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Maxime Faget conceived and proposed the development of the one-man spacecraft used in Project Mercury, which put the first American astronauts into suborbital flight, then orbital flight, events that paved the way for landing on the moon. After retirement, Faget helped found one of the first private space companies, Space Industries. Maxime Faget, who designed Project Mercury and contributed to every U.S. manned spacecraft Latest News about spacecraft afterwards, died at his home in Houston, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Sunday. Faget, who was 83, died Saturday. The engineer conceived and proposed the development of the one-man spacecraft...

China has a new satellite in orbit. The satellite blasted off from the Jiuquan space center in the country's desert northwest at 3:50 p.m. local time on Aug. 29, carried into space by a Long March 2C rocket. The official Chinese news outlet, the Xinhua News Agency, claims that the latest satellite orbited by the People's Liberation Army is a "scientific" project. According to Xinhua, the satellite will carry out land surveying and other scientific projects for several days and then return to Earth. The satellite reportedly will remain in orbit "for a few days" and return a film canister...

If there was a single word to describe how Burt Rutan and his team felt on the day before their historic flight, it would be confident. All the work preparing SpaceShipOne for its flight has been completed days earlier, and Rutan noted that on Saturday, two days before the planned flight, the hangar was dark all day long. Mike Melvill, the pilot selected to fly SpaceShipOne, could barely contain his enthusiasm during the preflight press conference. “I am ready to go, boy, I am ready to go!” he said in a manner not unlike an athlete revving up for a...

NASAWatch Editor's note: "CNN Headline news is flashing several pictures of NASA Deputy Administrator Fred Gregory standing on the tarmac receiving the bodies of the Columbia crew at Dover Air Force Base in February 2003 and claiming that the photos are of caskets containing war dead arriving home from Iraq in 2004."

<p>The Associated Press chooses an issue three times a week and asks the presidential candidates a question about it.</p> <p>SPACE: Do you support the plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 in preparation for manned missions to Mars?</p>

I can't believe it. I guess now I'll have to vote for Bush in the upcoming elections...Not what I expected, but after reading this report where he evinces strong support for the space program, I've had to switch alliances. As many of you know, I'm a big fan of science fiction, but I don't want to live out my life just reading about space--I'd like to go there, and perhaps teach there! However, as usual, Bush is a bit muddled in his plans. Fans of Ben Bova or Bob Zubrin Mars Society Founder know that a moonbase is an unnecessary,...

Going to Mars isn't nearly as expensive as you've heard. IT HAS ALREADY BECOME conventional wisdom that President Bush's proposed mission to send a man to Mars will cost a trillion dollars--even many trillions of dollars. At that cost, it's no wonder public support for the White House space vision is wavering. But is that number credible? Where does it come from? It has certainly been tossed around a lot in the days before and after Bush's January 14 speech. An Associated Press article said that "informal discussions have put the cost of a Mars expedition at nearly $1 trillion."...

U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) is requesting $16.2 billion for NASA (news - web sites) in 2005, including $1.09 billion designated for the new organization being created to carry out the president's new vision for space exploration, according to NASA budget documents obtained by Space News. The money in the budget of the new exploration enterprise, as it is known at NASA, is not for all new programs, but includes funding for existing programs that will now fall under the new exploration bureaucracy. It includes $483 million for Project Prometheus, the nuclear power and propulsion program...

After years of declining budgets, public apathy, and failed missions, NASA has gotten a big boost from the Bush Administration's recent promises of extravagant missions to permanently settle the moon and eventually explore Mars. No one knows what it would cost, but a similar idea in 1989 was estimated to cost up to $500 billion. Rather than lavishing money on new missions of dubious value, President Bush should consider a truly radical solution for America's moribund space program: privatize it. There is a contradiction at the heart of the space program: space exploration, as the grandest of man's technological advancements,...

Three-fifths of Americans oppose Bush's mission to moon, Mars WASHINGTON (AFP) - More than three-fifths of Americans oppose President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s proposal to return to the moon and eventually put a human on Mars, according to a poll. His plan to spend billions of dollars to manned mission to the moon and eventually to Mars drew opposition from 61 percent of the 1,003 adults surveyed January 14-15. Bush called late Wednesday for a new space vessel capable of traveling to the moon as early as 2015. He would give the US space agency NASA (news...

