mars

We have lift-off! It's a new era for social media, space exploration and... shoes?

Update: The SpaceX rocket launch was aborted at the last minute and rescheduled for Tuesday, May 22 at 3:44 a.m. Eastern.

Facebook ended its first publicly traded day right where it began: at $38 a share. CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang in the Nasdaq opening bell virtually from the Silicon Valley campus, and later, shares began trading at around $42 each. Facebook's bankers saved the IPO, keeping shares barely above $38. From this IPO, Facebook raised $16 billion. That's almost 10 times … Read more

Neil deGrasse Tyson was born the same week in 1958 that NASA was founded. Luck of the draw, perhaps, but the stars clearly have been aligned for a man who today is America's most famous astrophysicist (not to mention director of New York's prestigious Hayden Planetarium).

In recent years, Tyson has also taken on the role of popular educator -- if not public intellectual -- making the case for bigger national investment in space exploration and research. The thrust of his argument is that the pursuit of bold "space adventures" would have the salutary side effect … Read more

NASA is trying to shed any "not invented here" attitude for its next missions to Mars.

The space agency announced Friday it is enlisting the help of scientists and engineers worldwide to lay plans for sending a robot to Mars. The planning group's ultimate mission is to send humans to Mars by the 2030s.

NASA is organizing a meeting, called Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration, at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, in June. Scientists and technologists can submit ideas for papers online, some of which will be presented at the conference.

The robotic … Read more

Scientists believe that a reanalysis of soil samples taken during a Viking mission nearly 30 years ago again shows strong evidence of microbial life on Mars.

In a paper this month published in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences, scientists described performing new experiments and drawing on more recent understanding of the Mars environment to reach a conclusion opposite to one reached decades ago regarding the building blocks of life on Mars.

Controversy has surrounded the original experiments, called the Labeled Release (LR), done on the soil samples during the Viking mission in 1976, according to the paper'… Read more

Not long ago, word leaked of a plan that could take anyone with an extra $150 million on a trip around the moon. So SpaceX founder Elon Musk's assertion today that he hopes to be able to take people on a round-trip to Mars for $500,000 signals a much better deal.

Musk told the BBC that he expects to unveil details of his plans sometime later this year or in early 2013. Essentially, though, Musk believes that with its Falcon 9 launcher and Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX may already have the base infrastructure in place that could get paying … Read more

NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity, has a lot of time on its hands these days--so naturally it's spending a lot of time on Twitter.

The $2.5 billion science laboratory on wheels is in the middle of a 352-million mile trip to the Red Planet with an anticipated arrival date of August 5, 2012. If you're wondering exactly how fast that means Curiosity is traveling through space right now, well... you could just ask it, like @KristineKisky did, eliciting this response that's sure to confuse all non-space nerd-type people:

Curiosity has been actively tweeting and answering fan tweets since before its launch at the end of November. It's even developed a fairly sophisticated--if incredibly geeky--sense of humor and pop culture sensibility, with gems like Super Bowl weekend's "Think Brady & Manning throw long spirals? I'll go 352+ million miles to "touchdown" in Gale Crater." Or "30 Seconds to Mars? More like 241 days to go!"… Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--When Richard Garriott went to space, he lost money on the deal. Next time, he wants to make a profit.

In October 2008, Garriott, a well-known video game designer, traveled as a space tourist to the International Space Station.

The son of a NASA astronaut who grew up thinking everyone goes to space--because his neighbors all had been--his dream of following in his father's footsteps was dashed when he learned as a teenager that his eyes disqualified him for the job. "Being told I was not going to be allowed to go into space," Garriott said, &… Read more

The Obama administration is requesting $17.7 billion for NASA in its fiscal 2013 budget--down slightly from 2012 levels--doubling the amount spent on development of new commercial manned spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station and giving a substantial boost to the delayed and over-budget successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Funding for the space station and ongoing development of new rockets and capsules for deep space exploration remains roughly constant, but the agency's hugely successful Mars exploration program will be sharply scaled back, in large part to offset gains in other areas.

Putting an … Read more

Mars enthusiasts hoping the United States will soon be exploring the Red Planet will likely get some bad news next week.

According to The Washington Post, President Obama's next budget will slash funding for Mars and Jupiter rovers by as much as 20 percent. The budget is expected to be unveiled on Monday.

The Post reported that the Obama Administration has briefed scientists on its proposed budget, which would slash funding for NASA's Mars program from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion annually. And further cuts are proposed over the following four years.

The cuts are likely … Read more