October 6, 2008The NASA-Russia partnershipThe New York Times: This place was once no place, a secret military base northeast of Moscow that did not show up on maps. The Soviet Union trained its astronauts here to fight on the highest battlefield of the cold war: space. October 1, 2008NASA takes steps toward merging robotic and human space exploration into one programMSNBC: Robots and humans come together for space agency’s next 50 years. September 26, 2008NASA at 50The Washington Post: After a half a century at work, look back at how NASA began and images of what its missions have brought back to Earth. September 23, 2008Mars rover sets sights on distant craterThe Register: NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is about to set off on what may be its final odyssey - a seven-mile (11.3 km) jaunt to a crater around 20 times larger than the Victoria Crater from which it extricated itself earlier this month. September 17, 2008NASA plans $485 million robotic mission to Mars in 2013Computerworld: New orbiter designed to study Red Planet's atmosphere and climate history September 16, 2008NASA selects Mars climate missionBBC: The US space agency (NASA) has approved its next orbiter mission to Mars. September 15, 2008Hurricane damage could close NASA outposts for more than a weekHouston Chronicle: Damage assessments from Hurricane Ike at NASA's Johnson Space Center continued on Sunday, and a space agency spokesman said it could be late this week or sometime next week before the facility is ready to reopen for normal operations. September 9, 2008Hubble crew faces higher risk of debris hit says NASAReuters: The shuttle crew being dispatched to work on the Hubble Space Telescope faces a higher-than-usual chance of disaster due to orbital debris, the shuttle program manager said on Monday. September 2, 2008NASA looks into extending space shuttle lifetime until 2015Daily Tech: An e-mail obtained by The Orlando Sentinel reveals NASA is looking into the plausibility of postponing the retirement of its current fleet of three space shuttles until 2015, when the Orion is scheduled to be completed. August 27, 2008NASA renames GLAST for FermiUnited Press International: The US space agency says it has renamed its newest spacecraft -- the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST -- in honor of Enrico Fermi. August 26, 2008Russian rocket launches hit overflight snags
Space.com: In another frustrating foul-up on the path towards converting Soviet-era military missiles into cash-paying satellite launchers, a military-industrial team in Moscow has announced the "indefinite suspension" of plans to launch an earth resources survey satellite for Thailand.
The reasons: at the last moment, for the second time, overflight permission has been revoked by a country downrange of the launch site. First Uzbekistan, and now Kazakhstan, denied permission for dropping the booster's spent first stage onto their territories.
August 25, 2008NAS says more support and testing needed for moon, Mars exploration
USA Today: The technology storehouse supporting NASA's effort to launch astronauts back to the moon by 2020 is dependent on proper funding and clear mission goals, but lacks a comprehensive testing plan, according to a new report.
Released Thursday by the National Research Council, the 158-page report stemmed from a 10-month review of NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP) which is charged with developing and providing the new technologies required for the agency's return to the moon and beyond. August 20, 2008NASA's moon rockets will sport shocks to smooth out bumpy ride
USA Today: The nation's new moon rockets will be outfitted with shock absorbers to buffer astronauts from jackhammer-like vibrations during rocky rides into orbit.
A spring-and-damper ring will separate the first and second stages of Ares 1 rockets, which NASA is developing for missions to the International Space Station, the moon and later Mars.
