Six Planets Now Aligned in the Dawn Sky

YahooNews: Six Planets Now Aligned in the Dawn Sky
If you get up any morning for the next few weeks, you’ll be treated to the sight of all the planets except Saturn arrayed along the ecliptic, the path of the sun through the sky.

For the last two months, almost all the planets have been hiding behind the sun, but this week they all emerge and are arrayed in a grand line above the rising sun. Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are visible, and you can add Uranus and Neptune to your count if you have binoculars or a small telescope.

This sky map of the six planets shows how they should appear at dawn to observers with clear weather and an unobstructed view.

Astrologers have always been fascinated by planetary alignments, and the doomsayers of 2012 have been prophesying a mystical alignment on Dec. 21, 2012.

The modern tools of astronomers, such as planetarium software, show otherwise: absolutely no alignment at any time in 2012. But they also reveal a beautiful alignment visible during the month of May this year.

Six planets at one time
While astrologers view planetary alignments as foretellers of disasters, modern amateur astronomers look forward to them as nothing more than grand photo ops.

If you go out any morning for the next four days, you’ll be treated to a view of the crescent moon and all but one of the naked eye planets.

Because the moon moves rapidly from one morning to the next, it will only be part of the lineup for the next four mornings, but the four naked-eye planets will be there for the next few weeks.

Venus is, as always, the brightest and most visible of the planets, and it can be your guide to spotting the others. About half way between Venus and the rising sun is Jupiter, the second brightest planet.

Mars will be a tiny speck just above Jupiter, and Mercury another tiny speck about half way between Jupiter and Venus. Uranus is slightly more than one binocular field above and to the right of Venus, and Neptune is much farther to the right, about 40 degrees away in Aquarius. The Moon will be just above Venus on Saturday morning, and just above Jupiter and Mars on Sunday morning.

How to photograph the planets

Capturing a photograph of this gathering of the planets couldn’t be easier.

Just about any camera will do, though a camera with a telephoto lens setting will be better. Let the camera’s exposure meter be your guide, though a slight underexposure will help bring out the colors of the dawn sky.

Try to place the silhouette of some foreground object to lend depth to the scene. The best pictures will be on the next few mornings, while the crescent moon is part of the grouping.

This article was provided to SPACE.com by Starry Night Education, the leader in space science curriculum solutions. Follow Starry Night on Twitter @StarryNightEdu.

Endeavour's first commander reflects on shuttle's final mission

CNNNEws.com: Endeavour's first commander reflects on shuttle's final mission
Kennedy Space Center, Florida (CNN) -- As Space Shuttle Endeavour gears up for its 25th and final mission, its first commander is nostalgic but hopeful about the prospects of space exploration.

"I will have a good size lump in the throat on Friday, if not a tear," Capt. Daniel Brandenstein said.

Few outside the space community know Brandenstein, who was the commander on Endeavour's first flight in 1992.

"The vehicle on its maiden voyage performed flawlessly," he said.

Endeavour, which was built as a replacement for the Challenger that exploded after liftoff in 1986, was sent to repair an ailing satellite.

Brandenstein knows his shuttles; he flew four missions for NASA on four different vehicles.

"The vehicles are very similar on purpose, so you could train on one and move to the next one without a lot of retraining," he said.

Endeavour has logged more than 103 million miles in space, blasting off 24 times, but its 25th flight will be its last.

Brandenstein says it's too early to retire the spacecraft and believes it has many good years left.

"You got a vehicle that's only used up about 25 percent of its lifetime, and it's going to end up on a post," Brandenstein said, referring to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, where Endeavour will be displayed to the public.

He learned it's not easy to watch a retiring shuttle when Discovery landed for the final time last month.

"I'm not a very emotional guy, but I kind of got choked up on that," said Brandenstein who was the commander on a Discovery mission in 1985.

Watching his company make cutbacks when the 30-year shuttle program ends this summer will be hard, he said.

Brandenstein is the chief operating officer for United Space Alliance, an aerospace company that is contracted to manage the space shuttle program.

The company has announced it will layoff at least 2,600 of its 5,600 employees after the last shuttle flight.

Brandenstein, who spent 14 years at NASA and was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame, says he had one ritual before his four shuttle missions.

"The night before, I would go out and run and get dehydrated, and I wouldn't drink anything until I got in orbit," he said.

Going to the bathroom once suited up and inside the shuttle, meant doing it without leaving the seat.

"Unfortunately, the commander has to get in first and spends the most time on his back in those uncomfortable suites," he said.

Brandenstein says after grueling months of training in Houston, he enjoyed coming to Florida to spend the final days before a launch.

"If you planned your mission right and trained it right, it's really a time to unwind and it's time to relax and go fly," Brandenstein said.

Brandenstein believes the current Endeavour commander, Mark Kelly, will do the same.

Kelly is an experienced astronaut flying his fourth and final shuttle mission. His wife, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is there to watch the liftoff. The Arizona congresswoman was shot in the head less than four months ago.

"Flying in space is a very difficult thing to give up," Kelly said. "I've got to figure out a way to get back into space again."

As the shuttle prepares for a scheduled 3:47 p.m. ET. launch, Brandenstein says Mars should be the next target.

"We got lower Earth orbit pretty well covered now, so we ought to move beyond that," he said.

Despite the nostalgia over Endeavour's final mission, the man who logged almost 800 hours in space is counting his blessings.

"I got to fly a spaceship, it doesn't get any better than that." Brandenstein said.

US Space Program Goes Commercial

VoA.com: US Space Program Goes Commercial
This Friday, the U.S. space shuttle Endeavor is scheduled to lift off on its last voyage to the orbiting International Space Station. And on June 28, barring any last minute complications, Alantis will become the last space shuttle ever to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center. Both missions mark the end of NASA’s 30-year space shuttle program. But it is not the end of America’s space ventures.

Fifty years after a Redstone rocket carried the first American astronaut, Alan Shephard, into space, NASA is getting out of the business of sending astronauts on missions using its own spacecraft. Instead, the U.S. space agency will rely on privately designed and owned rockets to ferry cargo and crew to the orbiting International Space Station.

The commercially built space vehicles are expected to be every bit as powerful and reliable as those operated by NASA, but they’ll cost American taxpayers far less. One company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, has signed a $1.6 billion deal with NASA for 12 unmanned delivery flights to the space station.

SpaceX says the deal should lower the cost of launching cargo to about $1,000 per half kilogram - less than one-tenth of what it costs NASA to get a payload into outer space on the shuttle.

President Barack Obama is asking Congress to approve $850 million to aid the development of private rockets to service the orbiting scientific outpost. NASA administrator Charles Bolden says the budget will support a public-private partnership in space.

"We must have safe, reliable and affordable access to it for our astronauts and their supporting equipment. That’s why this budget boosts funding for our partnership with the commercial space industry," Bolden said.

The private sector’s role in unmanned space operations - such as the manufacture of satellites and robotic spacecraft -- is nothing new. So says former NASA executive Alan Stern, now with the Southwest Research Institute, which offers technical assistance to the aerospace industry.

Stern says the private sector is promising to conduct space missions for a fraction of what they have traditionally cost NASA. For example, SpaceX says it can reduce the cost of a launch, depending upon the rocket, to between $50 million and $100 million compared to the $1.5 billion price tag for each space shuttle mission.

Stern says this savings of dimes on the dollar benefits the private sector as well as the public.

"That’s a huge reduction in cost that’s going to allow us to have multiple space lines, and to be able to afford that. and to be able to do more things in space than we could in the past," Stern said.

Last year, SpaceX became the first commercial aerospace company to successfully launch, place into orbit and retrieve a spacecraft -- the Falcon 9, carrying an unmanned capsule called the Dragon.

The Dragon is being built as part of NASA’s $1.6 billion deal with SpaceX. Company founder and CEO Elon Musk says the space agency has been pressing it to complete testing of the capsule, so it can go to the space station on a resupply mission at the end of this year. However, news reports have quoted a top official in Russia’s manned space program as saying Russia will not allow the SpaceX rocket to dock with the space station until more extensive safety testing has been completed.

Safety is a big concern for the private rocket builders, too. Alan Stern says the companies are not cutting corners to keep costs down or to meet tight deadlines. He says they have a lot to lose if there are accidents.

"If the rockets fail or the capsules have problems, that’s going to affect their future business pretty strongly; in fact it could put them out of business. And that’s a very strong motivation for any private concern," Stern said.

But there have been problems. Orbital Sciences Corporation, which has a contract with NASA to deliver supplies to the space station, tried but failed in March to launch a climate satellite aboard its Taurus (XL) rocket. The $424 million payload was lost when the clamshell-like structure designed to protect the satellite enroute to orbit failed to open.

It was an exact replay of the company’s 2009 mishap, when a nosecone failure doomed a $270 million carbon-observing satellite. Both Orbital Sciences and NASA are investigating the twin accidents.

