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FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens do exist. And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades. Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'

Former NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr. Edgar Mitchell — a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission — claims aliens exist. He says extraterrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions — but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades. Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview in Birmingham, England, that sources at NASA who had had contact with aliens described the beings as "little people who look strange to us." He said supposedly real-life ET's were similar to the traditional image of a "small gray" — short, slight frame, large eyes and large head. Mitchell...

Top Astronaut: 'Aliens Do Exist' 11:37am UK, Thursday July 24, 2008 Aliens do exist and have even contacted humans on Earth, according to top astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell who was the sixth man on the Moon. l-alien Dr Edgar Mitchell says aliens are just like little men The truth has been hidden by governments for more than 60 years, the Moon walker says. And he claims he is lifting the lid on a conspiracy to keep aliens a secret. Dr Mitchell, who was on Apollo 14 in 1971, has told how he was aware of many UFO visits to Earth...

FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist. And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades. Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.' He said supposedly real-life ET's were similar to the traditional image of a small frame, large eyes and head. Chillingly, he claimed...

Midnight, 19 May 1961. A crisp frost had descended on Turin’s city centre which was deserted and deathly silent. Well, almost. Two brothers, aged 20 and 23, raced through the grid-like streets (that would later be made famous by the film The Italian Job) in a tiny Fiat 600, which screamed in protest as they bounced across one cobbled piazza after another at top speed. The Fiat was loaded with dozens of iron pipes and aluminium sheets which poked out of windows and were strapped to the roof. The car screeched to a halt outside the city’s tallest block of...

Two days after telling an online town hall meeting that NASA had "failed us miserably" and "wastes a vast amount of money," Houston Rep. John Culberson said Thursday he was weighing legislation to overhaul the structure of the space agency responsible for about 20,000 Houston-area jobs. (snip) "We need revolutionary change, a complete restructuring," Culberson told the Houston Chronicle. "NASA needs complete freedom to hire and fire based on performance, it needs to be driven by the scientists and the engineers, and it needs to be free of politics as much as possible." The fourth-term lawmaker said he was "kicking...

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — By day, the engineers work on NASA's new Ares moon rockets. By night, some go undercover to work on a competing design. These dissenting scientists and their backers insist they have created an alternative rocket that would be safer, cheaper and easier to build than the two Ares spacecraft that will replace the space shuttle.

America must begin preparing astronauts for sex in space if it is serious about sending people to Mars, according to a Nasa adviser. Dr Jason Kring said astronauts might have to emulate polar explorers and take a colleague as a lover for the duration of their three-year mission, to minimise sexual frustration. Dr Kring, who is studying the best sex balance of crews for the next wave of space travel, is an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. The university counts several astronauts and fighter pilots among its former students. His findings are due to be published by...

GREENBELT, Md. (CNS) -- An adjunct professor at The Catholic University of America in Washington has devised a new way to see outer space -- from the moon. Astrophysicist Peter Chen, along with colleagues Michael Van Steenberg, Ronald Oliversen and Douglas Rabin at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, has pioneered a method to create giant telescope mirrors on the moon. "We can do something really unique here. We can go to the moon and create a large telescope 20 or 50 meters across. This is far out of anything that exists on earth," said Chen in an interview with Catholic...

Mercury, the smallest planet, bakes in the heat of the Sun, but it has water in some form. It has volcanoes. It appears to have an active magnetic field generated by a molten iron core. And it has shrunk more than scientists thought. Those are some of the findings gleaned from the flyby of NASA’s Messenger spacecraft in January, the first close-up look since Mariner 10 flew by three times in the 1970s. “After five months of analysis, we’ve got some fascinating new results, and some of them have resolved debates that are more than 30 years old that go...

NASA scientist James Hansen, a high-ranking government employee, appeared in a Congressional committee meeting room June 23 to say CEOs of fossil energy companies “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” Their crime: Disagreeing with him. No word on the form of energy he used to travel to the inquisition. Hansen further claimed that federal laws to mandate restrictions on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have been “blocked by special interests, focused on short-term profits.” Um, no. Eleven Congresses -- five Democrat, six Republican -- have declined to limit greenhouse gas emissions since Hansen’s much-celebrated testimony before Colorado...

