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FYI, The NASA press release below refers to 'holiday' or 'seasons' greetings six times. No mention of Christmas, of course. [comment deleted]! In a bizarre historical turnabout, religious activity on the space station has now become almost entirely dominated by the Russians. They fly icons blessed by priests (http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=6673) Photos: http://hochu.vkosmos.ru/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/ikona.jpeg and http://www.svet-valaama.ru/photoalbom/2006_05_icon_from_space/2006_05_icon_from_space_01.jpg Also http://www.interfax-religion.ru/img/2308.jpg I haven't seen anything remotely similar from the American side. What have I missed? For the next manned launch this Sunday, also expect Russian Orthodox priests from the newly-built church in Baykonur (news story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10729300) to bless the rocket and the crew. File photo: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mp59h1-TVgE/SsKiot99hvI/AAAAAAAAAnA/1QV6t9vIfrs/s400/Best+Soyuz+Bless.jpg...

President Barack Obama will ask Congress next year to fund a new heavy-lift launcher to take humans to the Moon, asteroids, and the moons of Mars, ScienceInsider has learned. The president chose the new direction for the U.S. human space flight program Wednesday at a White House meeting with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, according to officials familiar with the discussion. NASA would receive an additional $1 billion in 2011 both to get the new launcher on track and to bolster the agency’s fleet of robotic Earth-monitoring spacecraft. The current NASA plan for human exploration is built around the $3.5 billion...

WASHINGTON — Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was personally skeptical of manned space missions and warned that NASA's future funding could depend on whether it was likely to create jobs. Pelosi vowed "harsh scrutiny" of all spending requests and said she would be asking "what is the mission? How will the money effectively be spent, in what period of time, to create jobs, compared to what?"

Think of a space agency and what comes to mind is probably the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Moon landing achievements. The UK government's decision to have its own NASA may thus look like a step towards a bold national future in the cosmos, but reality is likely to be much closer to the ground. The UK government's 10 Decemberannouncement that it would form an executive agency for space comes after years of reviews about what more the country could do for spaceflight, and the government has an enthusiastic space champion in its minister of state for science...

SAN FRANCISCO — When the sun is relatively inactive — as it has been in recent years — the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere cools dramatically, new observations find.

A rocky and water-rich planet, not much heftier than our own, has been discovered so close to our solar system that astronomers one day may be able to study its atmosphere.

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama reaffirmed his commitment to human spaceflight during a Dec. 16 meeting with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, but details of what path the president wants the space agency to take are not expected until the White House submits its 2011 budget request to Congress in February, according to government officials. Aerospace industry sources with close ties to the Obama administration said in advance of the Oval Office meeting that Bolden had prepared four options for the president to consider, all of which were said to include some variation of the so-called “Flexible Path” scenario a...

PARIS — European Space Agency (ESA) governments on Dec. 17 gave final approval to a two-part Mars exploration program to be conducted with NASA, confirming their commitment to spend 850 million euros ($1.23 billion) on missions in 2016 and 2018, ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain said.

Richard Branson's new commercial spacecraft, Enterprise, will transport the musicians to just outside the Earth's atmosphere where they can enjoy about 5 minutes of weightlessness and time to play one hit song.

WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama Dec. 16 to discuss options for the future of manned spaceflight activities and investments, according to the president’s daily schedule released by the White House. The meeting is slated to occur at 3:05 p.m. today in the Oval Office. Bolden and senior administration officials have spent the past several months mulling the findings of a blue-ribbon panel that found the agency’s Constellation program, a five-year-old effort to replace the space shuttle with rockets and spacecraft optimized for the Moon, is incompatible with NASA’s budget. The panel, lead...

Astronomers announced today the discovery of at least four — and as many as six — planets orbiting two nearby stars. These planets are relatively low mass, ranging from 5 to 25 times the mass of the Earth. For comparison, Jupiter is over 300 times more massive than the Earth, and Uranus 15 times our mass. Three of these extrasolar planets orbit the nearby star 61 Virginis, which is only about 28 light years away (that’s a stone’s throw in galactic terms). 61 Vir has been a target for planet hunters for some time because it’s very much like our...

WASHINGTON — The commercial spaceflight company Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) said this month that it expects to launch its cargo-carrying Dragon spacecraft on a maiden flight to the International Space Station (ISS) sometime between May and November 2010.

The report of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (the Augustine Committee) formed by the Office of Science and Technology Policy is truly exciting and inspiring. But that is hard to tell from its title, its text, or listening to the folks presenting it. It is dry, technical, and full of caveats. Nor would you know it from the media coverage — which is mostly about the negatives of NASA not having enough money.

