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NASA is partnering with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a technology roadmap for the commercial reusable launch vehicle, or RLV, industry. These smaller type rockets can be used to launch small science and cargo payloads into the lower regions of Earth's atmosphere, experts say, but unlike today's disposable sounding rockets this type would be recovered - similar to the space shuttle. "NASA is committed to stimulating the emerging commercial reusable launch vehicle industry," said Lori Garver, deputy administrator at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "There is a natural evolutionary path from today's emerging commercial suborbital (launch) industry to...

SYDNEY: The globe-spanning ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa contains about twice the liquid water of all Earth’s oceans combined, says a new study, which finds it’s packed with oxygen which could support life.

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...

We’re in the season where private polls for candidates and parties are testing the pretext for candidacies. Will you be more or less likely to vote for a candidate with decades of experience in government? Would you find a political newcomer attractive? How appealing is a candidate with a military background? A woman? There are dozens of vocational, regional and demographic identities that fit most candidates, and we need to know which ones are most appealing to voters when we do a candidate rollout. ~~~SNIP~~~ There are two ripe opportunities these days for Republicans to go bipartisan without breaking the...

Are we the lone sentient life in the universe? So far, we have no evidence to the contrary, and yet the odds that not one single other planet has evolved intelligent life would appear, from a statistical standpoint, to be quite small. There are an estimated 250 billion (2.5 x 10¹¹ ) stars in the Milky Way alone, and over 70 sextillion (7 x 10²² ) in the visible universe, and many of them are surrounded by multiple planets. Meanwhile, our 4.5 billion-year old Solar System exits in a universe that is estimated to be between 13.5 and 14 billion years...

The Golden Record Slide Show Of Images

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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 LCROSS Mission Changes Impact Crater 09.29.09 NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission (LCROSS) based on new analysis of available lunar data, has shifted the target crater from Cabeus A to Cabeus (proper). The decision was based on continued evaluation of all available data and consultation/input from members of the LCROSS Science Team and the scientific community, including impact experts, ground and space based observers, and observations from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Lunar Prospector (LP), Chandrayaan-1 and JAXA's Kaguya spacecraft. This decision was prompted by the current best understanding of hydrogen concentrations in the Cabeus region, including cross-correlation...

Study: Earth is outside of ‘safe operating space’Planet taking environmental hits all at once; ‘it’s truly scary in a lot of ways’ By Emily Sohn updated 6:09 p.m. ET, Thurs., Sept . 24, 2009 We are on the verge of pushing nature into a state of instability like nothing humanity has seen before, according to a study published in the journal Nature. The study, which attempted for the first time to come up with real numbers for a set of conditions beyond which Earth may not be able to recover, found that we may have already crossed several tipping points....

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...

Once we’ve demonstrated a 200-kilowatt prototype engine operating at full power on the ground, the next step is testing an identical version in space. We’re already testing the prototype unit in our vacuum chamber here in Houston, and we’re designing the actual flight engine, which is called the VF-200. We signed an agreement with NASA last December to actually mount the VF-200 on the International Space Station in 2012 or 2013. > We would hope that, if not the US, maybe the Europeans, the Chinese, the Russians, or somebody else will develop a nuclear-electric power capability that we can marry...

Scientists have discovered craters in Mars filled with almost pure water ice with the help of UA technology and say they are hopeful that this discovery will lead to possible missions there for astronauts. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, comprises a team of UA scientists who operate the high-resolution camera that captured the images of ice on Mars’ surface from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. “UA's role was really key,” said Shane Byrne, member of the HiRISE team and assistant professor of planetary sciences at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Laboratory, the lab HiRISE calls home.

NASA has long planned to mine water on the moon to supply human colonies and future space exploration. Now the discovery of small amounts of water across much of the lunar surface has shifted that vision into fast-forward, with the U.S. space agency pursuing several promising technologies. A hydrogen reduction plant and lunar rover prospectors have already passed field tests on Hawaii's volcanic soil, and more radical microwave technology has shown that it may be used to extract underground water ice. Water mined by these methods could not only keep astronauts supplied with a drink, but may also provide oxygen...

Rocket ships and outer space conjure up images of shuttle launches, moon landings, and the wonders of the unknown beyond Earth’s atmosphere. But for about 130 attendees of the Space Investment Summit yesterday at the Hynes Convention Center, these things are just business as usual.

China's first Mars probe mission will be delayed because of Russia's decision to postpone the launch of its mission to the Martian moon Phobos from next month to the year 2011. Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission had been slated to lift off aboard a Zenith rocket in October on a three-year mission to study Phobos and return soil samples to Earth. Yinghuo-1 orbiter was set to be launched with the mission. But Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, said on the agency's official website Tuesday that the mission will be delayed from October to the next launch window in...

A Canadian space tourist and two career astronauts are en route to the International Space Station (ISS). The trio is due to dock at the orbital outpost at 4:37 a.m. EDT (0837 GMT), where paying passenger Guy Laliberte - founder of circus troupe Cirque du Soleil - will spend about 10 days. His two crewmates, NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, are set to join the station crew for a six-month stay.