Captain Eugene (Gene) Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, has called for the shuttle to be extended past 2010 - so long as it doesn't damage Constellation's manifest - in order to reduce the gap in US manned space flight capability. In an inspiring interview, Captain Cernan spoke on a variety of topics, ranging from his concerns about presidential candidate Barack Obama's plans for NASA, to his wish that he had flown the space shuttle.

Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, has issued a stark warning that America must invest now in the space agency Nasa, or surrender leadership of space exploration to Russia and China. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Aldrin revealed that he intends to lobby Barack Obama and John McCain, the two US presidential candidates, in an effort to ensure they find sufficient funds for Nasa's goal to establish a permanent base on the Moon and then send a manned mission to Mars.

Here are a few past APODs (Astronomy Picture of the Day) that I've collected over the years. They really are incredible. However, some make take awhile to download, especially if you're on dial-up. Hope you enjoy them... Orion Spitzer:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0608/orion_spitzer_f.jpg NGC-2174:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0612/NGC2174_lrg.jpg M-42:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0601/m42_hst_f.jpg Orion Cradle:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0701/orioncradle_hallas_r.jpg Wisps Surrounding the Horsehead Nebula:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080406.html Markarian's Eyes:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0706/NGC4438_NGC4435_crawford_r.jpg Carina Nebula Panorama from Hubble:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0704/carina_hst_big.jpg Bullet Pillars in Orion:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0703/bullets_gemini_big.jpg The Rosette Nebula:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0702/rosette_gendler_big.jpg For individual descriptions of these images, go to the APOD archive page and run a search on the selected image's title:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

Monday, James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), addressed Congress and brought a new twist to his tired global warming song and dance routine.  Hansen now seems to be calling for the chief executives of Big Oil to be tried for high crimes against humanity.  Their crime?   Spreading doubt about global warming.  Actually, it is Hansen who is guilty. Guilty of abusing the public trust. James Hansen is the recognized international arbiter of the global temperature record-past, present and future.  Armed with a network of thermometers, state-of-the-art satellites, computers and a huge chunk of NASA's near...

In honor of NASA's 50th anniversary, the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and NASA are partnering on this year's Folklife Festival. The festival will be held Wednesday, June 25 through Sunday, June 29, and Wednesday, July 2 through Sunday, July 6, outdoors on the National Mall between Seventh and 14th Streets. Festival hours are from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. EDT each day, with special evening events including concerts and movie screenings beginning at 6 p.m. The program "NASA: 50 Years and Beyond," will include presentations, hands-on educational activities, demonstrations and exhibits that will highlight the agency's...

Although it seems like just yesterday, Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the day James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told members of Congress the world was doomed if the burning of fossil fuels didn't immediately cease. To commemorate this inauspicious occasion, Hansen is going back to Capitol Hill to call for oil company executives to be put on trial for crimes against humanity and nature. Can you imagine the media firestorm this is going to create? While you ponder, the following was reported by England's Guardian Monday (emphasis added): James Hansen, one of the...

Love is in the air: Amazing images of clouds from space By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 4:02 PM on 21st June 2008This is what earth looks like from above. And the spectacular pictures taken from 200 miles... Astronauts on the International Space Station took the snaps while travelling at 17,000 miles per hour during one of its 15 daily orbits.... Love is in the air over a Mexican islandThey show the complex meterological systems from an angle seen by a select few. Images include towering clouds, dust storms, lightening and a host of other meterological occurances. Astronauts are...

Yesterday's announcement by NASA of the discovery of water ice on Mars by its Phoenix Lander probe made big news everywhere. The discovery involved the observation of water ice sublimating into the air - that is, the water went from solid to vapor state without reaching the liquid stage. The Martian atmosphere has perfect conditions for sublimation - extremely thin, dry and cold. How cold? Well, you can check the Live Martian Weather Report, with data from a station on board the Phoenix Lander. Today will see a high temperature of a toasty -26 degrees F. What more do we...

