Earth is certainly not the only ocean-girdled world in our solar system. As many as five moons of Jupiter and Saturn are now thought to hide seas beneath their icy crusts.

Masten Space Systems, fresh from a million-dollar win in the NASA-sponsored Lunar Lander X-Prize Challenge, hopes to use its vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket technology to launch a commercial enterprise by the middle of next year. Dave Masten, founder and CEO of the five-year-old Mojave, Calif., company, said Nov. 6 the company will use the $1.15 million it won by taking first place in the Level 2 lander competition and second place in Level 1 to upgrade its Xoie (pronounced "Zoey") vehicle for higher and faster flight (Aerospace DAILY, Nov. 4).

NASA and Spaceward Foundation Award Prize Money for Successful Wireless Power Demonstration WASHINGTON -- NASA has awarded $900,000 in prize money to a Seattle company that successfully demonstrated new wireless energy beaming technology which could one day be used to help power a "space elevator." LaserMotive of Seattle was awarded the money after its performance in the Power Beaming Challenge competition, which was a demonstration of wireless power transmission that enabled a robotic device to climb a vertical cable. The competition was held Nov. 4-6 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. The Spaceward Foundation of Mountain View,...

On the last week of October much of the space industry focused its attention on Cape Canaveral and the launch of NASA’s Ares 1-X, a suborbital prototype of the Ares 1 rocket planned by the space agency to launch the Orion crew capsule later next decade. That attention was understandable given the state of the program’s development and its uncertain political future: a lot was riding on that two-minute launch.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) hopes next year to begin full-scale development of its three-stage Advanced Solid Rocket (ASR), with a first launch to follow in 2012 or 2013. To be built by IHI Aerospace, the ASR is Japan's proposed future launcher for medium scientific payloads. JAXA also is studying a further development that would cut costs partly by using a fuel that could be melted and formed into a solid engine at less than the boiling temperature of water. That follow-on rocket could be available for commercial use, according to ASR project leader Yasuhiro Morita.

NASA has blended three views of our home galaxy's turbulent core to produce a picture filled with scientifically significant snap, crackle and pop. And the deeper you go into the image, the more you learn. The composite picture of the Milky Way's center draws upon near-infrared data from the Hubble Space Telescope (shown in yellow), infrared readings from the Spitzer Space Telescope (shown in rich red) and the X-ray vision of the Chandra X-ray Observatory (shown in shades of blue

A young star observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope appears to be home to a wild – and young – planetary system that shares some of the frenetic dynamics thought to have shaped the early years of our own solar system. The Spitzer observations suggest young planets circling the star are disturbing smaller comet-like bodies, causing them to collide and kick up a huge halo of dust.

The quest to fly the first solar sail spacecraft is back on, with scientists once again hoping they can harness the energy of light to power a ship through space despite earlier failures. The Planetary Society recently announced plans to build a solar sail craft by the end of 2010, thanks to a $1 million anonymous donation made to the Pasadena, Calif.-based organization to reignite the project. "This was an enabling donation, there's no doubt," said Bruce Betts, Planetary Society director of projects. "We've been continuing to think and do studies, but we didn't have the funding in place to...

MOSCOW (AFP) – A Soyuz rocket carrying a new Russian-made module for the International Space Station blasted off on Tuesday from the Baikonur space base in Kazakhstan, television pictures showed. The Poisk (Search) module, also known as the Mini-Research Module 2, will provide additional facilities for scientific experiments aboard the orbiting space station, Russia's space agency said in a statement.

About a year from now, if all goes well, a box about the size of a loaf of bread will pop out of a rocket some 500 miles above the Earth. There in the vacuum it will unfurl four triangular sails as shiny as moonlight and only barely more substantial. Then it will slowly rise on a sunbeam and move across the stars. ... In principle, a solar sail can do anything a regular sail can do, like tacking.

As a child, I marveled at America's first flea-hops into space. I was 10 when Alan Shepard orbited the Earth in 1961, and I had just graduated high school when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in the summer of 1969. I grew up juggling those technological triumphs with political assassinations, watching the first “reality television” through a black-and-white porthole in our living room. President Kennedy pushed us into space before his rendezvous with Lee Harvey Oswald in '63, and both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King died in the spring of '68, when the moon loomed largest in our...

Several high-priority and high-priced satellites crucial to U.S. national security are slated to launch over the next 15 to 18 months, according to Bruce Carlson, director of the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). During a keynote address here at the Strategic Space Symposium, Carlson did not provide details of the upcoming missions. Most of the NRO’s satellite programs are classified. Carlson noted the launches to make the point that the NRO continues to perform its mission despite having had its struggles in recent years. But Carlson also said the NRO has suffered a steep decline in its research and development...

Scene 1: The White House Rose Garden. The President of the United States is standing before a crowd of amateur astronomers, students and teachers, with his science adviser by his side. In front of him: a telescope. The president bends down and presses his eye to the eyepiece. Flashbulbs pop. Scene 2: Kennedy Space Center. The Ares 1-X rocket sits on the launch pad, ready for its first test flight. More than 300-feet tall but fewer than 20 feet in diameter, it looks as precarious as a flying chopstick, but tomorrow's astronauts might ride a rocket like this one to...

The Obama adminstration must react responsibly to China’s declaration that military operations in space are inevitable, a top China expert says. “How will the US react to Chinese diplomatic efforts in light of the PLA’s blunt statements on space warfare? This is something the Obama administration has to take into account,” said Dean Cheng, China specialist at Washington’s Heritage Foundation. “Are we going to see outrage, any meaningful reactions to the Chinese statements or again that it was someone speaking out of school and we just aren’t sure.” Cheng was referring to what appears to mark a major shift...

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...

A California-based team of engineers has snagged a $1 million NASA prize by winning a pitched competition to fly homemade rockets on mock moon landing missions. Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif., successfully flew its rocket Xoie (pronounced Zoey) twice within a set time limit to qualify for the top Level 2 prize in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, a NASA-sponsored contest to build mock lunar landers.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military needs to deepen dialogue with China to better understand the intent of its space programs, a U.S. general said on Tuesday, after a Chinese commander announced plans to develop offensive military capabilities in space. General Kevin Chilton, head of the Pentagon's Strategic Command which coordinates U.S. military operations in space, said China-watchers had been "absolutely amazed" by the country's advances in its space programs over the past decade.

PANNITHITTU, India -- In this seaside village, the children of farmers and fishermen aspire to become something that their impoverished parents never thought possible: astronauts.