An international team of planet hunters has discovered as many as six low-mass planets around two nearby Sun-like stars, including two "super-Earths" with masses 5 and 7.5 times the mass of Earth. The researchers, led by Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said the two "super-Earths" are the first ones found around Sun-like stars.

If there’s one thing that the Virgin Group, the umbrella of companies that includes Virgin Galactic, is known for, it’s putting on a spectacle. The company has, over the years, refined the art of doing events designed to maximize public interest and media attention. It’s something that had its roots in the company’s need to compete against rival companies with bigger advertising budgets, but has since become a hallmark of Virgin itself.

Friday is a travel day for me, so be aware that comment moderation will be slow and sporadic. I just have time to get in word about the upcoming launch of the WISE mission, slated for December 7. NASA is planning a media briefing next Tuesday (November 17) to discuss the mission, which is designed to scan the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, spotting perhaps hundreds of thousands of asteroids and studying a wide range of stars and galaxies.The technology is fascinating in and of itself. WISE will image the entire sky in the infrared, using detectors kept below 15...

For those in a clear and dark part of the world, the Geminids will continue this evening. Rates of 100 meteors per hour, with possible peaks of 140-150 per hour. Geminids are characterized by being slow moving and white, with the possibility of some fairly large fireballs! Happy gazing!

The giant gold and silver satellite glittered against the black sky as space shuttle Atlantis closed in on it from below. Commander Hoot Gibson and pilot Guy Gardner flew the approach, while mission specialist Mike Mullane, at the other end of the flight deck, readied the shuttle’s robot arm for a capture. Downstairs in the airlock, mission specialists Jerry Ross and Bill Shepherd waited in their spacesuits for Gibson’s order to go outside and attempt a rescue. The mission of STS-27 had been to deploy the first in a series of new spy satellites that used radar to observe ground...

WASHINGTON — Congress and the White House have signaled that they envision sharply different futures for NASA and its manned space mission. At an aerospace luncheon, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said President Barack Obama wants the agency to embrace “more international cooperation” after the space-shuttle era ends in 2010 and hinted that its Constellation moon-rocket program could see major changes. But hours earlier, congressional appropriators reached a different conclusion, approving legislative language declaring that any change to Constellation, which aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 but is running well behind schedule, must first get the approval of...

Russia has reneged on an agreement to deliver a total of 10 kilograms of plutonium-238 to the United States in 2010 and 2011 and is insisting on a new deal for the costly material vital to NASA’s deep space exploration plans. The move follows the U.S. Congress’ denial of President Barack Obama’s request for $30 million in 2010 to permit the Department of Energy to begin the painstaking process of restarting domestic production of plutonium-238. Bringing U.S. nuclear laboratories back on line to produce the isotope is expected to cost at least $150 million and take six years to seven...

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for...

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for...

Chennai, Dec 6 (IANS) The Indian space agency is expected to take a major step in January towards realising its next generation rocket by ground-firing the world’s third largest - in terms of fuel mass and length - solid rocket booster developed in-house.

Mumbai: A feasibility report done by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has established that India has the capability to go on a mission to Mars, said former ISRO chariman, G Madhavan Nair. He was speaking during the last day of the international symposium on "science and technology at the frontiers" at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) on Saturday.

California is making waves today by announcing a first-of-its-kind space-based solar project that will transmit energy down to earth from space. According to estimates from developers, the project will generate enough electricity to power 250,000 homes per year. SolarFeeds.com: California’s biggest energy utility PG&E has announced that they would purchase 200MW off solar power that will be beamed from space by 2016.

NASA is gearing up to release $50 million in economic stimulus money to fund technology development for commercial crew transport to the International Space Station and any other low-Earth-orbit (LEO) destinations that may show up.

Most of the light from stars and other objects like planets in the universe is doubly invisible. It comes in the form of infrared, or heat radiation, with wavelengths too long for our eyes to pick up. Moreover, most infrared wavelengths do not penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere to get to our unseeing eyes.

IT WILL boldly go where few commercial flights have gone before.

Merry Christmas my fellow Space Freepers...

SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and its mothership, VMS Eve (WhiteKnightTwo) herald a new era in commercial space flight with daily space tourism flights set to commence from Spaceport America in New Mexico after test program and all required US government licens Virgin Founder, Sir Richard Branson and SpaceshipOne (SS1) designer, Burt Rutan, today reveal SS2 to the public for the first time since construction of the world’s first manned commercial spaceship began in 2007. SS2 has been designed to take many thousands of private astronauts into space after test programming and all required U.S. government licensing has been completed. The unveiling represents...