A joint American and European oceanography satellite designed to continue a growing legacy of monitoring changes in sea levels and the impacts on the global climate awaits an overnight blastoff Friday morning from California.

<p>After you open the link be sure and hit the F11 button, makes the pictures high def.!</p>

The robotic shovel aboard the Phoenix Mars Lander has dug into some white material just below the surface of the Red Planet. NASA scientists aren't exactly sure what it is--their best guess right now is that it's ice. Meanwhile, the first Martian soil samples are heating up in one of eight tiny ovens aboard the Phoenix. The Phoenix will "sniff" the gases released to identify them.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University Here's a closer look at the white material in the trench now called "Dodo-Goldilocks" that was uncovered by the robotic arm aboard the Phoenix. The white material was first...

CAPE CANAVERAL (AFP) - The US space shuttle Discovery left orbit Saturday and began its descent towards Florida, NASA said.Earlier, mission control gave the shuttle, which is bringing seven astronauts back to Earth, the green light to land at the Kennedy Space Center at 1515 GMT.

It was a good mission and I'm glad to see the ISS is taking shape. As for the object, not a big deal. My advice for everyone here, before going crazy over something minor or if something goes wrong, listen to NASA, not the media.

  NASA just awarded its future spacesuit contract to Oceaneering International. The US firm must now design, test, and produce two suits -- the default suit (pictured after the break) worn on-board for launch and landing and a second, more versatile, cheese-proof suit worn during space walks and upon the surface of the moon. The suits must be ready for the first scheduled launch of the Orion Space Capsule in 2015. The contract is valued at the government special price of just $745 million. Hey, we have to keep up appearances at the International Space Station, you know.  

And can studying NASA’s website provide evidence for such a scenario? A minister who promotes the Old Testament roots of Christianity suggests a rare string of lunar and solar eclipses said to fall on God’s annual holy days seven years from now could herald what’s come to be known as the “Second Coming” of Jesus. “God wants us to look at the biblical calendar,” says Mark Biltz, pastor of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, Wash. “The reason we need to be watching is [because] He will signal His appearance. But we have to know what to be watching as...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The Ulysses solar probe will cease operations around July 1 after nearly 18 years in outer space, NASA announced Thursday. The U.S.-European spacecraft has been suffering from a decline in its plutonium power for some time. Despite conservation measures by ground controllers, the power has dwindled to the point where thruster fuel soon will freeze up. Ulysses already has surpassed its expected lifetime by almost four times, traveling 5.4 billion miles since its launch aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1990. "When the last bits of data finally arrive, it surely will be tough to say goodbye,"...

Mission controllers at NASA are discussing a possible problem with space shuttle Discovery on Friday. Astronauts said they noticed a shiny, rectangular-shaped object trailing the shuttle after a rocket was fired. NASA officials said they're analyzing video and photos to determine if the part came from the shuttle or cargo bay. They're hoping to determine if it could pose a problem for the crew during the re-entry and landing on Saturday morning.

June 11, 2008 -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has filled its first oven with Martian soil. "We have an oven full," Phoenix co-investigator Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said today.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager took this image on Sol 14 (June 8, 2008), the 14th Martian day after landing. NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has filled its first oven with Martian soil. "We have an oven full," Phoenix co-investigator Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said today. "It took 10 seconds to fill the oven. The ground moved." Boynton leads the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument, or TEGA, for Phoenix. The instrument has eight separate tiny ovens to bake and sniff the soil to assess its volatile ingredients, such as water. The lander's Robotic Arm...

June 10, 2008: For more than 400 years, astronomers have studied the sun from afar. Now NASA has decided to go there. "We are going to visit a living, breathing star for the first time," says program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. "This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts." The name of the mission is Solar Probe+ (pronounced "Solar Probe plus"). It's a heat-resistant spacecraft designed to plunge deep into the sun's atmosphere where it can sample solar wind and magnetism first hand. Launch could happen as early...