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...

TOKYO — Japan's new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, nicknamed "The Alien," on Thursday encountered astronaut Koichi Wakata, after his return to Earth in July from the International Space Station. "Are you the alien?" asked the 62-year-old prime minister as he shook hands with Wakata, who visited his office in a blue jumpsuit. "Oh no, I'm an earthman. I understand the prime minister is the alien," Wakata, 46, said with a big smile.

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft is receding from Mercury after a Sept 29th flyby that put smiles on the faces of mission scientists. MESSENGER is beaming back images of thousands of square miles of previously unseen terrain, including this cheerful crater: The arc-shaped depression in the crater's floor is a "pit crater." A few of these have been seen on Mercury, and they are probably volcanic in nature. Pit craters may have formed when subsurface magma drained away and left a roof area unsupported, leading to collapse and the formation of the pit. In this example, the southern area of the pit...

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...

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has... observed infrared light coming from one such disk around a young star, called LRLL 31, over a period of five months. To the astronomers' surprise, the light varied in unexpected ways, and in as little time as one week... One possible explanation is that a close companion to the star -- either a star or a developing planet -- could be shoving planet-forming material together, causing its thickness to vary as it spins around the star... said James Muzerolle of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland[,] "This is a unique, real-time glimpse into the...

By linking the twin, 10-meter telescopes in Hawaii, astronomers at the W. M. Keck Observatory discovered an extended, double-layered dust disk orbiting 51 Ophiuchi, a star that is 410 light-years from Earth. It is the first time the Keck Interferometer Nuller instrument has identified such a compact cloud around a star so far away. The new data suggest that 51 Ophiuchi is a protoplanetary system with a dust cloud that orbits extremely close to its parent star, according to University of Maryland astronomer Christopher Stark, who led the research team... The data suggest that two debris disks orbit 51 Oph....

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...

Despite the accusations of my correspondents, I try to keep an open mind about our search for ET. That's not entirely trivial. Scientists, whose job description is to learn something wonderfully new, are just as human as the next haberdashed hominid. After pursuing an exploratory experiment for years or decades, they inevitably build up both a psychological and monetary investment in their strategy. They can easily become thoroughly marinated in their current approach, and dismiss other ideas with a sneer and a wave.

Yes, the moon is a "wetter" place than the Apollo astronauts ever could have imagined, but don't break out the beach gear just yet. Although three independent groups today announced the detection of water on the lunar surface, their find is at most a part per 1000 water in the outermost millimeter or two of still very dry lunar rock. The discovery has potential, though. Future astronauts might conceivably wring enough water from not-completely-desiccated lunar "soil" to drink or even to fuel their rockets. Equally enticing, the water seems to be on its way to the poles, where it could...

Craters gouged into the ruddy Martian terrain have revealed subsurface water ice closer to the red planet's equator than would be expected, new orbiter images show. The ice also seems to be 99 percent pure, instead of the dirty dust and ice mixture some scientists expected to see, scientists said today.

SpaceX has announced the payload for the first Falcon 9 launch later this year will be a stripped-down version of the company's own Dragon capsule, a vehicle being developed to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. In an update on the company's Web site, SpaceX said the demonstration launch would provide "valuable aerodynamic and performance data" for future Dragon test flights under the umbrella of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and Commercial Resupply Services programs. The payload is called the Dragon spacecraft qualification unit, a vehicle originally built only for ground testing to verify the spacecraft's myriad of systems...

1st Successful Amateur Hi-Def Video from The Edge of Space.Tomoya came to Canada from Japan to have us send his HD camera to the edge of spaceand has another video on his web page. The BEAR 3 & 4 balloon flights were featured on the Discovery Channel, Daily Planet TV show on Sept 18/09which can be viewed online at the Discovery Channel Web SiteHelp support future flights by making a Donation and receive a DVD in appreciation with 2-1/2 hrs. of the best of the 4 hr. 22 min. HD Video. The balloon and camera were launched at 7:44 AM, the...

CAPE CANAVERAL - After being removed from the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Space Wing’s launch schedule for five months, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is back on the board. The most recent 90-day Eastern Range forecast released Tuesday has the new rocket's maiden launch planned for November 29 at 11 a.m. local time.

ASTRONAUT Dr Leroy Chiao and cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Titov were among a number of experienced space experts at the press launch of the Excalibur Almaz space project held at King William's College on Saturday. The two men, who are among the most experienced of all space travellers, talked to the media and to college students about the Excalibur Almaz space capsule that is on show at the college.

MOJAVE, Calif., Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Masten Space Systems successfully demonstrated multiple sustained free flights of its XA-0.1B vertical take-off, vertical landing (VTVL) rocket this past week. The longest flight was 93 seconds and involved a flight between two pads 60 meters apart. This marks the first time a purely rocket powered VTVL has flown from Mojave Air and Space Port. "The flight was absolutely beautiful! The control systems were designed to control the vehicle to high accuracy, and worked. We landed within a few inches of the target. That's pretty amazing considering the vehicle is balanced on top of...