In the meantime, the company is continuing work on its Taurus II, an expendable medium class rocket that’s designed to deliver cargo to the International Space Station from a launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Island Facility in Virginia.

Recently, SpaceX announced plans for a demonstration flight of its new heavy lift vehicle, called the Falcon Heavy, at the end of 2012 from NASA’s Cape Canaveral, Florida facility.
Company CEO Elon Musk says the Falcon Heavy will be one of the biggest rockets ever built.

"175,000 pounds (53 metric tons) is more than a fully loaded Boeing 737 with 136 passengers, luggage and fuel in orbit. So that is really humongous," Musk said.
Founder Elon Musk believes the rocket will be powerful enough to carry the Dragon capsule to the moon and possibly even Mars.

NASA has just awarded four contracts totaling $270 million to four companies to develop manned space flight capabilities. In the past, private aerospace companies built spacecraft and other hardware to NASA’s design specifications, with the space agency at the forefront of every decision.

Now, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, Ed Mango, says space vehicles will be designed and owned entirely by the commercial sector, with safety input from the space agency.

"In the end, we will pay that company a certain price to purchase a seat, if you want to look at it this way, purchase a ticket, in order to fly to get our crew from the surface of the Earth to the space station," Mango said.

Mango says those ‘tickets’ won’t be available until the middle of the decade. Until then, NASA will pay Russia $750 million for a dozen round trip seats aboard the Soyuz spacecraft to ferry astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

Space Shuttle Endeavor Ready for its Last Mission

VOA.com: Space Shuttle Endeavor Ready for its Last Mission
People are flocking to the central Florida coast for Friday's scheduled launch of the space shuttle Endeavour, the second to last launch of a shuttle as NASA brings the three-decade-old program to an end.

The space agency is expecting around 700,000 people to be on hand for the event Friday evening, including US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the wife of shuttle commander Mark Kelly. She is still recovering from a wound to the head suffered in a shooting rampage in her home district in Arizona back in January. Her presence adds special emotional touch to what many regard as a significant moment for the US space program.

As crews prepare the space shuttle for launch at the Kennedy Space Center, Weather Officer Kathy Winters is keeping an eye on the slow-moving front that has worked its way across US southern states in recent days spawning severe thunderstorms and devastating tornadoes.

"We are expecting that to move down into central Florida," said Kathy Winters. "Now, it won't have the energy it has had and it won't be producing the severe weather as widespread as it has been doing the last couple of days, but we do expect that there could be an isolated severe thunderstorm along the front."

She said this concern caused her to move the probability of a weather-related delay in the launch from 20 percent to 30 percent. NASA officials say a slight delay in fueling the shuttle's external tank would not be a problem and there is a four-hour leeway built into the schedule.

The launch of Endeavor Friday will be a bittersweet event for astronauts, flight crews, space and science enthusiasts as well as those who have followed the progress of Congressswoman Gabrielle Giffords since she was severely wounded nearly four months ago. This launch, commanded by her husband, Mark Kelly, and the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis scheduled for late June will mark the end of an era and the beginning of a new, somewhat uncertain phase for the US space program.

Giffords, who has witnessed two previous launches in which her husband flew, wanted to be present for the start of his final shuttle mission even though she is still healing from her head wound. Doctors who have been working with her at a rehabilitation facility here in Houston approved her trip to Florida. News video shot from a distance Wednesday showed Giffords walking with some assistance to the airplane that took her to Florida. Doctors and therapists will be on hand with her the whole time at the Kennedy Space Center and she will be in a restricted viewing area. President Barack Obama is also scheduled to attend the launch, but NASA has not indicated where he will be.

Endeavour will carry the six-member crew to the International Space station and also carry out a number of experiments on its two-week-long mission, including the testing of three small satellites, each small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. If the experiment carried out as the shuttle travels to the space station is successful it could lead to the development of tiny satellites that could be deployed in space for a small fraction of the cost of deploying a conventional satellite.

The most important part of the mission is the delivery of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 to the International Space Station. It will be used for a study of cosmic rays and is expected to be operational for around 10 years.

As the Endeavour launch was being prepared, NASA held a news conference with representatives of private companies developing their own space vehicles, with the goal of providing transport into space for US astronauts by the middle of this decade. NASA has awarded more than $269 billion to four private US companies to help them spur development of their technologies.

The chairman of one of the companies, Mark Sirangelo of the Sierra Nevada company, hailed the accomplishments of the US Space Shuttle program for opening the way for this next phase in space exploration.

"I have heard and I have read many times in the last week about the end of the space shuttle program," said Mark Sirangelo. "From my perspective I do not see it as an end. I see it as the beginning of the next step. I think space shuttle was a bridge to move forward. Our vehicle is based, in large part, on the successes, on the triumphs, on the challenges, and the pain that has been done in the space shuttle program."

The Colorado-based Sierra Nevada company received $80 million from NASA to develop its Dream Chaser space plane. Other companies with similar vehicles in development with initial funding from NASA are Boeing, based in Chicago, California-based Space Exploration Technologies, or Space X, and Blue Origin, which is based in the northwest US state of Washington.

Public urged to name China's first space station

International Business Times: Public urged to name China's first space station

The public is asked to join in the naming of China's first space station set for launch in year 2020.

Chinese scientists and space engineers will start building a 60,000-kilogram space station and cargo spaceship intended for launch in year 2020, authorities said at the launch of the very first manned space programme of China.

Chinese government authorities has announced in a press conference that China Manned Space Engineering Office is now tasked to build a a space station made up of three capsules and a cargo ship for transporting supplies.

In project documents provided the media, the said space station is composed of a core module and two others where experiments will be conducted.

A cargo spaceship to transport supplies will also be developed.

The 18.1m-long core module, with a maximum diameter of 4.2m and a launch weight of 20,000 to 22,000kg, will be launched first.

The two experiment modules will then blast off to dock with the core module. Each laboratory module is 14.4m long, with the same maximum diameter and launch weight of the core module.

The public has also been engaged to provide a name for the said space station.

As space-exploration landscape changes, Penn State aerospace students retool their mission

PennLIve.com: As space-exploration landscape changes, Penn State aerospace students retool their mission

They grew up dreaming of space shuttle launches, counting down the numbers in their heads before the red-orange blaze sent a craft into the unknown.

Penn State aerospace student Kyle Farringer of East Pennsboro Township says he would love to be in the space program but has already accepted a job with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Middletown.

While they were in high school, learning the basic equations that explain motion, they heard President George W. Bush say America is going back to the moon. America, he said, is going to Mars by 2015. When the Constellation program picks up where the Apollo and the shuttle programs left off, America will remind the world that space is our destiny, too.

Four years ago, they began studying aerospace engineering at Penn State, a program that has produced three astronauts and scores of graduates who have worked on space missions from the ground. Even if Bush’s Martian timetable was a bit aggressive, they knew they would soon be ready to help chart the universe.

Then the target changed.

The economy collapsed. The national deficit ballooned. A new, better space vehicle became too expensive.

President Barack Obama’s speeches implore the nation’s youth to win the future, but he’s not planning for their “Sputnik moment” to come in outer space. He killed the Constellation program in October, saying it was “over budget, behind schedule and lacking in innovation.” NASA won’t begin building the shuttle’s replacement until 2015 at the earliest.

Private industry, Obama says, is the way forward.

Companies such as Space X are developing rockets for low-orbit space flight and satellite maintenance. They and their competitors predict a coming boom in the commercial space industry.

That boom is not here yet.

Endeavor will take off for the last time on Friday, the next-to-last-ever shuttle launch.

As 87 Penn State aerospace students prepare to graduate soon after, those who wanted to work in the space field are finding a far different landscape than they once envisioned.

Unlike many of their peers with less-technical degrees, they expect to find work. But instead of rockets, they will likely work on the “air” side of the field, building crafts that fly at a much lower altitude.

As one senior, Joe Singer, put it: “Four years ago, people were thinking, ‘I’m going to get a job in space.’ Now it’s, ‘I better think about something else.’”

We asked seniors what it has felt like to watch the change in the nation’s priorities and what they think it means, for themselves and our future as explorers.

Rocket scientists in training

Kyle Farringer, a 2007 graduate of East Pennsboro High School who is majoring in physics: “I knew I wanted to do this in third grade. I watched too much ‘Star Wars.’ ... I played with a lot of Legos. I just enjoyed designing stuff.”

Robert Thacker-Dey, from Bucks County: “By junior year of high school, I really wanted to do something pioneering. Something brand new. To me, the last thing really left that was new to people was the space industry.”

Singer, a 2007 graduate of Pequea Valley High School in Lancaster County: “We had to do a career survey in seventh grade and aerospace came up. ... My senior year, I built a [remote-control] airplane for my senior project.”

Thacker-Dey: “I didn’t even realize it was rocket science until halfway through my freshman year.”

Singer: “I wrote a paper about the future of space flight two years ago. To submit it for a conference now, I had to revise it thoroughly because so much has changed.