Ice on Mars: Americans Pour Cold Water on 'Eureka Moment' By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News American space experts today poured cold water on Mars Express scientists' "eureka moment" - the first direct evidence of Earth-like ice on the Red Planet. Excited European Space Agency controllers said their orbiting space craft had detected frozen water at the Martian south pole. The scientists described the find as a "eureka moment" and said it confirmed the possibility that Mars once harboured life. But there was a cool reception among experts at the American space agency, Nasa, to the claim. They...

NASA's tough little Mars lander phoned home yesterday to tell its makers it had done what its European counterpart failed to do and survived a 120km fall to the red planet. The Spirit spacecraft survived a hell ride through the thin martian atmosphere as it braked from 19,000km/h in six minutes while its heat shield reached temperatures similar to those on the surface of the sun. NASA scientists had devised a series of communication tones to allow them to confirm the lander, surrounded by a cocoon of airbags, had "bounced down". But there was a nail-biting 15-minute wait before the...

<p>Can you fly to the moon on a trial balloon?</p> <p>The reports put the moon, which in recent years has been ignored by all save baying dogs and werewolves, back on the national agenda.</p> <p>"The moon can be made into a major asset, rather than just providing light at night," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., chairman of the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics, said Thursday.</p>

BEIJING (Reuters) - China put a communications satellite into orbit on Saturday, the first of nearly a dozen orbiters the country plans to launch by the end of next year, state media said on Saturday. The Zhongxing 20, the fourth launch since China's first manned space flight last month, blasted off atop a Long March 3A rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan, the Xinhua news agency said. The fast pace of launches was due in part to an improved testing procedure that had more than halved the time needed between launches at a...

CHINA plans to launch a man into space, or maybe even two or three, next Wednesday at 6am - at least according to the travel agent with exclusive rights to market tours to watch the historic launch. It's supposed to be a state secret, but anybody who responded to advertisements placed by the China Aviation International Travel Service in two Beijing newspapers this week was let in on it. "The launch is scheduled on the 15th. It's still a secret," said a tour salesman. Just under 4000 yuan ($700) buys a return flight from Beijing to the remote Gobi desert...

The Galileo spacecraft's 14-year odyssey came to an end on Sunday, Sept. 21, when the spacecraft passed into Jupiter's shadow then disintegrated in the planet's dense atmosphere at 11:57 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. The Deep Space Network tracking station in Goldstone, Calif., received the last signal at 12:43:14 PDT. The delay is due to the time it takes for the signal to travel to Earth. Hundreds of former Galileo project members and their families were present at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for a celebration to bid the spacecraft goodbye. "We learned mind-boggling things. This mission was worth...

 Marvin The Martian and Daffy Duck (as Duck Dodgers) will appear on official patches that Warner Bros. has designed for two NASA Mars Exploration Rover Missions this summer. The special patches will act as the defining logo for the mission and will be worn by TEAM DELTA crews, comprising members from NASA, the United States Air Force, and Boeing. They will be featured on mission control and launch pad crew suits, jackets, and mugs. "Daffy Duck and Marvin The Martian struck us as such a perfect fit, capturing the fun and adventurous spirit of these important explorations, that we were...

America's Space Program: What We Should Do Next BY BUZZ ALDRIN Buzz Aldrin was backup Command Module pilot for Apollo VIII, man's first flight around the moon. On July 20, 1969, he and fellow Apollo XI astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first humans to walk on the moon. Aldrin holds a doctorate in manned space rendezvous from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He currently heads Starcraft Boosters and is a leading voice in charting the course of future space efforts. My thoughts about our next steps in space remain fundamentally the same as they were before the Columbia accident on...

Spacemen joke about landing Other capsules ended up in lake, surrounded by wolves MOSCOW -- It could have been a lot worse for the two Americans and one Russian whose landing ended up nearly 300 miles off course and their recovery hours late. In 1976, a Soyuz spacecraft came down in a freezing squall and splashed into a lake; the crew spent the night bobbing in the capsule. Eleven years before that, two cosmonauts overshot their touchdown site by 2,000 miles and found themselves deep in a forest with hungry wolves. That's when Russian space officials decided to pack a...

China Details Space Safety Measures for Manned Missions By Associated Press posted: 04:10 pm ET 31 March 2003 BEIJING (AP) -- China has installed comprehensive safety systems allowing its "taikonauts" to escape their spacecraft if there is an emergency, state media said Monday. China is planning its first space launch later this year and said the safety measures are meant to prevent a disaster similar to that which destroyed the space shuttle Columbia Feb. 1 as it re-entered the atmosphere. Seven astronauts were killed. The safety systems are designed to rescue taikonauts from danger or mishaps at any time during...