Beijing: In an apparent shift of its stand, a top Chinese military commander has called for militarisation of space, saying it was a "historical inevitability". "China will develop an air force with integrated capabilities for both offensive and defensive operations in space as well as in the air", People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force commander Xu Qiliang said. China has so far been opposing militarisation of outer space, and recently, along with Russia had offered to sign a pact with the US on non-weaponisation of outer space. Xu claimed, "Superiority in space would mean superiority over the land and oceans....

After 30 days of data reduction, Ares I-X engineers continue to find fairly close correlation between their computer models and the flight performance of the test vehicle, which was the tallest rocket ever launched. Flight-control algorithms developed for the operational vehicle "worked extremely well," said NASA's Marshall Smith, systems engineering and integration (SE&I) manager for Ares I-X, and the flight data in general validated the computer models being used to design Ares I. "I, personally, from SE&I, am very, very pleased with the performance of our (guidance, navigation and control) system; the algorithms that we're testing for Ares I worked...

Is all this space travel worthwhile? Will it really contribute to our civilization or our touchingly naive way of life? Will it even lift our spirits? I cannot be sure about the first two, as I feel these might be permanently floating somewhere out there. But I have some space-sourced spirit lifting to share. Japan's Sapporo Breweries, the entity that brings you those large silver tins of beer to complement your rainbow roll, announced this week that it is launching space beer.

Shortly after the first of the year (if not already), the Large Hadron Collider — the most powerful particle accelerator ever built — will smash protons together at record energies. If the Earth remains intact, doomsayers will once again have been falsified. Every time they forecast the demise of the planet, those prophets of Earthly annihilation prove themselves no more foresightful than mortgage bankers or phony psychics.

It seems there really is water on the moon, a major discovery that, like every answer to a great question, trails thousands of unanswered questions in its wake. Let us review the facts, or, at least, the facts as I understand them from my in-depth academic perusal of the headline crawl across the bottom of the screen on CNN. The lunar craft Chandrayaan-1, launched by India in October 2008, revealed a small amount of water on the moon, concentrated at the lunar poles. The craft wasn't manned , so presumably some kind of instrument relayed the news.

You won’t want to miss an interview with Debra Fischer now available on the MarketSaw site. The latter is a blog focused on 3D motion pictures, and thus the interest in Fischer’s work on Alpha Centauri draws from a cinematic base. Specifically, James Cameron’s new movie Avatar depicts a gas giant with a habitable moon around it, and the MarketSaw editors are interested in whether such a planet could exist around one of the Centauri stars. The interview that follows, discussing Fischer’s ongoing hunt for Centauri planets, is prime reading. I’ll quote from it, but you’ll want to read the...

We don’t exactly know what to call GJ 758 B, which may be a brown dwarf or simply a large planet of between ten and forty Jupiter masses. But the detection is being hailed as the first direct observation of a ‘planet-like object’ orbiting a star similar to our own Sun. We have the new High Contrast Coronagraphic Imager with Adaptive Optics (HiCIAO), recently attached to the Subaru Telescope and working in the near infrared, to thank for the detection.

Science: For two years, our space agency has refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has repeatedly corrected its climate figures. A leading researcher threatens to sue to find more inconvenient truths. What's become known as "Climate-Gate" may be about to explode on this side of the pond as well. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has threatened a lawsuit against NASA if by year-end the agency doesn't honor his FOI requests for information on how and why its climate numbers have been consistently adjusted for errors. "I assume that what is there is highly...

Lawmakers on Wednesday said NASA must continue to improve astronaut crew safety on its new shuttle-replacing rocket, as well as on promising commercial vehicles that could ferry crews to orbit. In a House subcommittee hearing, NASA officials told congressional representatives that its new Ares rockets should be 10 times safer than the space shuttles they are intended to replace. Committee members also stressed that NASA must set guidelines for commercial boosters before astronauts can ride them into space.

WASHINGTON — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) said Dec. 3 that it expects to launch its cargo-carrying Dragon capsule on its first flight to the international space station (ISS) sometime between May and November 2010. In a press release, the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company said it had conducted Dragon operations training in October for a group of NASA astronauts to bring them up to speed on how the ISS crew will interface with the capsule while it is approaching and berthed to the station.