“I get the impression people are confused with what the direction of space exploration should be. We’ve changed it from, ‘We’re going to the moon and Mars’ to ‘an asteroid’ to ‘a point in space where it’s easy to get to.’”

Farringer: “They get going on one thing, and then they cancel it. They just don’t stick with anything.”

Singer: “If we as a nation stated we were getting to Mars by 2025, say, and really committed to it, people would support it.”

Farringer: “I would love to go back to the moon, but there’s no momentum for it anymore. There’s so much we don’t know about our universe yet.”

The work:
Thacker-Dey: “The work is so much harder than I would have guessed coming out of high school. If you had told me it would take me 12 hours to do a project and I still wouldn’t be done, I would have said you were crazy.

“There have been assignments where I’ve stared at the page for five hours straight and not been halfway done the first problem.”

Farringer: “Junior year is when they try to weed you out. You’re pretty much swamped. You can’t keep up with it. Last year, I remember pulling eight or nine all-nighters to get [things] done. You have to form groups and really rely on one another to get things done.

“The guys I study with are my best friends.”

Thacker-Dey: “They set you up with these huge computer programs when we’re working in [coding] languages you barely know and you have to have it done in two weeks.”

Singer: “I have two minors in the college of liberal arts [political science and religious studies]. I think the workload is pretty consistent across the university. ... People who don’t enjoy engineering stuff will tell you engineering is hard.”

Thacker-Dey: “You have to be able to accept failure and understand that you’re not always right.”

The future:
Thacker-Dey: “We had the same design for the shuttle since the ’70s. It’s good that we’re currently starting to build momentum for the next generation of vehicles. It’s bad to cancel the shuttle without something to replace it.”

Singer: “I was in D.C. a couple )of) weeks ago on a congressional-visit day for a student aerospace association. ... Congressman [Todd] Platts said we need to make sure we don’t have duplicate programs doing the same thing. There’s a bunch of NASA programs doing the same thing.”

Thacker-Dey: “Most people not in aerospace say it’s more of a luxury and not a necessity, especially where we are. We have a huge amount of deficit and a government that doesn’t always work properly.”

Singer: “Private industry has to get past the point of people trusting them.”

Farringer: “You’re not going to make a profit off knowledge. That’s not the way it works.”

What’s next?
After graduation, Farringer will go to work at Pratt-Whitney in Lower Swatara Township, testing jet engines.

Singer will begin a three-year engineering rotation with G.E. Aviation. A month after he goes to work, he’ll start classes for his master’s degree.

Thacker-Dey is in the interview process for two jobs: working on F-35 jet engines for a government agency on the air side of the field, and a private space company that is developing inflatable habitats for people in orbit. The company is conducting tests, including one at the International Space Station.

Thacker-Dey: “[The private company is] the job I always wanted, but the [government job] has all the benefits. It’s a great package and they’ll pay for grad school.

“I think once I have a government job it’s easier to move around, and with the government, your pay scale doesn’t decrease. ... I want to be a propulsion engineer for NASA, but they don’t have any entry-level openings right now. If I start with [the government job], I could change later.

“If you offered me the choice right now, I’d probably take [the government job].”

Farringer: “Really, no one I talked to got a job on the space side. It’s really all with air.”

Singer: “One or two people have leads in space, but I think most people in my class will end up in the air side.”

Robert Melton, director of undergraduate studies for Penn State’s aerospace engineering program: “We certainly have students in my spacecraft-design class who are finding jobs in the space side.

“Students say, ‘I want to work on a mission that sends a man to Mars.’ Well, the chances of working on that mission might not be great, but there are a lot of other things: private space exploration, satellite projects, global imaging.”

Singer: “After my sophomore year, I interned at the Aberdeen Proving Ground because I thought experience in government work would give me a head’s-up when dealing with NASA.

“[Now,] if there’s a point where I’m working in space technology, it’s going to be in private industry.”

Farringer: “If there’s going to be another space race, it will be between private companies.”

Singer: “I’m a practical person. I don’t want to work in an industry with so much fluctuation.

“If NASA came to me today and said we’d like to offer you a job, I probably wouldn’t take it because of the uncertainty about where the dollars are going to go.”

Farringer: “I don’t know what my career is going to hold, to be honest with you. I have a feeling NASA is going to keep declining. I guess commercial is going to pick up. But with the way the industry is going, I doubt I’ll work in it.”

Thacker-Dey: “I see myself as a very positive person. Just because you tell me I can’t do something doesn’t mean I won’t do it one day. It doesn’t matter if I have to wait 20 years, 30 years. This is what I want to do.”

Will the U.S. continue to 'reach for the stars'?

News@Northeastern: Will the U.S. continue to 'reach for the stars'?

April 27, 2011
With the space shuttle program winding down — Discovery returned from its final mission in March, Endeavor is scheduled for its last flight this Friday, and Atlantis should launch at the end of June — observers are wondering about the future of the U.S. space program. Will there be room for any kind of ambitious space program, given the state of the U.S. economy? Will space flight move increasingly toward privatization? As former Florida congressman James Bacchus, one of the principal congressional sponsors of the International Space Station, wrote in The Hill’s Congress Blog in March, there has been “utter bipartisan failure thus far to figure out what to do next in human space flight, how to make it work, and how to pay for it at a price our chosen leaders think we can afford.” Here, Associate Professor of Political Science William Kay, an expert on the history and politics of the space program, offers some predictions.

What do you think will happen to the future of space exploration? Will it increase or decrease or plateau, or change in some other way?
In the short run, there will be little change overall. Human space flight missions will continue to the International Space Station, using Russian Soyuz spacecraft for transportation. In the long run — moving beyond ISS or missions to the Moon or Mars — the direction and pace of space exploration depends almost entirely on developments in the relevant technologies, particularly those related to launches.

Do you think privatization of space exploration is a good idea?
Most of the movement toward privatization — which has actually been under way since the Reagan Administration — I have found to be, on the whole, a positive development. Unfortunately, there have also been cases — the most notable being NASA’s decision to contract out shuttle maintenance — where the results have been anything but positive. In any event, privatization is clearly the trend of the future.

One of the great success stories in the development of the “space market” has been the commercial launch sector. In 1981, when the first privately developed rocket was launched, everything sent into space up to that point was the work of a government. By 2000, the commercial launch industry, made up of dozens of firms from almost as many countries, had become a billion-dollar business. Now, everything sent into space, with the partial exception of the shuttle, is launched by a private company. More firms, including a number interested in offering “space tourism,” are expected to join the effort in years to come.


Just how important is it that we “reach for the stars” — especially when the economy is in such dire straits?
Speaking of the economy, one small advantage a traditional, government-run space program has over the privatized approach is that the former is relatively more recession-proof.

With respect to “reaching for the stars,” it is very important that we, as a country, have a clear and consistent set of priorities. In general, I think a great nation should devote some of its resources toward the “lofty and ambitious” — which need not be as gargantuan as the Apollo program. On the other hand, I think “greatness” also means acknowledging and recognizing those occasions — hopefully few in number and short in duration — where the immediate needs of citizens requires the postponing of these loftier pursuits.

SpaceX Sets Sights on Mars

My Fox Boston: SpaceX Sets Sights on Mars

EndPlay Staff Reports) - Even though the long-running space shuttle program is winding down this year, space exploration isn't. And now sites are set even further than the moon or even the International Space Station.

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, recently told the Wall Street Journal's Alan Murray that his company will send humans into space within the next three years and to Mars within 10 to 20 years. He also told Murray he even envisions a future with a self-sustaining colony on the red planet.

A video of the interview can be found here .

Musk said SpaceX would provide transportation, but actual colonization would be left up to others.

"We want to be like the shipping company that brought people from Europe to America, or like the Union Pacific railroad," he said during the interview. "Our goal is to facilitate the transfer of people and cargo to other planets, and then it's going to be up to people if they want to go."

According to reports from Discovery News , SpaceX is partnering with NASA to achieve Musk's lofty initiative; as SpaceX is one of four companies sharing a $269 million boost from a NASA-funded investment. Reports indicate that SpaceX and Boeing will use the cash influx to design capsules for space travel, while Sierra Nevada will use their funds to design a winged craft. The other investment recipient, Blue Origin, was founded by online retailer Amazon's creator Jeff Bezos and is a relative newcomer to the aerospace field.

SpaceX will reportedly use the investment for work on its Dragon capsule, a free-flying and reusable spacecraft that will seat seven, according to company information.

Though the Discovery New s report indicated funds will be disbursed when the developers reach certain milestones, Musk and SpaceX are both proven performers for NASA. Last year, Musk was involved in a similar program to design cargo ships. Musk was successfully able to fly a demo ship for NASA, and was compensated with $300 million in government funding for his design and efforts.