August 15, 2008Launch date for fall shuttle missions confirmedSpace.com: NASA mission managers decided Thursday not to push for earlier launch dates for two space shuttle missions set to blast off this fall. The shuttle Atlantis will remain on track for a planned Oct. 8 launch to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope while its sister ship Endeavour will continue toward a Nov. 10 liftoff to the International Space Station, NASA spokesperson Kyle Herring told SPACE.com. August 12, 2008Space shuttle replacement delayed until 2014The Register: NASA has put back the planned launch of its Orion spacecraft for a year, meaning the first test launch won't be until 2014 at the earliest. August 6, 2008Scientists reply to Web gossip on Mars findSan Francisco Chronicle: It took Dwayne Brown, a leading NASA public affairs spokesman, to tell a news teleconference: "There have been reports over the weekend that NASA had made a major finding that it was withholding from the public and this speculation has fueled a host of rumors." Neither the White House nor the president's science advisers have been briefed on the new findings by anyone, Brown said. NASA to test plasma engine on space stationFlight Global: NASA expects to sign an agreement to test a new propulsion system on the International Space Station, according to the US space agency's administrator Michael Griffin. Nations pool resources to study lunar seismic activityNature News: Representatives of nine national space agencies signed an agreement on 24 July to create an International Lunar Network, which aims to plant a system of six or more seismic stations on the Moon. August 5, 2008Scientists suffering perpetual jet lag while on Mars timeUSA Today: Morten Bo Madsen spends his work day crunching data on a laptop seated in front of a clear plastic-covered box about the size of a widescreen computer monitor that emits a startlingly bright blue light. Madsen is one of the 150 scientists and engineers working on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission. The bright light keeps Madsen's internal clock in check, because Madsen is living on Mars time. Mars' day is 40 minutes longer than Earth's, and the start of the Martian day is always changing with respect to Earth time, as a result of their respective orbital motions. Living on a schedule that shifts forward by 40 minutes everyday can wreak havoc on the human body, creating an effect that is essentially like perpetual jet lag. August 1, 2008NASA's Phoenix Lander Confirms Ice Exists On MarsNPR: NASA's Phoenix lander has been on Mars for more than two months. It has sampled the soil, measured the weather and snapped thousands of pictures. One of its missions is to determine whether the Martian arctic is able to support life. July 31, 2008NASA prepares for Hubble telescope's final upgradeLos Angeles Times: The $900-million effort, scheduled for launch Oct. 8, will be the fifth and last Hubble servicing mission, and engineers and scientists on the ground in Maryland have great hopes for the upgrade to one of the world's best-known scientific instruments. "I think it will put Hubble at the apex of its capabilities," said David Leckrone, senior project scientist for the Hubble. Leckrone and other NASA scientists geared up for the launch at NASA Goddard, which manages Hubble's day-to-day operations. Scientific operations are based at the Space Telescope Science Institute on the John Hopkins University campus in Baltimore. Scientists at Goddard tested sensitive scientific equipment in an acoustic chamber to make sure that what goes into space can withstand the violent shaking that characterizes every shuttle launch and the eight-minute ride into orbit. Live Coverage of today's solar eclipseSpaceRef : NASA, in partnership with the Exploratorium Science Center, San Francisco, Calif., and the University of California at Berkeley, will transmit live images of the Aug. 1, 2008, total eclipse of the sun. Updated 01 August 2008: The Ellipse is now over, and Reuters reports that Liquid confirmed on Saturn's moon TitanThe Associated Press: At least one of many large, lake-like features on Saturn's moon Titan studied by the international Cassini spacecraft contains liquid hydrocarbons, making it the only body in the solar system besides Earth known to have liquid on its surface, NASA said Wednesday. July 30, 2008NSF to reuse Iridium satellites for researchGovernment Computer News: A project funded by the National Science Foundation will use Iridium satellites to study weather patterns in space. July 22, 2008NASA looks to Lunar ScienceThe Register: This week the first annual Lunar Science Conference is being held at the NASA/AMES Research Center in Mountain View, California. It's being run by the newly-formed NASA Lunar Science Institute — whose job it will be make dust vapor studies look sexy while doling out $2m grants to teams of lucky researchers. Reporter Austin Modine irreverently July 18, 2008Texas congressman contemplating legislation to overhaul NASAHouston Chronicle: Two days after telling an online town hall meeting that NASA had "failed us miserably" and "wastes a vast amount of money," Houston Rep. John Culberson said Thursday he was weighing legislation to overhaul the structure of the space agency responsible for about 20,000 Houston-area jobs. July 17, 2008Russian Satellite Debris Poses HazardNPR: NASA is