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ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Friday 11 September for cooperation in the field of space transportation. The agreement was signed at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Video game developer John Carmack, better known for his work on Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein, has qualified for a million dollar prize from NASA. America's space agency challenged the nation's brightest minds to come up with a design contest known as the Lunar Lander Challenge. Carmack's team, known as Armadillo Aerospace, won $350,000 after taking first prize last year in NASA's Level 1 competition. Now they are aiming for Level 2 and the million dollar prize. As MSNBC.com describes it: "The alcohol-fueled, pressure-tank-equipped rocket has to hang in the air for a minimum of 3 minutes during each leg of...

As America prepares to embark upon a new era of human space exploration, President Obama has commissioned a review of the nation’s human space flight plans. Known as the Augustine Committee, this panel has the important charter of evaluating the current NASA plan... Exploration must be recognized as a national imperative that sustains U.S. leadership in space; a significant increase in human space-flight safety should be accomplished under government leadership; we must leave low Earth orbit and explore destinations beyond; and sustaining robust funding and staying the course are imperative... ...Members of the committee presented their preliminary findings to NASA...

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — Space shuttle Discovery and its seven astronauts took a cross-country detour and landed safely in California on Friday after stormy weather prevented them from returning home to Florida for the second day in a row.

NASA has released this terrible image of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, as captured by Frank Culbertson—the commander of the International Space Station at the time. His words that day: Our prayers and thoughts go out to all the people there, and everywhere else. Click on the image to zoom in. You can see downtown Manhattan—south, where the towers were—, with the East River and Brooklyn on the top, and the Hudson and New Jersey on the bottom.In the anniversary of the attack, let's take a few minutes to reflect on the stupidity of all violence,...

First Landing Opportunity Waved Off Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:56:07 AM PDT The weather forecast is "no go" today for Friday’s first landing opportunity at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If the weather cooperates for the second Kennedy landing opportunity, the deorbit burn would occur at 6:17 p.m. EDT, with landing at 7:23 p.m.

Let's try this again..

I can tell nothing went wrong.. No big media hyperbole..

Here is video of NASA testing "the new first-stage solid rocket motor for the Ares I rocket. The static firing of the five-segment solid motor, designated development motor -1 was conducted at the ATK test facility in Promontory, Utah." The video says it has "22 million horsepower." Quite an amazing display of power. . . . (VIDEO)

...the iconic orbiting observatory is working just fine after its May upgrade which saw it get new batteries, gyroscopes and and a thorough overhaul of its instruments. It also got a new camera and a new spectrograph from the astronauts who spent five days under Hubble's hood. The upgrade, almost certain to be Hubble's last, should keep it producing tip-top images until 2014... Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said that the telescope is "significantly more powerful than ever, well-equipped to last into the next decade." According to NASA, future observations will range from "studying the population...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business, ready to uncover new worlds, peer ever deeper into space, and even map the invisible backbone of the universe. The first snapshots from the refurbished Hubble showcase the 19-year-old telescope's new vision. Topping the list of exciting new views are colorful multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie "pillar of creation," and a "butterfly" nebula. With its new imaging camera, Hubble can view galaxies, star clusters, and other objects across a wide swath of the electromagnetic spectrum, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. A new spectrograph slices across...

WASHINGTON – A refurbished Hubble Space Telescope is showing Earth the sharpest photos yet of cosmic beauty, complete with heavenly glows. NASA on Wednesday unveiled the first deep space photos taken by Hubble since its billion dollar repair mission last spring. That work included installing two new cameras, other science instruments and replacing broken parts. The images of galaxies and nebulas are sharper than previous photos taken of the same places by Hubble before the upgrade. Some of the colorful images have brilliant glows of light that give them halos that to some people can appear heavenly.

WASHINGTON — A White House panel of independent space experts says NASA's return-to-the-moon plan just won't fly. The problem is money. The expert panel estimates it would cost about $3 billion a year beyond NASA's current $18 billion annual budget. "Under the budget that was proposed, exploration beyond Earth is not viable," panel member Edward Crawley, a professor of aeronautics at MIT, told The Associated Press Tuesday.

A White House panel of independent space experts says NASA's return-to-the-moon plan just won't fly....However, President Barack Obama's expert panel said any plan to go beyond low-Earth orbit was "not viable" with current spending....

PASADENA, Calif. -- Thousands of newly released images from more than 1,500 telescopic observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a wide range of gullies, dunes, craters, geological layering and other features on the Red Planet. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the orbiter recorded these images from the month of April through early August of this year. The camera team at the University of Arizona, Tucson, releases several featured images each week and periodically releases much larger sets of new images, such as the batch posted today. The new images are available at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/releases/sept_09.php . Each...

Once again, a NASA space probe is supporting the 6,000-year biblical age of the solar system...