Transcendence Splashes Down

New York Magazine: Transcendence Splashes Down:What was lost when Space Shuttle missions started to feel ho-hum.

t is objectively no small feat, slipping the surly bonds of Earth. But somehow, over its 30 years of existence, NASA’s Space Shuttle program has become roughly as thrilling as the Delta Shuttle. Still, there’s something sad about the end of the program, which will officially shut down after Endeavour’s 25th and final mission, on April 29, and one last there-and-back by Space Shuttle Atlantis in June. It’s not so much that the program’s increasingly prosaic missions—they have amounted, in recent years, to something like space carpooling—will be missed. The sadness instead comes from the petering out of space travel’s promised transcendence.

The commonplace marvels of modern technology probably have something to do with this awe deficit—a 400-mile vertical round-trip in a less-than-sleek 1992-model vehicle may not seem as miraculous as it did in a time before one could, if booked on the right airline, stream Parks and Recreation onto an iPad mid-flight. The Shuttle program’s geopolitical moment has passed, too. We’re no longer going to space to prove that our way of life is superior to an evil empire’s; instead, we’re going up there to do some repairs, drop off a magnetic spectrometer, and see the sights. And with deficits suddenly the Greatest Threat Our Nation Has Ever Faced, such errands now stand out as a sore thumb of a line item.

The Space Shuttle program has cost nearly $200 billion over its lifetime; at a moment when we’re cutting holes in the social safety net to try to balance the books, Friday’s Shuttle launch will cost what NASA says is nearly half a billion dollars and another estimate puts at $1.2 billion. That the “economic, scientific and technological returns of space exploration have far exceeded the investment,” as former NASA life-sciences director Joan Vernikos has written, makes the accounting look a little more favorable, of course. But simply talking about it that way suggests just how un-wonderful space has become.

The Endeavour’s final mission will be commanded by Mark Kelly, the husband of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and for that reason, more than for its place in NASA history, it will ascend from a news brief to a bona fide national moment. Giffords, remarkably, has recovered enough from a January assassination attempt in which she was shot in the head that she is expected to be present for liftoff; President Obama and his family are scheduled to be there as well. It will be an occasion to celebrate Giffords’s inspiring recovery, to try to pull something uplifting from the horrible day in which she and other innocents were attacked, to be both moved and, in the postmodern mode, moved by how moved we are. Or it should be, anyway. It’s hard not to worry that, inevitably and unfortunately, on television and in Politico and slumped grumpily beneath WHERE’S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE? picket signs in the Kennedy Space Center parking lot, some will find a way to make this still-great thing—if you’re just joining, these people are going to space—small and familiar.

It might not be that the space program is insufficiently whiz-bang or beyond our means so much as that we’re now too busy, scared, or pissed off for it to mean anything to us. Which is a shame; baffled and broke-ish and hacked-off as the nation is, a little bit of that old humbling space-wonder and some of the shared purpose necessary to get people from here to there would go a long way right now. More than ever, the silent sanctity of space seems appealing—especially compared to being stuck down here, watching the skies and left without a ride.

Russians 'never, ever had sex in space'

Herald Sun: Russians 'never, ever had sex in space'
RUSSIAN or Soviet cosmonauts never had sex in space in the 50 years of human exploration of the cosmos. And that's official, according to a Russian expert. As for Americans, well, you'd better ask them.

"There's no official or unofficial evidence that there were instances of sexual intercourse or the carrying out of sexual experiments in space," Valery Bogomolov, deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute of Biomedical Problems told the Interfax news agency.

"At least, in the history of Russian or Soviet space exploration this most certainly was not the case," said Bogomolov.

Rumours have persisted for years of secret Russian and American programs to test the effects of weightlessness on sex but this has always been strongly denied by both sides.

"As for American space exploration, well, I just don't have the information to categorically deny that," said Bogomolov. "There are just anecdotal rumours which are not worth trusting," he added.

Four Companies Win NASA Funding for Space Program

The New American: Four Companies Win NASA Funding for Space Program
Private industry is making progress toward lowering the cost of space flight, and NASA would like to come along for the ride.

Among the earliest actions of the Obama administration was the appointment of the “Augustine Committee,” which was given the responsibility of carrying out a review of NASA’s manned space program. The result of the committee deliberations was a NASA with its budget intact, but without a mission or mandate to go anywhere. The previous administration’s plans for a return to the Moon and eventual missions to Mars were abandoned — few presidential administrations are interested in implementing the showpiece programs of their predecessors.

One of the implications of the new administration’s policy was to make tentative steps toward privatization. As reported over a year ago for The New American:

The Obama plan would rely on private spacecraft to replace the space shuttle in transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station. But such reliance on private corporations does not mean that NASA’s spending will be cut; as in all budgetary matters under the current administration, the space agency will receive more funding, and although work on Constellation-related project will be cut back, even cancelled, this does not mean that the space agency will not pursue new technologies.

The implementation of this change in policy continues, as NASA awards a total of $269.3 million to four companies that are developing new spacecraft, which the space agency may seek to purchase from them in the future. A story for the Los Angeles Times details the division of NASA’s funds:

On Monday, NASA handed out $269.3 million to four companies to privately develop rockets and spacecraft for what could be the next step in manned spaceflight.

The winners included Hawthorne-based rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, and Boeing Co., which develops spacecraft in Huntington Beach and uses rocket engines made by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in Canoga Park.The other two awards were $22 million to Blue Origin, a closely held space venture in Kent, Wash., that is owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and $80 million to Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev.

After the shuttle program is mothballed and before privately built space vehicles are astronaut-ready, the U.S. will have no way to travel to the International Space Station other than shelling out $63 million for rides on a Russian Soyuz rocket. "We're committed to safely transporting U.S. astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

SpaceX has drawn a great deal of attention in recent months with its successful launch of the Falcon 9 booster and its ambitious plan for the largest rocket since the days of the Apollo program: the Falcon Heavy. For SpaceX, and other rocket manufacturers, a future which is less reliant on NASA funding offers prospects for a greater involvement by private industry in space. In a post-shuttle era, NASA is less a provider of access to low earth orbit, and more a consumer; their role is more analogous to buying tickets on the plane, rather than owning the whole airline. Over the long term, the existence of privately-owned launch vehicles offers far greater prospects for the exploration and development for the commercial use of space than anything dreamed of by NASA or any other governmental space agency.

NASA Honors Pioneer Astronaut Alan Shepard With Moon Rock

PR Newswire: NASA Honors Pioneer Astronaut Alan Shepard With Moon Rock
WASHINGTON, April 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA will posthumously honor Alan B. Shepard Jr., the first American astronaut in space who later walked on the moon, with an Ambassador of Exploration Award for his contributions to the U.S. space program.

Shepard's family members will accept the award on his behalf during a ceremony at 5:30 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 28, at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, located at 74 Greenbury Point Road in Annapolis, Md. His family will present the award to the museum for permanent display. NASA's Chief Historian Bill Barry will represent the agency at the event, which will include a video message from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

Shepard, a 1945 graduate of the Naval Academy, was one of NASA's original seven Mercury astronauts selected in April 1959. On May 5, 1961, he was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard the Freedom 7 spacecraft on a suborbital flight that carried him to an altitude of 116 miles.

Shepard made his second spaceflight as the commander of Apollo 14 from Jan. 31 to Feb. 9, 1971. He was accompanied on the third lunar landing by astronauts Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell. Maneuvering the lunar module "Antares" to a landing in the hilly upland Fra Mauro region of the moon, Shepard and Mitchell deployed and activated a number of scientific instruments and collected almost 100 pounds of lunar samples for return to Earth.

NASA is giving the Ambassador of Exploration Award to the first generation of explorers in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs for realizing America's goal of going to the moon. The award is a moon rock encased in Lucite, mounted for public display.

The rock is part of the 842 pounds of lunar samples collected during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972. The astronauts or family members receiving the award present it to a museum of their choice, where the moon rock is placed on public display.

For pictures of the NASA Ambassador of Exploration Award, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/AofEphotos.html
Shepard retired from NASA in 1974 and passed away in July 1998. For more biographical information, visit:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/shepard-alan.html
NASA Television will broadcast a Video File of the award presentation. For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Shuttle Endeavor to Take Off on April 29

AutoEvolution: Shuttle Endeavor to Take Off on April 29

Unaware of the fact that 2011 is a historic year for the American space exploration program, the Russian space agency has somewhat messed things up for Endeavor, the space shuttle that is was originally scheduled to dock with the International Space Station on April 27.

In order to avoid a space traffic jam with the Progress unmanned mission, set to take off on the same date, NASA decided to postpone the last launch in Endeavor's career. On Wednesday, the agency confirmed that the new launch date is April 29.

On her final journey into space, Endeavor will be transporting to the ISS spare parts, supplies and a $2 billion astrophysics experiment. The mission, dubbed STS-134, is scheduled to last for 14 days, but Mike Moses, NASA's shuttle program launch integration manager, told Space.com that that can be extended to 16 days.

"We'll probably add those two days, taking that to a 16-day mission, but we won't do that until we get on orbit and see what we've got," Moses told the source. "All in all it's going to be a very busy mission, very packed."