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.

Although it may take millions of year for swirling clusters of interstellar gas and dust to become a mature planet, scientists have discovered that rapid changes can be observed even within a fraction of that time span. Over the course of five months, the researchers observed that the infrared light from a disk of gas and dust around LRLL 31, a young star, tended to vary in unexpected ways. This suggests that another star — or perhaps a planet — is shoving the clump of planet-forming material around, which causes its thickness to vary as it spins around the star.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Sept 23 (Reuters) - A NASA proposal to spur the development of private space taxis to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station once the space shuttle is retired has drawn a bid from U.S. aerospace giant Boeing Corp (BA.N). Boeing is willing to invest "a substantial amount" of its own resources in the project, company officials said on Wednesday, but declined to give more financial details.

For the fifth time, ESA hosted this month the one-week CEMS kick-off seminar for students from leading European management schools to learn about technology transfer and what it takes to turn space technology breakthroughs into viable non-space businesses.

NASA's first version of the rocket slated to replace the space shuttle and send astronauts back to the moon will make its debut test launch Oct. 27, four days early, the space agency announced Tuesday. The rocket, a demonstration booster called Ares I-X, was previously scheduled to blast off Oct. 31, but engineers preparing the booster were able to complete work in time for the earlier liftoff, NASA officials said. Launch is set for 8:00 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) on Tuesday, Oct. 27 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

HOW far could an astronaut travel in a lifetime? Billions of light years, it turns out. But they ought to be careful when to apply the brakes on the return trip. Ever since cosmologists discovered that the universe's expansion is accelerating, many have wondered just how much this will constrain what we could see with telescopes in the future. Distant regions of the universe will eventually be expanding so fast that light from any objects there can never reach us.

A vaccine created from research in space may soon be put to the test in human trials for the first time. The Astrogenetix company, based in Austin, Texas, has begun applying for approval to begin testing their space-designed salmonella vaccine on humans. Salmonella are disease-causing bacteria responsible for about 40,000 infections in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Eating contaminated food is one primary means of infection.

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.

The huge assembly standing in Northrop Grumman Corporation’s high bay looks a lot like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, but it’s a full-scale simulator of the space telescope’s key elements. Engineers are using the simulator, consisting of the telescope’s primary backplane assembly and the sunshield’s integrated validation article, to develop the Webb Telescope’s hardware design. In addition, technicians are using it to gain experience handling large elements in advance of working with the actual hardware that will fly in space.

Three articles will appear in Science Magazine tomorrow - one paper each describing results on lunar observations from three spacecraft: Deep Impact aka EPOXI, Cassini, and Chandrayaan-1. Three different spacecraft - three different instruments - all saying the same thing about the presence of water and other materials on the Moon. The EPOXI paper says that water has been "unequivocally" confirmed and that "the entire lunar surface is hydrated during at least some portions of the lunar day". In another paper, previously unreleased 1999 flyby data from Cassini shows hydroxyl concentrations on "the sunlit face of the Moon". Water was...

India has successfully launched seven satellites in a single mission, nearly a month after the country's inaugural Moon mission was aborted. The rocket was carrying an Indian remote-sensing satellite and six smaller ones, all of them foreign.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2009) — Researchers from the Open University are laying the groundwork for a new equation that could mathematically quantify a habitat’s potential for hosting life, in a similar way to how the Drake equation estimates the number of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way.

Moscow, Russia (September 21, 2009) – Today, Team Selenokhod, a Russian group of engineers and managers, announced its official entry into the Google Lunar X PRIZE - a $30 million competition that challenges space professionals and engineers from across the globe to build and launch to the moon a privately funded spacecraft capable of completing a series of exploration and transmission tasks as outlined in the competition’s official rules. Team Selenokhod, headquartered in Moscow, Russia with ten group members, is among 20 teams from 44 countries that are competing for their share of the $30 million prize purse.

Having left the capitals of half the world studded with towers, tents, gherkins and globes, the architect Lord Norman Foster is now gazing into the heavens. His firm, whose most famous projects include the British Museum's Great Court and the rebuilt Reichstag in Germany, is joining a European consortium pitching for the farthest frontier.

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...

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.

Signaling growing ambitions in commercial human spaceflight, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) will test its Dragon spacecraft earlier than expected on the first flight of its Falcon 9 launcher, while fellow NASA commercial partner Orbital Sciences begins studies of a human-rated version of its Cygnus cargo delivery spacecraft. “The first four Falcon 9 launches will likely have Dragon on top,” says SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell. “The original plan was to fly only with the 5-meter fairing, but now we’re exploring flying the qualification vehicle on the first demonstration flight.” Following the initial demonstration flight, and three planned demonstration missions for NASA’s...