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WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said Tuesday that President Barack Obama has asked him to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries” as the White House pushes the space agency to become a tool of international diplomacy. “In addition to the nations that most of you usually hear about when you think about the International Space Station, we now have expanded our efforts to reach out to non-traditional partners,” said Bolden, speaking to a lecture hall of young engineering students.

President Obama's NASA budget isn't 'job friendly.' The retirement of the shuttle fleet coupled with the cancellation of the Project Constellation and other projects will cost the jobs of 23,000 workers at and around Kennedy Space Center. 'Hope and Change' has arrived in Florida.

Obama's Call to Endeavour Astronauts Gets Awkward Traci Watson Contributor (Feb. 18) -- Astronauts flying in space are used to VIP phone calls that don't always go as scripted, but Wednesday's conversation was probably one of the most awkward. President Barack Obama used his chat with the crews of the space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station to declare that he sees space exploration as "so important." "My commitment to NASA is unwavering," Obama said. He emphasized "how proud we are of you ... and how committed we are to continuing human space exploration in the future." A few...

President Barack Obama has ditched US plans to return to the moon and hitched NASA's future to private industry in a budget calling for the space agency to stay close to Earth and do research. In budget proposals for NASA, Obama proposed increasing funding for the space agency by AU$6.7 billion over five years. But he proposed dropping the massively over-budget program to develop a new-generation rocket called Constellation, put in place by former president George W. Bush and which had been aimed at taking Americans back to the moon. Citing a report issued last year by a commission set...

A NASA team looking into design concepts for future space capsules has successfully demonstrated that an all-composite structure is a feasible alternative to traditional metal capsules for carrying astronauts into space and returning them safely to Earth. The composite materials that make up the structure are basically the same as the tough, lightweight laminates used today for race cars, business jets and high-end sports equipment. In combination with new space-age fabrication techniques, these advanced composite materials promise potential benefits over traditional metal structures. Among them is that they can easily be formed into complex shapes that may be more structurally...

Details are still sketchy and Congress must still weigh in, but it seems clear now that Ares 1 and Ares 5 are dead, the International Space Station will operate through 2020, and commercial rockets will be used to carry crew and cargo to the orbiting outpost. These outcomes are all within the Augustine Committee’s list of fixes for an exploration program that clearly was over budget, behind schedule, and demonstrably unsustainable. Without a Shuttle-class rocket, billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded infrastructure will go unused, and thousands of uniquely skilled workers will be forced to pursue other careers.

Per a NASA spokesman, Obama has killed the country's manned space program by cutting all funding for it. The Constellation program was to be the next manned space program to send people back to the Moon and build a Moon base, then to send astronauts to Mars. Obama wants the money for increased spending on his constituants. Killing the Constellation Program means the $9B already spent is down the drain and an estimated 4,600 jobs will have been ended.

Achievement: The nation that put the first man on the moon may have put its last as budget cuts slash NASA's plans to return. Men will return to the moon, but they will likely speak Chinese. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced in front of a joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American to the moon by the end of that decade. It was a clarion call to the American spirit and technology to rise up and prove that America's best days were still ahead. Forty-one years after Neil Armstrong set foot on...

NASA will not be getting the $1 billion budget boost civil space advocates had hoped to see when President Barack Obama sends his 2011 spending proposal to Congress Feb. 1, requiring the U.S. space agency to make even tougher than expected choices about the future of its manned space program, according to sources with close ties to the administration. These sources declined to reveal the fate of NASA’s planned Ares 1 crew launch vehicle, which many observers see as a likely cancellation target, but they did say the budget proposal would fund a multibillion-dollar effort to foster development of commercial...

NASA advocates expecting a big boost to the U.S. space agency’s budget in 2011 are likely to be disappointed when the administration of President Barack Obama delivers its annual funding request to lawmakers Feb. 1, according to sources with close ties to the administration. NASA’s budget, just over $18.7 billion this year, is still expected to rise again in 2011, these sources said, but by much less than the $1 billion increase NASA and its contractors have been privately anticipating since mid-December, when Obama met with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to discuss the findings of a White House-appointed panel tasked...

As the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to propose changes to NASA’s human spaceflight program in the president’s 2011 budget request to lawmakers Feb. 1, an independent NASA safety advisory panel is warning the space agency against abandoning its current plans. In an annual report issued Jan. 15, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel cautioned the United States against halting work on NASA’s Ares 1 rocket to fund unproven commercial alternatives. “To abandon Ares I as a baseline vehicle for an alternative without demonstrated capability nor proven superiority (or even equivalence) is unwise and probably not cost-effective,” the report...

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...

China's "father of space program" mourned across country (Source: Xinhua) 2009-11-02 　 People in deep sorrow come to express condolences in a small mourning hall that was set up at Qian Xuesen's home, Beijing, Nov. 1, 2009. Qian, also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, died of illness in Beijing Saturday morning at the age of 98. He led the country's missile and aviation programs and played a significant role in developing China's first man-made earth satellite. (Xinhua/Gao Xueyu) 　 　　BEIJING, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The death of China's legendary scientist Qian Xuesen has plunged many Chinese into deep sorrow and people...

The U.S. Senate gave final passage to an energy and water spending bill Oct. 15 that denies President Barack Obama’s request for $30 million for the Department of Energy to restart production of plutonium-238 (pu-238) for NASA deep space missions. The House of Representatives originally approved $10 million of Obama’s pu-238 request for next year, but ultimately adopted the Senate’s position before voting Oct. 1 to approve the conference report on the 2010 Energy-Water Appropriations bill (H.R. 3183). The bill now heads to Obama, who is expected to sign it. NASA relies on pu-238 to power long-lasting spacecraft batteries that...

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...

The moon belongs to everyone The best things in life are free, The stars belong to everyone They gleam there for you and me. --From the 1927 musical Good News Star-gazing may be free, but the Human Space Flight Plans Committee, a panel of luminaries and experts appointed by President Obama to assess the future of America's manned space efforts, has found that space exploration is not. The gist of the committee's imminent report: Our current levels of expenditure will not support a return to the moon, a journey to Mars, or much beyond keeping the space station operating. This...

It hardly seems possible that 40 years have now passed since Neil Armstrong put that puffy moon boot in the dusty surface of the Sea of Tranquility and uttered those immortal words -- "joke's over Aldrin, unlock the friggin' door." Continued

WASHINGTON — The White House has ordered a complete outside review of NASA's manned space program, including plans to return astronauts to the moon. Officials want a report from an independent panel by August. White House science adviser John Holdren said Thursday that the new panel will look at the design of new spacecraft to replace the space shuttle and go to the moon, as well as consider possible alternatives to the current design. In a letter to NASA, Holdren wrote that because of the magnitude of the manned space program's ambitions and its expense, "it would be only prudent...

Mexico City - Mexico plans to begin construction this year on a space port to send satellites aloft, an official said Monday. The facility will be located in the southern state of Quintana Roo on the border with Belize, said state planning minister Jose Alberto Alonso Ovando. The location was chosen after extensive studies in part because of its proximity to the Equator, he said in an interview. Late last year, the Mexican National Congress approved the founding of a national space agency, Aexa. The agency's headquarters will be located in the state of Hidalgo from where it will oversee...

January-February 2009 One-Way Ticket to Mars by  James C. McLane III Our best hope to reach the red planet might be to send just one person there ... forever.I once worked in America’s Manned Space program, proud to be one of perhaps a quarter million folks around the world trying to send humans into space. We like to think it’s humanity’s destiny to spread out across the universe, but less than one out of twenty-five thousand of us on this planet are really doing anything toward that goal. There was a time when human space travel was big business....