At the end of which the shuttle will make her return trip to land for the final time. After NASA completes stripping the shuttle from all potentially harmful and non-essential parts, the craft will be taken into custody by the California Science Center in Los Angeles. That will leave only one shuttle running, the Atlantis, which will follow the same process later in the year, after it too makes its final flight.

NASA awards $270M to spacecraft builders

Florida Today: NASA awards $270M to spacecraft builders

NASA on Monday awarded almost $270 million to developers of four U.S. spacecraft that are the frontrunners to fly astronauts after the shuttle.

Two capsules, a space plane and a gumdrop-shaped spacecraft were selected under a program seeking to develop commercial vehicles to taxi astronauts to the International Space Station or other destinations by the middle of the decade.

After two more shuttle flights, NASA will rely on Russian spacecraft for rides to the space station until a U.S. commercial service becomes available.

"We're committed to safely transporting U.S. astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "These agreements are significant milestones in NASA's plans to take advantage of American ingenuity to get to low-Earth orbit, so we can concentrate our resources on deep space exploration."

NASA hopes privately run crew transportation will cost less than a government-run system, allow the agency to focus on building a giant rocket and capsule for exploration and help spur a market for commercial spaceflight.

The agency last year began its commercial crew development program, known as "CCDev," with $50 million in federal stimulus funds split among five companies.

The highly anticipated second round spread more than five times as much funding among fewer companies, hoping to accelerate progress on commercial systems.

After winnowing 22 proposals to eight finalists, NASA made the following awards:


$92.3 million to The Boeing Co. of Houston, Texas, to continue work on the Apollo-style CST-100 capsule, which the company hopes will also visit private stations launched by Bigelow Aerospace.


$80 million to Sierra Nevada Corp. of Louisville, Colo., developer of the Dream Chaser spacecraft, which resembles a small space shuttle orbiter.


$75 million to SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., whose Dragon spacecraft has completed one orbital test flight under a NASA program readying it for cargo deliveries to the space station.


$22 million to Blue Origin of Kent. Wash., a start-up backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos that will work on its gumdrop-shaped New Shepard spacecraft and an escape system.

Each of the spacecraft - all able to carry up to seven people - would launch from the Space Coast on United Launch Alliance's Atlas V or Delta IV rockets or SpaceX's Falcon 9, and the program will be managed at Kennedy Space Center.

The new funding will likely bring some jobs to Brevard County, though the numbers initially would be very small compared to the thousands being lost as the shuttle program nears retirement.

NASA did not specify when it would open a competition to select the vehicles that will ultimately fly crews, saying plans could be released by late this summer.

Philip McAlister, acting director of the Commercial Spaceflight Development program at NASA headquarters, said the field of competitors also won't be limited to Monday's winners, which did not include any launch vehicle providers.

Among the four finalists that lost out Monday were ULA, which won $6.7 million in the program's first round to work on an emergency detection system, and ATK, which sought to repurpose a solid rocket booster developed under NASA's canceled Constellation program as the first stage of a crew launcher.

The other two were Orbital Sciences Corp., which has a contract to deliver cargo and had proposed a space plane to carry crews, and Excalibur Almaz, which is upgrading old Soviet-designed systems.

Also overlooked Monday was a proposal by lead shuttle contractor United Space Alliance to study the viability of flying the shuttle commercially.

McAlister said a selection panel weighed how much technical progress could be made in a year and how much the proposals would advance availability of a commercial crew system given the funding available.

It's not clear how soon any of those systems will fly missions, with NASA citing only a "middle of the decade" target.

SpaceX has said it could be ready to fly crews within three years of being awarded a contract. Boeing said Monday it remained on track to fly by 2015, with test flights in 2014, if funding continued to ramp up.

"We'll be well along within a year," said Keith Riley, deputy manager for Boeing's commercial crew programs.

While the second round of commercial crew development funding was significantly bigger than the first, it's a fraction of the at least $3 billion budgeted in 2011 to work on a heavy-lift rocket and the Orion capsule for exploration.

NASA has requested $850 million to accelerate commercial crew efforts in 2012, but many in Congress are insisting NASA focus more resources on the heavy-lift project that by law is expected to be ready to fly by 2016.

Still, the commercial spaceflight advocates called Monday "a landmark day."

"This is a big step towards opening up the space frontier," said John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. "Leveraging private investment is the only way NASA can make its dollars go farther in these times of belt tightening."

The program differs from traditional NASA contracts in that companies will only be paid upon meeting negotiated milestones, and they must invest in their projects. That investment ranges from 10 percent to 20 percent over the next year, NASA said.

"The next American-flagged vehicle to carry our astronauts into space is going to be a U.S. commercial provider," said Ed Mango, manager of the Commercial Crew Program based at KSC.

Commission that oversees U.S. Space & Rocket Center adopts policy to handle contracts

blog.al.com: Commission that oversees U.S. Space & Rocket Center adopts policy to handle contracts
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- The commission that oversees the U.S. Space & Rocket Center has agreed to changes in a policy for managing contracts, with committee approval required for certain contracts.

The center's CEO will review and approve all contracts, agreements or purchase orders, according to an amended contract management policy approved Monday by the Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission. However, contracts that must be approved by the commission's business committee in order to be binding on the commission are:

Any contract, agreement or purchase order with a cumulative cost of $75,000 or more, including options;

Any contract that is a renewal or extension of a previously approved contract with a cumulative cost of $75,000 or more, including options;

Any contract with a single party in which the total value of all contracts exceeds $75,000; or

Any contract of longer than 60 months.

In addition, contracts in any of those categories that exceed $150,000 and license agreements for any Space Camp or Aviation Challenge license must also be approved by the commission's executive committee.

When the business or executive committee approves a contract, then the CEO and the commission's chair or vice chair is authorized to execute it.

"The (business) committee has been working (on policy changes) for quite some time," said Daniel Wilson, a committee member and former committee chair, at the commission's meeting. The amended policy gives the CEO some authority in dealing with contracts, he said, while providing oversight from commission members.

"If it's too cumbersome, we can always revisit the issue," Wilson said.

"I think it's a good, protective measure," said Dr. Deborah Barnhart, who was named the center's CEO in December. "I don't think it will be cumbersome."

Previously, for contracts with cumulative costs of $100,000 or more, only the approval by the CEO and the commission's chair or vice chair was required, and contracts with cumulative costs under $100,000 required only the CEO's approval.

The execution of a number of contracts by former CEO Larry Capps became a major issue with some commission members. Under an involuntary termination agreement reached last November, Capps remained as a consultant through February and retired.

Barnhart reported to commission members that, to date, funding has been received to send 73 children to Space Camp programs as part of the "Summer of Fun" campaign. Local businesses have been asked to sponsor scholarships for area children.

More than 200 scholarship applications have been received, Barnhart said.

Michael Flachbart, the center's vice president of operations, said that registration for this year's weeklong camps is 3 percent higher than at the same time last year.

Attendance for the center's traveling exhibit, "CSI: The Experience," reached 12,256 as of last Thursday, compared to projections of 14,056 guests, Barnhart said. That brings attendance of the exhibit, which opened in late January, to about 78 percent of projections, she said. About 1,800 more children with school groups are scheduled to attend the exhibit before it closes May 1, she said.

The commission on Monday also amended its by-laws, changing the name of its finance committee to business committee and its aerospace programs committee to education committee, to reflect the restructuring earlier this year of Space Center departments. The development committee and visions and plans committee were included in the by-laws as standing committees.

Taxis in space new NASA goal

Montreal Gazette: Taxis in space new NASA goal

NASA divided up more than $269 million US Monday among several companies vying to build commercial spaceships to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, the space agency said.

Boeing received $92.3 million and privately held Sierra Nevada Corp. got $80 million, NASA said.

Space Exploration Technology, the privately held company founded by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, was awarded $75 million. The company, also known as SpaceX, is considering an initial public offering next year, Musk recently said.

Blue Origin, founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, received a contract worth $22 million. The companies were competing for the next round of funding in NASA's Commercial Crew Development program.

The program is aimed at developing a U.S. commercial alternative to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station after the U.S. space shuttles are retired later this year.

The United States has already turned over flights to Russia at a cost of $51 million per person. The price is expected to increase to $63 million in 2014.

"We're committed to safely transporting U.S. astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said.

"These agreements are significant milestones in NASA's plans to take advantage of American ingenuity to get to low-Earth orbit so we can concentrate our resources on deep space exploration."

The companies chosen for the program came from a pool of 22, Philip McAlister, acting director of Commercial Spaceflight Development at NASA, told reporters during a conference call.

In addition to government funds, the companies will be expected to invest their own resources, a shift from how the United States has developed spacecraft in the past.

The agreement covers work for about 14 months. The goal is for NASA to be able to buy commercial orbital space transportation services by about 2015.

