nasa

Lunar orbiter begins long-awaited mapping mission

After two months of checkout and calibration, NASA's $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was maneuvered into a circular 31-mile-high mapping orbit Tuesday, and scientists said Thursday the spacecraft's instruments are delivering intriguing clues about the possible presence of water ice.

"The moon is starting to reveal her secrets, but some of those secrets are tantalizingly complex," said Michael Wargo, NASA's chief lunar scientist.

Scientists expected the spacecraft to find signs of hydrogen--an indicator of possible water ice deposits--in permanently shadowed craters near the moon's south pole. Ice could be expected from cometary impacts over … Read more

Japanese cargo ship completes smooth docking

Japan's new HTV cargo ship, carrying more than 7,000 pounds of supplies and equipment, was plucked out of open space by the International Space Station's robot arm Thursday to complete a near-flawless automated rendezvous marking a major milestone for the station program.

Arm operator Nicole Stott, working inside the Destiny laboratory module, locked the station's space crane onto the HTV cargo ship at 3:47 p.m. EDT as the two spacecraft moved into orbital darkness 220 miles above Eastern Europe.

"It's a real example of international cooperation with a Japanese vehicle captured by … Read more

Astronauts' urine lights up the sky

They pissed it. You may have missed it.

Recently, there was a fascinating glow in the sky that moved observers to ponder just what it might be.

I am assuming that Space.com is an authoritative source of information, for it informs me that the glow that was seen in the sky by so many last Wednesday was, indeed, astronauts' urine.

NASA spokeswoman Kylie Clem told a press conference that this aurora boreapiss was the result of the space shuttle Discovery releasing an unusual amount of water and urine into outer space.

I have never consciously weighed urine--not even my … Read more

House panel questions new direction for space

NASA's embattled Constellation moon program, thought by many to be on life support in the face of ongoing budget cuts, is technically feasible, "soundly" managed, and capable of putting American astronauts back on the moon as planned in the 2020s, the chairman of a manned space review said Tuesday.

But if the Obama administration and Congress fail to restore some $3 billion in lost funding, he said, NASA will be unable to return to the moon or venture beyond the confines of low-Earth orbit.

Norman Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin and chairman of Review of U.… Read more

Discovery glides to smooth California landing

Detoured by bad weather in Florida, the shuttle Discovery dropped out of orbit and swooped to a flawless California landing Friday to close out a successful space station resupply mission.

Shuttle commander Frederick "C.J." Sturckow and pilot Kevin Ford fired the shuttle's twin braking rockets at 4:47 p.m. PDT to drop the ship out of orbit for an hour-long descent to Edwards Air Force Base.

After a steep plunge across the Los Angeles basin, Sturckow took over manual control at an altitude of about 50,000 feet above the Mojave Desert landing site and … Read more

ATK successfully test fires Ares 1 booster

With the future of NASA's embattled moon program in doubt, Alliant Techsystems test-fired a huge five-segment solid-fuel booster in Utah Thursday, a ground-shaking demonstration designed to collect performance data for a new rocket intended to replace the space shuttle.

Generating 22 million horsepower, the lengthened 154-foot-long shuttle booster ignited with a torrent of flame at 3 p.m. EDT, sending a towering column of dirty brown exhaust into the Utah sky as hundreds of spectators looked on. Two minutes later, after consuming 1.4 million pounds of solid propellant, the rocket burned out.

"After witnessing what we just … Read more

Japan launches new cargo craft to space station

The Japanese space agency launched a powerful new rocket Thursday carrying an unmanned space station cargo ship on a complex maiden voyage to deliver some 7,400 pounds of equipment and supplies to the orbital outpost.

With four strap-on boosters gushing white-hot exhaust and a pair of hydrogen-fueled main engines roaring at full throttle, the H-2B rocket thundered away from launch pad 2 at the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan at 1:01:46 p.m. EDT.

"The launch was beautiful," Stephen Clark, a U.S. journalist representing Spaceflight Now, said in an instant message from Tanegashima. &… Read more

Repaired Hubble telescope back in action

NASA scientists showed off spectacular new pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope Wednesday, a stunning gallery of remote galaxies, a stellar nursery, an enormous globular cluster packed with countless pinpoint stars, and a dying sun blowing off its outer atmosphere in butterfly-like wings of debris.

The pictures clearly show the fabled telescope is back in action, ready to resume its role as one of the most productive observatories on or off the planet, thanks to a dramatic five-spacewalk shuttle repair mission last May.

"Every field of astrophysics, whether it's our local neighborhood of planets, nearby stars and their … Read more

Returning to the moon before this century is out

A federal government committee assigned to independently review plans for manned spaceflights has released a summary of its first report. It is not encouraging.

The report makes it clear that NASA's current plans are unachievable.

The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee was established in May by the Obama administration to perform an "independent review of planned U.S. human space flight activities with the goal of ensuring that the nation is on a vigorous and sustainable path to achieving its boldest aspirations in space." Its summary report was released Tuesday. The full report is set for release later this month.

Here's the worst of it, all in one paragraph from page 10:

The Committee has found two executable options that comply with the FY 2010 budget. However, neither allows for a viable exploration program. In fact, the Committee finds that no plan compatible with the FY 2010 budget profile permits human exploration to continue in any meaningful way.

In short, the committee concluded that without additional money, Americans won't be going anywhere in space anytime soon. And even with another $3 billion per year, it'll be a long time before the U.S. can get back to the moon, never mind Mars.

It's commonly said that what took us about eight years to get done in the first place--starting from President Kennedy's famous statement to Congress in May 1961...

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

...and ending with the successful return of Apollo 11 on July 24, 1969--couldn't be done again today because the U.S. lacks the will to commit comparable resources to the project.

But you know what? The Apollo program, start to finish, cost less than $150 billion in today's dollars (after accounting for inflation). NASA's budget request for 2010 (PDF) is well over $18 billion. And I just realized that eight years and two months of that spending adds up to just over $152 billion.

… Read more