carefully tracking some 500 pieces of debris from a Russian intelligence satellite that may pose a hazard for the international space station. The satellite exploded in March; another piece of it broke apart in June. July 7, 2008One last trip to the Hubble Space TelescopeWashington Post: NASA scientists, engineers and astronauts are finalizing plans to fly the space shuttle this fall on a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to repair and upgrade the orbiting observatory that revolutionized astronomy. The long-delayed servicing mission will be the last for the Hubble, NASA says, but it will allow the telescope to perform at its highest level ever for the remaining five or six years of its operating life. Messenger's mercury flight reveals water sourceHouston Chronicle: Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, appears to have at least one source of water, even though the temperatures on the tiny planet soar to 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
June 27, 2008Ares V rocket gets power boostAviation Week : NASA planners have tentatively added an engine to its planned Ares V moon rocket, and increased the length of its shuttle-derived solid-rocket boosters to accommodate a larger hydrogen tank, as early work on lunar surface operations gets under way. As now conceived, the Ares V will use six Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RS-68 engines to power its core stage, and twin five-and-a-half segment versions of the four-segment ATK shuttle solid boosters. Previous Ares V concepts had five RS-68s and twin five-segment boosters that basically matched the first stage of its Ares I crew launch vehicle. June 20, 2008NASA, NSF fund UD space physics researchUniversity of Delaware: Faculty in the space physics group in the Bartol Research Institute and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UD have been awarded several multi-year grants by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to conduct theoretical and observational research projects. June 18, 2008Shuttle retirement will hurt Florida's space coast
Washington Post: Up to 6,400 of the 8,000 people who work as shuttle contractors in the area will lose their jobs, according to early NASA estimates.
June 11, 2008NASA balks at Congressional request to launch particle physics experimentNPR: NASA has scheduled just 10 more space shuttle flights before retiring its fleet for good. But the space agency may have to add one more mission, to bring a seven-ton $1.5 billion physics experiment into space. Continue reading "NASA balks at Congressional request to launch particle physics experiment" » June 10, 2008Mars Phoenix to try shake-and-bake once moreThe Los Angeles Times In a series of maneuvers that sounds more like cooking class than research on Mars, scientists said Monday they would try one more time to shake bits of the clumpy Martian soil into a test oven on NASA's Phoenix lander before switching to a backup strategy that called for dribbling the soil into the oven. June 6, 2008NASA budget passes full House S&T committeePhysics Today: The House committee on science and technology unanimously passed NASA's 2009 budget (H.R. 6063) which orders NASA to make one extra flight to the international space station to deliver the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. AMS was without a launch vehicle after the loss of space shuttle columbia cancelled its 2009 flight. NASA had been looking at alternative launch vehicles but the large cost involved made approval unlikely (see NASA Cancels Science Flight, Ditches International Partners May 2007). "NASA has a key role to play in the nation's innovation agenda, ensuring the future health of our nation's aviation system, and advancing our efforts to better understand our climate and the changes facing the Earth system," said Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN). "In addition, a properly structured human space flight and exploration program can provide dividends technologically, scientifically, and geopolitically--and is worthy of the nation's investment in it." H.R. 6063 adds more than $1.6 billion to the White House request. The bill emphasizes the importance of aeronautics R&D, strengthening the exploration program, and NASA leadership in Earth science research and applications. It increases funding for the climate-monitoring satellite Glory, the development of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and the Ares launcher, which is currently scheduled to enter service in 2015, nearly 5 years after the last shuttle flight. June 4, 2008NASA's Phoenix spacecraft is ready to get its hands dirty on Mars
NASA's Gravity Probe B project winds downNPR: NASA researchers spent nearly 40 years on Gravity Probe B, a satellite designed to test some of Albert Einstein's theories. As the $700 million project winds down, NASA is rejecting a request for another 18 months of funding. May 26, 2008Phoenix lands successfully on MarsVarious: NASA's Mars Phoenix space probe has survived re-entry through the Martian atmosphere and landed close to the north martian pole. Yesterday, NPR's Joe Palca described what scientists hope to achieve with this mission, before updating NPR's audience this morning with news from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where jubilant mission control staff has gathered to watch the landing yesterday evening.