NASA to Announce Funding for Private Spaceship Builders Today

Space.com: NASA to Announce Funding for Private Spaceship Builders Today
NASA today (April 18) will announce the private companies who will receive funding awards to help develop technologies that will support the agency's commercial spaceship needs.

The awards are part of the second round of NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, which is aimed at supporting growth within U.S. industry to develop and demonstrate human spaceflight capabilities.

The first round of the agency's CCDev initiatives began in 2009, and the second round of selected proposals will be used to advance the commercial crew space transportation system concepts and mature the design and development of launch vehicles and spacecraft, NASA officials said in a statement.

In February, NASA contacted at least eight private companies, including Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Blue Origin, Boeing, Excalibur Almaz, Orbital Sciences Corp., Sierra Nevada Corp., Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and United Launch Alliance (ULA) to discuss their proposals for the CCDev2 awards. [Infographic: Spaceships of the World]

After NASA's space shuttle program ends later this year, the agency will rely on commercial providers to carry cargo and eventually humans to the International Space Station. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. already have contracts with NASA to ferry supplies to the space station following the retirement of the veteran orbiters.

NASA will discuss its commercial space company picks today during media briefing at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT). The teleconference will feature the following representatives:

Philip McAlister, acting director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Edward Mango, program manager of the commercial crew program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Andrew Hunter, deputy chief financial officer at NASA Headquarters.
Today's announcement comes on the heels of last week's political compromise that resulted in a new federal spending bill. On April 14, Congress passed a spending measure for the last five months of the year 2011.

The bill left NASA with about $18.5 billion, putting its budget roughly $240 million below its 2010 funding level.

To outer space and back to Earth again

The Indepedent.co.uk: To outer space and back to Earth again

Man has come a long way since Yuri Gagarin first went into space 50 years ago. But as space travel becomes a preserve of the wealthy and the Moon return project is slashed, is the heydey of space exploration over?


It’s 1957 Russia. Laika the dog is preparing for lift-off, sat in a padded cabin sealed off from the radio transmitters, telemetry system and programming unit that will transport her to the ends of the Earth.


The world is watching, astonished and aghast – the 18kg Russian spacecraft is far superior to anything the US is considering.


Building on the success of Sputnik 1, launched just one month before, Russian engineers are preparing the first ever spacecraft to carry a living animal into orbit.


In the years that followed, the Soviet Union and USA would become locked in a battle for supremacy in outer space exploration, against the backdrop of an increasingly cold war.


The Space Race unleashed a proliferation of experiments, from artificial satellites to excursions to the Moon. But while the 1950s and 60s boasted space exploration in abundance, manned voyages in the years that followed were to deplete.


The space agenda began to prioritise analysis and photography from orbit over man exploring the Moon in earnest - Venera 13 analysed Venusian soil from 1982, while the surface of Mars was brought into focus by Phobus 2 in 1989.


Undoubtedly, planetary science has seen a tremendous growth in new knowledge. We have discovered Europa’s ocean could support life, and that liquid methane rain falls on Saturn’s moon, Titan, creating rivers and lakes not unlike those on Earth.


But aren’t the days of astronauts setting foot on the Moon to explore its peaks and crevasses, not as a tourist in exchange for millions of dollars, but for the sake of science, over?


Recent developments might suggest as much. In 2010 Barack Obama announced the end of the Constellation mission back to the Moon, and encouraged NASA to shift its focus in exchange for a $6 billion funding increase.


Meanwhile business tycoon Richard Branson built on his £14 million deal to allow his company, Virgin, to take passengers into space. Yesterday Virgin Galactic announced it is looking for pilot-astronauts for both the carrier vehicle and the craft that will fly into space.


Chris Bergin, Managing Editor of NASASpaceflight.com, a website which publishes space exploration news, acknowledged moon missions are declining.


“While Moon missions may no longer be the main focus of the future plans, staged manned exploration goals of potentially visiting a Near Earth Object (NEO) - such an asteroid - working off the long duration space flight lessons of six month tours on the International Space Station, will lay the path for an eventual manned mission to Mars,” he said.


“Robotic exploration of the outer solar system has always been part of the space program's focus, and will continue to be so - from a robotic standpoint - not least because manned exploration of those destinations won't occur in our lifetimes.


“Manned exploration of Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) is technically achievable, but highly costly. While robotic missions are less costly, the balance is to build a viable roadmap for manned BEO missions, given manned missions still cultivate far more inspiration and public interest over robotic missions, and by some margin.”

Bergin also spoke about space tourism: “Space tourism will become part of - as opposed to a dominating element - of the future of space travel, at least from a public interest standpoint, and probably not from a launch frequency standpoint,” he said.

“The big missions will still remain with NASA, and commercial space, such those seen with SpaceX's plans, who continue to impress with their evolving fleet of vehicles, led by billionaire founder Elon Musk.”

Turning specifically to Richard Branson’s venture, Bergin said: “Virgin Galactic are certainly leading the charge for space tourism, which had previously only been open to a handful of selected multi-millionaires paying to ride on the Russian Soyuz to the International Space Station for around a week.

“However, you will still need to be extremely rich to afford to ride on Virgin's SpaceShip2, and notably, you are only going to be riding to suborbit, for a matter of minutes. To put into context, you are only going as "high" as where the Solid Rocket Boosters separate during the first two minutes of a Shuttle launch. It will still be amazing, but there's certainly some confusion in the public domain that these flights will be like a Shuttle mission.

“Some people who follow the space program have noted that Virgin's PR machine has been working overtime on selling their flights, noting they are 'safer than the Space Shuttle', whilst completely ignoring the Shuttle's amazing 30 year career in their legacy of flight logo on the side of the vehicle. Let's be clear, in space flight terms, we're comparing a new Mini popping to the supermarket, with an 18 wheeler juggernaut carrying a delivery across Europe.

“However, we are witnessing the start of what will eventually be numerous companies offering tickets to ride into space, notably the plans seen for Bigelow Aerospace, who continue to plan a 'Space Hotel' via their innovative inflatable module design. It may turn into an exciting future for private passengers, with costs eventually reducing so that non-millionaires will be able to book a flight into space. That can only a good thing. Sir Richard Branson is being rightly praised for opening up these possibilities.”

Fifty years ago the world was full of aspirations that a new age of space exploration was upon them. And according to the Space Odyssey series, trips to the moon should by now be as customary as popping to the supermarket. Instead, space exploration looks set to become the preserve of the mega-rich, while funding for voyages which shape the world as we know it are slashed. To infinity and?back to Earth again?

Editorial: Shuttle decision more than a disappointment; it’s an outrage

Dallas News: Editorial: Shuttle decision more than a disappointment; it’s an outrage
Forget that we’re all Texans here and more than a little biased. If you asked unbiased people in Botswana to name the city they most associate with space exploration, chances are they’d say Houston.

When humans landed on the moon in 1969, the very first sentences out of commander Neil Armstrong’s mouth were heard around the world: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” For all of the past 135 shuttle missions, the first and last sentences out of the mission chief’s mouth included some reference to Houston.

It boggles the mind, then, to contemplate the Washington decision-making that, on Tuesday, awarded exhibits of retired shuttle orbiters to New York, Washington, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and a fourth to (drum roll) … Los Angeles.

The announcement came on the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle flight — a flight that shuttle biographer Henry Dethloff describes as having been conceived in large part during discussions on Oct. 27, 1966, about creation of a reusable launch vehicle. And where did those discussions occur? Houston.

The commander of the first shuttle mission, STS-1, was John Young, who spent nearly all of his career training at the Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston. From his current home near Houston, Young can drive to the space center’s museum and look over capsules and all kinds of memorabilia from his early days in the Gemini program and its Mercury predecessor.

Young can tour various gigantic Saturn V rocket components that carried Apollo vehicles like the one he commanded to the moon and back. And he can recall incredible stories of Apollo 13 — the infamous “Houston, we’ve had a problem” flight. Young was part of the Houston team that scrambled to adapt filters, tubes and other odds and ends to extend the crew’s life on the lunar landing module as the Apollo 13 capsule slowly died.

Young and millions of visitors to the Johnson Space Center can tour just about every aspect of the U.S. space program except one big one: the shuttle itself. Like the rest of us, he’ll have to hop on a plane to Florida, Washington, New York or … Los Angeles.

Texans were warned weeks ago that politics would play a role in this decision, even though Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden, the NASA administrator, insists that’s not the case. Bolden, himself a former astronaut, could not possibly have overlooked Houston’s pivotal role in the shuttle program.

This newspaper shares the skepticism of Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who stated, “It is clear political favors trumped common sense and fairness in the selection of the final locations for the orbiter fleet.”

This decision isn’t just a disappointment. It’s an outrage.

The Future of Human Spaceflight

FoxNews: The Future of Human Spaceflight
Fifty years ago today, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin blasted into Earth orbit, marking the beginning of the human spaceflight era.