This image, one of the first captured by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, shows the vast plains of the northern polar region of Mars. The flat landscape is strewn with tiny pebbles and shows polygonal cracking, a pattern seen widely in Martian high latitudes and also observed in permafrost terrains on Earth. The polygonal cracking is believed to have resulted from seasonal contraction and expansion of surface ice. Phoenix touched down on the Red Planet at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53 Eastern Time), May 25, 2008, in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east...

Scientists ran into a snag when trying to deliver a sample of Martian arctic soil to one of the instruments on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, mission controllers said on Saturday. The lander's robotic arm released a handful of clumpy Martian soil onto a screened opening of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) on Friday, but the instrument did not confirm that any of the sample passed through the screen. Images taken on Friday show soil resting on the screen over an open sample-delivery door of TEGA, which is designed to heat up soil samples and analyze the vapors they give...

I saw the ISS/Space Shuttle combo pass over Illinois tonight.

The troublesome toilet aboard the International Space Station appears to be working again, thanks to a replacement pump taken to the station by the shuttle Discovery. “The toilet appears to have been repaired,” said Rob Navias, the commentator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s video channel on the Web, NASA TV (www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/). The single toilet aboard the station has separate systems for dealing with solid and liquid waste, and the systems are designed to work without the help of gravity. The solid waste system was operating properly, but the liquid system, which uses air flow to direct urine and...

Presumptive Republican White House nominee John McCain said Thursday he would like to see a manned mission to Mars as part of a "better set of priorities" for NASA that would better engage the public.

Two-Armed Spiral Milky Way Illustration Credit: R. Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA Survey Credit: GLIMPSE Explanation: Gazing out from within the Milky Way, our own galaxy's true structure is difficult to discern. But an ambitious survey effort with the Spitzer Space Telescope now offers convincing evidence that we live in a large galaxy distinguished by two main spiral arms (the Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus arms) emerging from the ends of a large central bar. In fact, from a vantage point that viewed our galaxy face-on, astronomers in distant galaxies would likely see the Milky Way as a two-armed barred spiral similar...

Previously (A Tale of Two Thermometers) we looked at how US temperature data sets have been adjusted - with more recent versions of historical data sets showing a steeper rise in temperature than they used to. To recap the earlier article, the graph below shows additional adjustments to the data set since the big "correction" in 2000 We observe that the data has been consistently adjusted towards a bias of greater warming. The years prior to the 1970s have again been adjusted to lower temperatures, and recent years have been adjusted towards higher temperatures. DivergenceSo how does NASA's data compare...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A NASA spokesman on Thursday said that the launch of its GLAST space telescope, which will allow scientists to look deep into the universe, has been delayed until Wednesday June 11 at the earliest. It is the third time the GLAST launch had been delayed, this time due to a battery in the system that would destroy the rocket in case it deviates from its course, said NASA spokesman George Diller. The launch window extends to August 7 and there could be further delays, Diller said. The GLAST -- the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope -- will...

ISS = International Space Station To see if the pair will in fact pass and be visible over your particular location, schedules and other important information are available from the website just below (heavens-above.com):http://www.heavens-above.com/ NASA-International Space Station (official website):http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/ Important note for first time Space Station observers: Unless the Station is scheduled to pass 20 or more (depending on your viewing location--obstructions, etc) degrees above the horizon, you may not see it at all. But if the pass IS high enough above your local horizon, it will 'look' like a very bright white star, w/ no blinking or colored lights...

Expanding its existing relationship with NASA, Google on Wednesday said it plans to lease 42.2 acres of unimproved land at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., to construct up to 1.2 million square feet of offices and research space. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has provided a visual overview of the site on Google Maps. Under the terms of the 40-year lease agreement, Google will pay rent of $3.66 million annually. The lease allows for the possibility of five 10-year extensions, making the maximum term 90 years, assuming both parties agree. The lease allows for periodic rent increases. NASA...

