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PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - Northrop Grumman Space Technology has been selected to help NASA design a nuclear-powered spacecraft to orbit and explore three moons of Jupiter that may have oceans beneath their icy surfaces. The $400 million contract with the Redondo Beach, Calif.-based unit of Northrop Grumman covers work through mid-2008, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Monday. The Prometheus Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter spacecraft will be designed to explore Callisto, Ganymede and Europa sometime in the next decade, after launching in 2012 or later. Scientists want to know what the big moons are made of, their history and whether the...

Nick Berg, the American beheaded by terrorists was allegedly working in Iraq as a spy for American intelligence. It is suspected by some Washington insiders that Berg's links with espionage may have led to his gruesome execution that was filmed on a videotape by terrorists. "Washington is rife with rumors that Berg had a connection to U.S. intelligence. Fuelling the suspicion is that he had Arab language capabilities and he's said to be a computer genius," The National Enquirer quoted a source as saying. "Someone who was prepared to brave the dangers of traveling to Iraq on an apparently legitimate...

Tracing a Civilian's Odd Path to His Gruesome Fate in Iraq By JAMES DAOPublished: May 26, 2004 his article was reported by James Dao, Richard Lezin Jones, Christine Hauser and Eric Lichtblau and was written by Mr. Dao. Nicholas E. Berg had a distinctive strategy for soliciting work for his communications tower company: conduct free spot inspections, then offer to fix any problems. Where others went sightseeing, he went climbing and inspecting. Where others wrote postcards, he inventoried towers, from Texas to Africa. By late last year, Mr. Berg, 26, had turned his sights on Iraq. An adventurous entrepreneur...

In doing some additional research on Nick Berg, I wanted to look into the naming of his business, Prometheus Methods Tower Service. Each business, especially startups by young folks, have a strong attachment to their business name and typically have some sort of secondary meaning behind it.So, doing a Google search on 'Prometheus' I discovered the Prometheus Radio Project at the URL noted.On the front page of this site, it states quite clearly the following: "Do you want to travel to far-away countries to build radio stations? Learn how you can build, even on a super-tight budget, by clicking here!"

Prometheus Methods Tower Services Inc., the business that cost Nick Berg his life in Iraq, has no records with the Pennsylvania Department of State. The company that specialized in building communications towers never registered with the Pennsylvania Corporation Bureau, said Brian McDonald, spokesman for the state department. McDonald conducted a search of the bureau’s online list of registered businesses, but found no matches. The same search done by a Daily Local News reporter produced the same results -- several businesses contained the word "Prometheus" in their names. Only one is located in West Chester, and it is not related to...

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico – A NASA project to Jupiter and several of its moons may depend on the U.S. Navy to provide the nuclear know-how in building a reactor for deep space exploration. The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) program is a flagship mission under NASA’s Project Prometheus – a multi-pronged effort to develop near- and long-term nuclear electric power and propulsion technologies. JIMO would be powered by a compact nuclear reactor and propelled by a set of ion engines that expel electrically charged particles to generate thrust. NASA and the scientific community are considering adding a Europa lander to...

Project Prometheus, NASA’s multibillion-dollar nuclear power and propulsion initiative, has a new home inside the U.S. space agency. Begun as the Nuclear Systems Initiative in 2002, the program was given a new name in 2003, a bigger budget and its first mission: the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO). Now, with an ambitious new space exploration agenda handed down by the White House, NASA is making more changes to Project Prometheus. JIMO’s launch date is slipping and responsibility for developing the nuclear systems NASA says it needs to kick solar system exploration into high gear is being given to the newly...

PASADENA, California, (AFP) - Nuclear power may give NASA (news - web sites)'s long-range missions the speed and range that combustion engines cannot, but research is sputtering for lack of funds. NASA's head of the Prometheus program said the agency has three billion dollars for the next five years. "Beyond that, we know we need more money," Al Newhouse told AFP. "We are at a very early stage of this program. It has been in existence for slighty under a year." Nuclear propulsion first became a NASA budget line item in 2003, with 125 million dollars. NASA requested 279 million...

NASA Successfully Tests Ion Engine NASA's Project Prometheus recently reached an important milestone with the first successful test of an engine that could lead to revolutionary propulsion capabilities for space exploration missions throughout the solar system and beyond. The test involved a High Power Electric Propulsion (HiPEP) ion engine. The event marked the first in a series of performance tests to demonstrate new high-velocity and high- power thrust needed for use in nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) applications. "The initial test went extremely well," said Dr. John Foster, the primary investigator of the HiPEP ion engine at NASA's Glenn Research...

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." Thus declared Howard Roark in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. In the context of this statement, the private-public distinction is employed not in politicoeconomic terms (which are, however, derivative), but in an individual, ethical sense, pertaining to the objectively correct atmosphere which one should experience in and away from the company of other men. Any rational treatise, including this one, will undertake a definition of terms prior conducting their...

NASA selected several radioisotope-based power-conversion technologies for research and development (R&D). The awards are the first competitive technology procurement funded wholly by NASA's Project Prometheus. These systems are distinguished by their use of new technologies for converting heat from radioisotope fuel into electrical power. The technologies are intended for use in improved radioisotope-power systems, which could provide higher efficiencies and power levels than those used on existing devices, enabling more sophisticated science instruments and spacecraft subsystems. The awards cover several distinct power-conversion technology areas: Thermoelectrics, Thermophotovoltaics, Stirling Engines, and Brayton Engines. "With this award, NASA is laying the foundation for...

WASHINGTON -- NASA will fund 10 research proposals in the first series of contracts awarded under Project Prometheus, the agency’s effort to develop nuclear power and propulsion systems for spacecraft. The 10 proposals are intended to develop new methods and technologies for converting heat from radioisotope fuel into electrical power, NASA announced. Nuclear power has the potential to dramatically reduce interplanetary travel time while boosting the amount of power available for science instruments. "NASA is laying the foundation for several technology paths that could enable entirely new classes of missions, from networked science stations on Mars to small spacecraft capable...

We are called to open up the heavens By MARK R. WHITTINGTON The funeral pyre of the crew of Columbia STS-107 streaked across the Texas sky like some horrible comet. In ancient times comets were considered to be a prelude to Earth-shaking events, the rise and fall of empires, or the birth and death of kings. What turns of history this tragedy will set in motion no one can predict. One can offer, though, some suggestions of what should be. There should be no months-long orgy of self-doubt and recrimination. For one thing, the need to sustain our presence on...

Earth's Ecology and Space Nuclear Energy Can Coexist Earth by Apollo 17 by Paul March Friendswood - Jan 30, 2003 On the issue of space exploration, nuclear power and their interaction is not simple to define, analyze or resolve. As with all single-issue political discussions, the facts are hard to agree on, misstatements of facts are common and there are many opinions masquerading as facts that need to be identified. During the last thirty years it was claimed by NASA that without significant reductions in the cost of launch operations to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and faster transit times to...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 June 22 Io: The Prometheus Plume Credit: Galileo Project, JPL, NASA Explanation: Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite Galileo image. On the left, over Io's limb, a new bluish plume rises about 86 miles above the surface of a volcanic caldera known as Pillan Patera. In the middle of the image, near the night/day shadow line, the ring shaped...