In humanity's first half-century as a spacefaring species, government-run space programs put people on the moon and began to master low-Earth orbit. The next 50 years should bring a sea change, with commercial companies taking over near-Earth operations and freeing NASA and other space agencies to send astronauts to asteroids and Mars.

As a result, by 2061, millions of people may well have gone to space, and thousands may be living there, experts say. We may see permanently manned outposts on the moon, and boots will likely have crunched into Mars' red dirt. [Gallery: Visions of the Future of Human Spaceflight]

The seeds of this transformation are being sown now, as private companies ramp up their spaceflight capabilities and start finding ways to make money in Earth orbit and beyond.

"We're in the midst of a paradigm shift right now," said scientist Alan Stern, vice president of the space division of the Southwest Research Institute, a nonprofit organization based in San Antonio. "In 15 years we'll likely look back and say, 'That was a special time. That was pivotal.'"

Private spaceflight taking off

Since Gagarin's historic achievement, human spaceflight has been the province of nations, with government agencies such as NASA launching people into space for scientific reasons, or as expressions of national pride.

But that's all about to change, because private spaceflight is set to take off, making access to space far cheaper than it's ever been.

Multiple companies are developing their own spaceships and their own plans for making money in space. Virgin Galactic, for example, could start taking tourists on suborbital joyrides as early as 2012, at $200,000 per seat. More than 400 people have already bought down payments for such a trip, according to company officials.

Other firms are jockeying for position in the suborbital-tourism race, including Blue Origins, Masten Space Systems, XCOR Aerospace and Armadillo Aerospace.

Orbital tourist trips might not be far behind suborbital jaunts. Various companies — including Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX for short) — are developing crewed vehicles that could take paying customers to the International Space Station, or perhaps the commercial space station under development by Bigelow Aerospace, which is helmed by hotel tycoon Bob Bigelow.

And spaceflight might become a regular part of our day-to-day travel around the planet within the next 50 years, some space industry insiders say. Vehicles that rocket through space on their way from San Francisco to Sydney, for example, could turn a taxing 14-hour trip into a short jaunt.

"In 50 years, companies and government agencies may have tackled the technological challenges that will enable point-to-point rocket or hypersonic transportation," said Virgin Galactic president and CEO George Whitesides. "For the last 50 years, the average speed of air travel has not changed — we are certainly overdue for a significant major advance."

More than tourism needed

Tourism is the leading edge of the commercial push into space. But for humanity to really establish a presence in Earth orbit and beyond, other space-based industries must be developed as well, experts say. [Vote Now! The Best Spaceships of All Time]

"People need to figure out business models by which you can monetize other aspects of human spaceflight beyond tourism," Stern told SPACE.com. "Bob Bigelow has one, with his space station. We need 50 Bob Bigelows."

Those other commercial opportunities may include mining asteroids for precious metals, or extracting the moon's ample water stores to produce rocket fuel, which would be sold to spaceships at orbiting filling stations.

Indeed, some businesses are already planning out such ventures. The private firm Shackleton Energy Company, for example, plans to send robotic scouts to the moon in the next four years and hopes to be selling propellant in low-Earth orbit by the end of the decade.

If some of these ideas pan out, more and more entrepreneurs and companies might see business opportunities in space. The effects could snowball, and the proverbial heavens could soon open up.

"Fifty years in the future, I would hope that millions of people have had the opportunity to travel to space, and that thousands of people live there," Whitesides told SPACE.com. "I think outposts on the moon and Mars are entirely possible, with tourism to the lunar surface an expensive but possible activity."

Freeing NASA up to explore

The coming explosion in commercial spaceflight capabilities should free up NASA to explore farther afield than it ever has before.

NASA is retiring its space shuttle program later this year after three decades of service. The agency is counting on companies such as SpaceX to take up the burden of ferrying astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit over the long haul.

"If others are able to take that on, then we can concentrate on exploration and discovery, which are really what we're here for," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.

NASA is already eyeing destinations beyond low-Earth orbit and the moon. President Barack Obama's vision for the nation's human spaceflight future calls for NASA to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and then on to Mars by the 2030s.

NASA has many reasons to send astronauts to Mars — chief among them to search for evidence of life on the Red Planet, be it past or present. And astronauts could well be looking for microbes in the Martian dirt before 2061 rolls around.

"I think in this timeframe, we could easily have sent people to Mars," Cooke told SPACE.com. "We may have gone there repeatedly."

Excursions to the moon or asteroids would likely come first, Cooke added, to help astronauts and scientists map out a Mars trip. And a journey to the Martian moon Phobos is another potential intermediary step.

"You'd be right at Mars, and you could teleoperate [robots] on the surface," Cooke said. "Yet you wouldn't have to take the full step of landing on Mars, which is a big deal."

Making it happen: NASA

NASA is on its way toward developing the capability to get beyond low-Earth orbit. But the space agency isn't quite ready to launch astronauts to the Red Planet yet.

Among other things, NASA needs to develop larger spaceships that can accommodate crew on a potential six-month trip to Mars, for example. And it must come up with a heavy-lift rocket, Cooke said.

"The biggest first step is a heavy-lift vehicle," Cooke said. "It's incredibly important. We're going to have to launch the equivalent of the full-up space station that we currently have in orbit to get to the Martian surface and back."

New entry and landing systems would also be needed for a manned Mars mission, as would effective ways to protect journeying astronauts from dangerous space radiation.

The scale and cost of such a mission mean that NASA likely wouldn't be going it alone.

"We will probably do this in an international effort, which will benefit all of the world," Cooke said.

Making it happen: Private spaceflight

For the commercial human spaceflight revolution to really take hold, companies must find a variety of ways to make money in space, Stern said. And they must increase the safety of human spaceflight. [10 Private Spaceships Headed for Reality]

NASA's space shuttle has had two fatal accidents in 133 manned missions. The safety record of Russia's Soyuz vehicle is comparable. Private companies will probably have to do better than that, or tourists, scientists, educators and anyone else won't risk flying with them regularly.

"The trick is to have the fatalities be rare enough to be acceptable," Stern said. "Currently they are not, because the shuttle and similar systems have fatalities too often on a per-flight basis."

Stern thinks an order of magnitude improvement in the safety of commercial human spaceflight — one accident every 500 or 1,000 flights, say — might be enough to get people taking to the heavens regularly.

For his part, Whitesides thinks that human spaceflight might make huge safety strides in the next half-century, perhaps becoming as reliable and routine as plane travel is now.

"I think travel to LEO [low-Earth orbit] could approach the safety of commercial airplane travel in that timeframe, if not much sooner," Whitesides said. "Through the use of new technologies and safety systems, we should be able to make significant advancements in space safety, as we are doing today at Virgin Galactic."

If all of these factors line up, humanity could escape from the boundaries of its home planet as never before by 2061. We could establish an extensive and protracted presence in Earth orbit, on the moon and beyond, experts say.

Stern is optimistic that this push into space is under way, facilitated by the improving capabilities of private spaceflight.

"We're seeing that the private sector can do human spaceflight, and do it at radically less expensive price points," he said. "I believe in 200 years, when people look back, they will see this as the pivotal breakout in human spaceflight."

World celebrates 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s space flight

Itar Tass: World celebrates 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s space flight

OTTAWA, April 11 (Itar-Tass) -- The MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver has held a gala meeting devoted to an outstanding role played by first world cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in the history of space exploration. A representative of the MacMillan Space Center, Tracy Cromwell, in an interview with Itar-Tass praised a great role played by Gagarin’s space mission. The gala event was organized to pay tribute to Yuri Gagarin and his contribution to the history of manned space flights, Cromwell said.

On the eve of the 50th jubilee of the first manned space flight special events devoted to the historic anniversary were held in Canada, including at the Canadian parliament in Ottawa, a conference of writers of science fiction in Toronto, museums in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg, the Astronomical Observatory in Alberta and the University of Western Ontario.

ROME - Special events timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's space flight are beginning at the Sapienza University of Rome on Monday. The main gala events attended by Russian and Italian cosmonauts will be held at the University of Insubria in Varese (Milan) on April 12, where a scientific conference devoted to the present, past and future of manned space flights will be held. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev, who had been to space four times including a space mission to the Mir orbital station and the International Space Station, will take part in the conference. A documentary film devoted to Yuri Gagarin will be demonstrated for the first time at Milan Planetarium.

The Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology organized a meeting with Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev, who took part in two international space expeditions to the Mir orbital station and the International Space Station, and US astronaut Walter Cunningham who was the Lunar module pilot in the 1968 Apollo mission. Italian astronaut Maurizio Cheli who took part in the Columbia shuttle expedition in 1975 is to join his Russian and US colleagues.

TBILISI - An exhibition "The Way to the Stars" devoted to the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s space flight was held at the Russian Drama Theatre in Tbilisi on Sunday. On display were paintings created by talented children who took part in the Georgian national competition of children’s drawings organized by the “Russian Club” international cultural organization.