Enlarge ImageFresh look.Recent surveys of the Milky Way show it contains a prominent central bar feature (bottom), distinguishing it from other galaxies of the classic spiral variety (top).Credit: (top) NASA/Spitzer Space telescope (bottom) NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech) The Milky Way Gets a Facelift By Phil BerardelliScienceNOW Daily News03 June 2008Forget what you thought the Milky Way looked like. The galaxy is far from the simple and elegant spiral-armed structure so often portrayed. New observations, presented today at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Missouri, reveal, among other things, that the Milky Way is missing two...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- Space shuttle Discovery performed a slow back flip and then docked at the international space station Monday, delivering a mammoth lab and two new occupants: a NASA astronaut and Buzz Lightyear. Commander Mark Kelly pulled up to the space station and parked as the two spacecraft soared 210 miles above the South Pacific. Discovery carried Japan's prized Kibo lab, a 37-foot-long, 16-ton scientific workshop. The seven shuttle astronauts and three station residents will combine forces to install the bus-size lab on Tuesday. The shuttle crew also brought a spare toilet pump for the orbiting outpost....

HOUSTON (AP) — Space shuttle Discovery's seven-member crew completed an inspection of the spacecraft's wings Sunday afternoon, looking for any signs of damage after launching a day earlier.Discovery, making its way to the international space station, is carrying the orbiting outpost's biggest room by far — Japan's $1 billion lab. The shuttle is also delivering a spare pump for the space station's malfunctioning toilet.But the inspection of the shuttle was not as thorough as it normally is because the school-bus-size lab, named Kibo — Japanese for hope — takes up almost the entire payload bay.That left no room for a...

Scientists have discovered what may be ice that was exposed when soil was blown away as NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars last Sunday, May 25. The possible ice appears in an image the robotic arm camera took underneath the lander, near a footpad. "We could very well be seeing rock, or we could be seeing exposed ice in the retrorocket blast zone," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., co-investigator for the robotic arm. "We'll test the two ideas by getting more data, including color data, from the robotic arm camera. We think that if the hard...

This will be the official thread for the launching of the Space Shuttle Discovery..

U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords says she's just as excited and nervous as family members of other astronauts. Never mind that she's making a little history as the wife of 6 months to Mark Kelly, commander of space shuttle Discovery. The shuttle is supposed to launch this afternoon. Giffords wanted to make it clear she wasn't there as a member of Congress. She was there as the anxious wife. The Arizona politician says she couldn't be prouder of her husband. She had no connection to NASA before meeting Kelly. But she is a member of the House Science and Technology Committee,...

TUCSON, Ariz. - Scientists for the Phoenix Mars Lander are wrestling with an intermittent short circuit on the spacecraft. The problem is in a device that will analyze ice and soil dug from the planet's surface, the scientists said Friday. The short circuit was found during testing done before the mission's experiments get under way. The short circuit isn't considered critical, said William Boyton of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Boynton is in charge of the device that will heat and analyze samples scooped up by the lander's robotic arm. He said scientists know what is triggering...

ScienceDaily (May 30, 2008) — A new analysis of the Martian rock that gave hints of water on the Red Planet -- and, therefore, optimism about the prospect of life -- now suggests the water was more likely a thick brine, far too salty to support life as we know it. The finding, by scientists at Harvard University and Stony Brook University, is detailed May 30 in the journal Science. "Liquid water is required by all species on Earth and we've assumed that water is the very least that would be necessary for life on Mars," says Nicholas J. Tosca,...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - After being rushed in from Russia, a toilet pump was loaded into space shuttle Discovery on Thursday just in time for this weekend's liftoff to the international space station, where the lone commode is acting up. A NASA employee based in Moscow hand-carried the pump on a commercial flight that touched down Wednesday night. Within hours, the pump and related equipment were packed away aboard Discovery. Discovery is scheduled to blast off Saturday on a 14-day mission. The main delivery item is a 37-foot-long Japanese lab; it will be the biggest room once installed at the...