New York Times reporter Kenneth Chang leads with Phoenix transmitting photos back to Earth of the surface. "I know it looks a little like a parking lot,” said the mission’s principal investigator Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona, “but it’s a safe place to land.” “There’s ice under this surface,” Smith said. “It doesn’t look like it. You don’t see ice, but it’s down there.” As space.com's Andrea Thompson discovers, Phoenix is designed to test the Martian soil and ice for signs that the water was once liquid, to see if it could have created a habitable zone for microbial life at some point in the past. The instruments include a robotic arm that will scoop up dust and ice, as well as a wet chemistry lab and tiny ovens that will analyze the soil to see what compounds might be in it. "The science team has been waiting patiently... and they are anxious to use their instruments," said Smith. Over the next three months the science teams will collect as much data as possible from the spacecraft says Los Angeles Times staff writer John Johnson Jr. Mars has been a risky venture for many space agencies, with a high rate of failure. Of the 39 missions to the red planet only a few have reached the surface and sent data back to Earth reports NPR's Virginia Hughes and Alejandra Garcia. The Independent's Steve Curtis looks at the difficulties in designing a probe to land on Mars. Meanwhile, Washington Post writer Marc Kaufman is one of the few reporters to point out the reason for Phoenix's name, the fact the spacecraft was built out of the spare parts of two earlier Mars missions that were canceled. Kaufman's piece has a nice slide show of the spacecraft. The BBC has video of the press conference and touchdown. Phoenix is also another first for NASA, in that it is the first time that a NASA mission will be run from an operations center at a university, the University of Arizona. Related Links May 23, 2008GLAST gamma ray telescope preps for launchScience: In July 1967, US surveillance satellites looking for signs of a Russian nuclear test in space recorded two flashes of gamma radiation. Scientists quickly determined that the high-energy bursts did not come from a nuclear explosion, which would have generated a more sustained stream of gamma rays and also produced lower energy radiation detectable by other satellite instruments. Only years later did they realize that the flashes--named gamma ray bursts (GRBs)--originated in violent events deep in space. In scanning the heavens for an enemy secret, they had stumbled upon a cosmic one. Now, researchers are opening the window wider with a new telescope designed to record gamma radiation several orders of magnitude higher in energy than current instruments can detect. NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Satellite Telescope (GLAST), scheduled for launch next month, will also be the first instrument of its kind to survey the entire sky several times a day, increasing the chances of finding and following extreme astronomical phenomena anywhere in the universe. May 21, 2008House committee clears shuttle for AMS flightPhysics Today: On Tuesday the House Science and Technology space and aeronautics subcommittee quickly cleared bill H.R. 6063 which orders NASA to make one extra flight to the international space station to deliver the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. AMS was without a launch vehicle after the loss of space shuttle columbia cancelled its 2009 flight. NASA had been looking at alternative launch vehicles but the large cost involved made approval unlikely (see NASA Cancels Science Flight, Ditches International Partners May 2007). H.R. 6063, which also sets NASA's budget for 2009, adds more than $1.6 billion to the White House request. The bill increases funding for the development of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Ares launcher, which are currently scheduled to enter service in 2015, nearly 5 years after the last shuttle flight. Controls put in place to reduce cost over-runs on NASA's science programs were over ruled by the subcommittee, which authorized NASA to proceed with the climate-monitoring satellite Glory, which is over budget. The bill also demands that the next generation of Landsat satellites continue collecting thermal infrared land imagery, the compliance of which may delay a 2011 Landsat satellite launch. The bill will now be sent to the full committee for consideration. |
SearchCategoriesArchives
Recent Posts
|