More than 250 young artists from Georgia aged from 4 to 17 took part in the competition at which 600 drawings were displayed. The winners - the nine-year-old Luka Gotua from Tbilisi and the 16-year-old Georgy Kopadze from Rustavi, were awarded a free sightseeing tour to Russia which includes historical cities on Russia's "Golden Ring" tourist itinerary.

Test of Big Space Rocket Set for Late 2012

VOANews.com: Special English: Test of Big Space Rocket Set for Late 2012
This is the VOA Special English Technology Report.

An American space company says a powerful new rocket should be ready for a test launch by the end of next year. The company is Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. Its new rocket is called the Falcon Heavy.

Company officials say it will be able to transport satellites or spacecraft weighing up to fifty-three metric tons into orbit. Fifty-three metric tons is one hundred seventeen thousand pounds. That load weight is double the capacity of NASA space shuttles. The space agency is retiring its shuttles after thirty years.

Elon Musk is the chief executive officer of SpaceX.

ELON MUSK: "One hundred seventeen thousand pounds is more than a fully loaded Boeing 737 with one hundred thirty-six passengers, luggage and fuel in orbit. So that is really, really humongous. It’s more payload capability than any vehicle in history, apart from the Saturn Five."

NASA used Saturn Five rockets during its Apollo and Skylab programs in the nineteen sixties and seventies. A Saturn Five launched the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on the moon in nineteen sixty-nine.

The rockets were removed from service in nineteen seventy-three. But they remain the most powerful ever built.

Elon Musk says the Falcon Heavy will be the second most powerful rocket ever. He says it was designed to do more than carry satellites and other equipment into space. He says the rocket was designed to meet NASA's ratings for human flight safety. So it could someday be used to carry astronauts and other travelers into space.

Mr. Musk says the Falcon Heavy could also be used for missions like carrying a robotic lander to collect samples from Mars.

ELON MUSK: "It has so much capability, so much more capability than any other vehicle, that I think we can start to contemplate missions like a Mars sample return, which requires a tremendous amount of lift capability because you’ve got to send a lander to Mars that still has enough propellant to return to Earth."

The first launch is planned from the company's launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. A launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is expected in late twenty-thirteen or fourteen.

In time, SpaceX hopes to launch ten Falcon Heavy rockets a year. It says the rocket should reduce launch costs to about two thousand dollars a kilogram. That is about one-tenth the cost of carrying loads into orbit on a space shuttle.

SpaceX already has a billion-and-a-half-dollar deal with NASA to use a smaller rocket to transport cargo to the International Space Station. The rocket is the Falcon 9, and the deal is for after the two last shuttles -- Endeavour and Atlantis -- are retired this year.

And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report, written by June Simms and Jessica Berman. I'm Steve Ember.

Key dates in the history of space exploration

Space Travel.com: Key dates in the history of space exploration
Following are key dates in the history of space travel and exploration, 50 years after Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin became the first man in space:
1957
October: USSR launches first satellite Sputnik 1.

November 3: Russian dog Laika becomes first live animal in space but dies aboard Sputnik 2.

1958
October: American space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) created.

1961
April: Gagarin becomes first man in space, completing a single, 108-minute orbit aboard Vostok 1.

May: US President John Kennedy launches the Apollo programme which foresees a man on the moon by the end of the decade. American Alan Shepard carries out a 15-minute space flight aboard Mercury.

1962
February: American John Glenn completes the first three orbits of the Earth.

August: US launches a probe to Venus, USSR fires a probe to Mars in November.

1963
June: First space flight by a woman, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.

1965
March: Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov undertakes first spacewalk during a 26-hour flight.

1967
January: Launchpad blaze kills all three astronauts aboard Apollo 1. Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov killed when Soyuz 1 parachute fails in April.

1969
July: US astronauts Neil Armstrong, then Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (Apollo 11) become first men to set foot on the Moon.

1971
April: USSR launches first orbital space station, Salyut 1.

June: Three cosmonauts on Soyuz 11 die during descent of their module.

1975
May: European Space Agency created.

July: A US Apollo spacecraft docks with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft while in Earth orbit.

1979
December: Europe becomes a space power with the launch of the Ariane rocket.

1981
April: Maiden voyage of the US space shuttle Columbia, the first reusable manned spacecraft. It is followed later by Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.

1986
January: Challenger explodes on liftoff, killing all seven astronauts.

1990
April: Launch of of the Hubble Space Telescope, a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency.

1998
November: Start of the contruction of the International Space Station (ISS), which is inhabited in late 2000.

2001
April: US millionaire Dennis Tito becomes the world's first space tourist.

2003
February: Shuttle Columbia disintegrates over Texas upon reentry killing seven astronaunts.

October: China launches the Chang'e I satellite, the nation's first lunar orbiter. In September 2008 Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang aboard the Shenzhou VII successfully completes his country's first ever space walk.

2004
September: British airline magnate Richard Branson announces a plan for the world's first commercial space flights.

2008
October: India's first lunar mission blasts off from the national space centre on the southeastern coast.

2009
February: Iran launches its first domestically manufactured satellite into orbit. A year later it sends animals into space.

2010
February: US President Barack Obama scraps plans to return Americans to the moon and to conquer Mars.

2011
February: Shuttle Discovery lands back on Earth after its final space flight before retirement. After the last journeys of Endeavour and Atlantis, the US will depend totally on Russia's Soyuz to go to space.

Science shortfalls limit NASA spaceflight ambitions

Space.MSNBC.com: Science shortfalls limit NASA spaceflight ambitions
Nearly 50 years after the first human spaceflight, NASA is in poor shape to send astronauts on long deep-space voyages because the agency's life and physical sciences program has shrunk dramatically in both size and scope in recent years, a new report suggests.

However, NASA could achieve the insights and breakthroughs needed to send humans deeper into space than ever before – including to Mars – if the agency supports its life and physical sciences program with strong leadership and stable funding, according to the National Research Council report.

The report, titled "Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences for a New Era," was released Tuesday by the council to help set an agenda for research in the next decade.

NASA's human spaceflight future
NASA's success in human space exploration to date has depended on strong programs studying important questions in life and physical sciences. A forward-looking portfolio of such research could help lead to interplanetary voyages and advance fundamental knowledge of life, materials and technology that can lead to spinoff benefits on Earth, the report noted.

However, several years of budgetary challenges and priority being given to other programs at NASA have left the agency's life and physical sciences program with no clear institutional home and led it to dwindle significantly, according to the committee that wrote the report. As a result, NASA is now in poor shape to take full advantage of the unparalleled opportunities presented by the International Space Station's laboratory environment.

"At some point in the 2001-2002 time frame, life and physical sciences research was an integrated program, receiving about $500 million per year," said Elizabeth Cantwell, co-chair of the committee that wrote the report and director of mission development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. "There were a number of reorganizations and changes between then and 2010, with the biggest change in the 2006-2007 timeframe, and a number of lines of research were either parceled out to new management structures or eliminated."

"It's hard to track how much funding was eliminated, but it looks like it's down to $150 million to $200 million, so a lot of fundamental research was cut," Cantwell told Space.com.

Leadership is key
Strong leadership with scientific know-how is needed to highlight just how important life and physical sciences are in human exploration and help give it the clout it requires, the committee wrote. The report concludes that re-establishing the program under a single management structure housed in an appropriate part of the agency will be key to the program's success, although the committee makes no recommendations as to what that place might be. In addition, they add that a stable and adequate funding base is needed to support a robust research program that attracts top scientists.

"A focused life and physical sciences program can make possible the achievements that bring the space community, policymakers and the U.S. public to a realization that we are ready for the next significant phase of human space exploration," Cantwell said.

Among the areas that the report recommended future life and physical science research at NASA should concentrate on included:

--An effective countermeasures program to fight the adverse effects of the space environment on the health and performance capabilities of astronauts, which would make prolonged human space exploration missions possible.

--The effect that gravity or lack thereof has on biology, a deeper understanding of which could not only help astronauts fight loss of bone in microgravity but also perhaps slow the loss of bone with aging.

-Orbital fuel depots for cryogenic rocket fuels.

-Collecting or producing large amounts of water on the moon or Mars.

-Advances stemming from research on fire retardants, fire suppression, fire sensors and combustion in microgravity that provide the basis for a comprehensive fire-safety system, greatly reducing the likelihood of a catastrophe.

-Regenerative fuel cells that can provide power for long periods at high rates, of use not only in the dark on the surface of the moon but potentially on Earth.

"Research in the life and physical sciences can enable space missions and, as a unique benefit, there is critical research that can in turn be enabled on Earth by access to space," said Wendy Kohrt, professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, and co-chair of the committee that wrote the report. "With the advantage of the space environment, we believe there is an opportunity to significantly advance fundamental scientific understanding."

The committee that wrote the report has met with NASA and congressional staffers about their findings. "It's being taken seriously," Cantwell said. "The challenge they have to take into consideration is how we make the next decade or two decades of important research happen, to keep human space exploration not just in existence but moving forward."