Elon Musk (Credit: SpaceX)
NASA at 50: Privatizing Space
Washington Post
The results of a webchat Q&A with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who discusses the progress of his Falcon rockets and his dreams for Mars.
Aiming for Stars, Entrepreneurs May Also Fill Gaps
Washington Post
As NASA turns 50 this week, the space agency faces increasing competition from entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Richard Branson who are pushing for space tourism in low Earth orbit and trips to the moon and Mars.
NASA postpones shuttle launch to October 14
Reuters
“NASA on Wednesday delayed the launch of its last mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope by four days to make up training time lost due to Hurricane Ike.
“The shuttle Atlantis is now expected to lift off at 10:19 p.m. on October 14 (0219 GMT on October 15) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“The six-man, one-woman crew completed a three-day training exercise at the space center on Wednesday, which culminated with a dress rehearsal for launch.”
Space exploration key to mankind’s survival: NASA chief
AFP
“Mankind’s very survival depends on the future exploration of space, said NASA chief Michael Griffin in an interview with AFP marking the 50th anniversary of the US space agency.
“This journey, said the veteran physicist and aerospace engineer, is full of unknowns and has only just begun.
‘Does the survival of human kind depend upon it? I think so,’ he said.”
NASA clears hurdle on Soyuz
Orlando Sentinel
“NASA Administrator Michael Griffin on Tuesday won the approval of a key Senate committee in his battle to buy Russian spacecraft as a four-year replacement for the space shuttle.
“But the fight is far from over. And Griffin has less than two weeks to persuade the rest of Congress to allow the use of Soyuz spacecraft to take U.S. astronauts to the international space station after the space shuttle’s planned retirement in 2010.”
Obama Calls on Senate and House Leadership to Renew America’s Commitment to NASA
Text of Letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi
Dear Majority Leader Reid and Madam Speaker Pelosi:
This Administration’s lack of leadership for our nation’s space program has left Americans without access to space or the ability to support its astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) without paying Russia for transportation. The ISS is a world-class research facility, built with approximately $100 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money. With the planned retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2010, the U.S. will be paying Russia for rides to and from the ISS, and for emergency lifeboat services, using their Soyuz spacecraft. Furthermore, at the end of 2011, NASA will no longer even have the legal authority to continue paying Russia for Soyuz flights, so unless we act immediately, the U.S. will abandon its role in supporting, and benefiting from, missions to this amazing facility, leaving it to our international partners.
Continue reading ‘NASA Moves Toward Buying More Soyuz Vehicles’
During the last two weeks, a series of dizzying, stomach-churning events have sent shock waves around the world.
The American financial system has come thisclose to a complete meltdown, threatening to take the planet’s economy down with it. A venerable investment firm has collapsed, another was forced into a shotgun merger, and U.S. government now owns 80 percent of the world’s largest insurance company. President George W. Bush - about to bequeath a half-trillion dollar annual budget deficit on his successor - has proposed spending an additional $700 billion to buy out bad real estate investments. And that might be conservative. The national debt will be raised to a staggering $11.3 trillion.
You might think this would cause people to rethink some of our national priorities - such as building expensive housing for a handful of astronauts on the Moon, for example. But, you’ll be happy to know that NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is having none of it.
Continue reading ‘No Bucks, No Tom Wolfe Analogies’
University of Arizona Communications
The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, has returned more than 8,214 gigapixel-size images of the Martian surface since the start of the science phase of the mission in November 2006.
HiRISE scientists released 1,005 observations of Mars made between April 26 and July 21 to NASA’s mission data archive, called the Planetary Data System, and also to the public last week.
Continue reading ‘Spectacular New Images of Mars Released’
NASA PRESS RELEASE
NASA for the first time last week used microgravity research flights aboard commercially-owned aircraft to test hardware and technologies. These flights, on an airplane operated by the Zero Gravity Corporation, simulated the weightless conditions of space.
In addition to numerous NASA experiments, five companies sponsored by the agency’s Innovative Partnerships Program flew experiments aboard the reduced-gravity aircraft flights from Ellington Field in Houston. The flights were the first in NASA’s Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training program, called FAST.
Continue reading ‘NASA Uses Zero-G Plane for Experiments for First Time’
NASA MISSION UPDATE
This image, taken by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander’s Surface Stereo Imager, documents the delivery of a soil sample from the “Snow White” trench to the Wet Chemistry Laboratory. A small pile of soil is visible on the lower edge of the second cell from the top.This deck-mounted lab is part of Phoenix’s Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA).
The delivery was made on Sept. 12, 2008, which was Sol 107 (the 107th Martian day) of the mission, which landed on May 25, 2008.
Continue reading ‘More Soil Delivered to Phoenix Lab’
NASA awards $485M Mars project delayed by conflict
The Associate Press
“The price of the probe increased by $10 million, its launch was postponed by two years, and the science-gathering mission will be cut in half to one year, an official said. NASA chose the University of Colorado’s [MAVEN] proposal to study the Martian atmosphere from 20 other ideas to study Mars that were trimmed to just two before a conflict of interest was declared.
“NASA has not disclosed what the conflict of interest was or who it involved, other than to say last year that it was not created by NASA but by one of the two groups. The space agency said last December that a ’serious’ conflict of interest in one of two proposals forced it to disband the board formed to pick the winner, and create a new panel to award the contract.”
NASA PRESS STATEMENT
NASA has selected a Mars robotic mission that will provide information about the Red Planet’s atmosphere, climate history and potential habitability in greater detail than ever before.
Called the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft, the $485 million mission is scheduled for launch in late 2013. The selection was evaluated to have the best science value and lowest implementation risk from 20 mission investigation proposals submitted in response to a NASA Announcement of Opportunity in August 2006.
Continue reading ‘MAVEN to Challenge Martian Galactic Ghoul’