HAWTHORNE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) recently conducted its first Dragon spacecraft operations training for a group of NASA astronauts and personnel at its corporate headquarters in Hawthorne, CA. The October training focused on how the crew will interface with the Dragon spacecraft while it is approaching and berthed to the International Space Station (ISS). Three of the participating astronauts — Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Shannon Walker and Douglas Wheelock — will be on board the ISS when Dragon makes its first visit under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

Japan has successfully launched another optical (picture taking) spy satellite. This one joins two other optical birds and one radar satellite. This most recent satellite launch cost $109 million. The satellite cost quite a bit more. In early 2007, Japan lost the use of one of its two radar satellites. The "No. 1 radar satellite", which went into orbit in March 2003, was supposed to last for five years. But the bird has been having electrical problems, and had to be written off. Nearly three years ago, Japan launched its fourth spy satellite into orbit, using a Japanese made rocket....

The U.S. Air Force is asking industry to explore options for quick delivery of a space-based missile warning system, a move which is likely connected to reports that the service's newest ballistic missile warning satellite is failing in orbit. A broad sources sought notice was issued Nov. 24, and a more specific and classified request for information is expected Dec. 1. This flurry of activity is likely a response to concerns of a space-based missile warning gap, according to industry officials. The 23rd Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite, launched into orbit last November, has drifted from its original position in...

It took humans thousands of years to explore our own planet and centuries to comprehend our neighboring planets, but nowadays new worlds are being discovered every week. To date, astronomers have identified more than 370 “exoplanets,” worlds orbiting stars other than the sun. Many are so strange as to confirm the biologist J. B. S. Haldane’s famous remark that “the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” There’s an Icarus-like “hot Saturn” 260 light-years from Earth, whirling around its parent star so rapidly that a year there lasts less than three days. Circling...

Every field has its holy relics, the objects that are held in such high regard by those who practice in that field, or admire the field, that they are imbued with almost holy significance. Space is like that. There are the Moon rocks; the Apollo, Mercury, and Gemini capsules; and, for the most devout, the historical sites where important things happened, like the launch pads where vehicles first left Earth. In the United States, many of these relics are displayed in the closest equivalent Americans have to a church of spaceflight, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in...

NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center employee Justin Junell of Slidell received the prestigious Silver Snoopy award Oct. 22 during a special ceremony held in conjunction with the Stennis Health and Safety Day. Junell is a theoretical simulation technologist for NASA’s Engineering and Test Directorate at Stennis. He was honored for outstanding and distinguished contributions on the shuttle gaseous hydrogen flow control valve test project, especially his role in quantifying the risk and substantiating the safety rationale for continued shuttle program use of the existing configurations of the shuttle’s external liquid hydrogen-2 tank flight pressurization system flow control valve.

A new NASA study of a Martian meteorite that made headlines 13 years ago strengthens the original claim that the rock contains evidence of life on ancient Mars. Researchers at the Johnson Space Center used advanced electron microscopes that weren't available in 1996 to re-examine the magnetite crystals on the meteorite. The meteorite, called ALH84001, was blasted from the surface of Mars 16 million years ago, scientists say, and is thought to have landed on Earth 13,000 years ago. An American scientist found it in Antarctica in 1984.

There’s a lot of frustration in the air. For decades, NASA has been fumbling round going nowhere at the taxpayers’ expense. Private enterprise is taking its sweet time to fill the vacuum while dealing with technical problems, financial issues and on and on. Will we ever be able to buy a ticket to ride? But let’s think about it for a moment. Isn’t this how it’s always been with great innovations? Giving birth to them is a painful process; it’s a game of chutes and ladders, not a linear path to certain success. History isn’t destiny, but it can be...

Reported by Interfax of Russia in Moscow On November 25, an unusual sacred procession took place when the Virgin Mary Icon known as the "Sign" (see below) flew around the Earth 176 times. On September 30 the spaceship Soyuz TMA 16 which had a mission to bring the icon to the International Space Station was driven from the Baikonur cosmodrome, the representative of the Galaxy studying centre initiated the project told Interfax-Religion on Wednesday. The sacred procession was finished on October 11. The icon, after circling the earth for over a week,  was delivered back on the "Soyz TMA 14 spaceship. The icon of the Virgin Mary "The...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair should sign by Dec. 1 a document laying out new responsibilities for the National Reconnaissance Office, builder and operator of America’s spy satellites. This will set in motion the first substantial changes to the NRO charter since 1965, four years after then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara created the NRO and drafted its charter. The NRO is led by former Air Force Gen. Bruce Carlson, The new document, called a statement of principles, lays out eight core ideas meant to guide the NRO, according to a source familiar with the document....