Is it time for us to get serious about building a "Space Elevator?" On August 13, approximately 280 people gathered at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond Washington for a "Space Elevator Overview" public lecture, with 60 attendees continuing on to be part of the four day long Fifth International Space Elevator Conference sponsored by Microsoft and JPL Foundation. Delegates flew in from Japan, Armenia and other far-off locations. A proposal for a space elevator was first published by Yuri Artsunov in the USSR in 1960. At that time, the west knew little about Artsunov's work, and the idea was re-invented...

The International Space Station may have to fire its thrusters to avoid a piece of space junk that is on course to pass within two miles of the orbiting complex and its 13 astronauts. Nasa is tracking debris from a portion of a European rocket, the Ariane 5, that was launched more than three years ago. The debris could pass close enough to require astronauts to fire thrusters to move the station and shuttle Discovery that is docked there out of the way, NASA officials said at a briefing. The debris posed no immediate danger to the station or the...

PANAJI, India (AFP) – India's first lunar mission has captured images of the landing site of the Apollo 15 craft, debunking theories that the US mission was a hoax, the country's state-run space agency said Wednesday. "The images captured by a hyper-spectral camera fitted as a part of Chandrayaan-I... has reconfirmed the veracity of the Apollo 15 mission," said Prakash Chauhan, from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). NASA's 12-day Apollo 15 mission in 1971 was the first designed to explore the surface of the moon in great detail and over a long period. But it and others in the...

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston--Shuttle commander Frederick "C.J." Sturckow, forced by a leaky steering jet to use Discovery's big maneuvering thrusters instead of preferred fine-control vernier engines, deftly guided the spaceplane to a flawless docking with the International Space Station Sunday night to cap a two-day rendezvous.Approaching from directly in front of the laboratory complex as both spacecraft sailed 220 miles above the central Atlantic Ocean at 5 miles per second, the shuttle's payload bay docking port engaged its counterpart on the front end of the station's Harmony module at 7:54 p.m. CDT, about 10 minutes ahead of schedule.The shuttle Discovery,...

That's "Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill" to all of you "Colbert Nation" extremists out there.... Deal with it.

This is the live thread of the Space Shuttle Discovery Launch... I figure I do it now..

8/27/2009 - WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- Officials in NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate will begin accepting scholarship applications on Sept. 1 for the 2010 academic year. The application deadline is Jan. 11, 2010. "These scholarships are a fantastic way to support our brightest students and encourage them to finish their education, expose them to NASA's research programs and inspire them to pursue a career in aeronautics," said Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA officials expect to award 20 undergraduate and five graduate scholarships to students in aeronautics or related fields. Undergraduate...

DVR GO!!!

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -- After last-minute debate over external tank insulation, the shuttle Discovery is poised for launch early Tuesday on a three-spacewalk mission to deliver more than seven tons of supplies, experiment hardware and life-support gear to the International Space Station.

An image of the Victoria Crater in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image was captured at more of a sideways angle than earlier images of this crater. This view is similar to what would be observed by looking out the window of an airplane flying over Mars. The camera pointing was 22 degrees east of straight down (east is at the top of the image).

In the wake of the Augustine Commission's declaration that the troubled Ares rocket program is unaffordable under any realistic budget projections, the Space Frontier Foundation renewed its call to immediately cancel the costly dead-end project and replace it with multiple commercial vehicles. "Three years ago we published Unaffordable and Unsustainable, declaring that government must henceforth 'buy all crew and cargo services with a destination of low Earth orbit [from] commercial providers using privately-owned and operated spaceships'," said Foundation co-Founder Bob Werb. "For over a decade, we've said that continuing to try and develop new government rockets costs too much and...

WASHINGTON -- NASA doesn't have nearly enough money to meet its goal of putting astronauts back on the moon by 2020 -- and it might be the wrong place to go, anyway. That's one of the harsh messages emerging from a sweeping review of NASA's human space flight program. The Human Space Flight Plans Committee, appointed by President Barack Obama and headed by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine, has been trying to stitch together some kind of plausible strategy for America's manned space program. The panel has struggled to find options that stay under the current budget and include missions...

Nasa will not be able to meet its target of sending humans back to the Moon by 2020, or even dream of landing on Mars, because it is suffering from chronic underfunding, a presidential review panel has warned. The US space agency needs at least another $50 billion (£30 billion) over the next decade if it is to come close to delivering on its vision for retiring the space shuttle, completing construction of the International Space Station and launching ambitious new voyages of discovery. Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in 1969. He believes a new lunar mission would be pointless...

There is a recent movement within NASA to be open and transparent and practice inclusion with our space program, but how do we accomplish that? There are many schools of thought, but my personal take on it is that inclusion isn’t just about giving tours of space centers and holding events (though these are much appreciated). It is also about giving people a voice and making them feel like they share a role in the mission. I’m no expert, but my thought was that if we want people to feel included, maybe we should let them tell us what they...

NASA needs more cash in order to meet its goal of finding nearby space rocks that could hit Earth in a devastating impact, a new report says. Congress ordered NASA in 2005 to find and track 90 percent of the large asteroids near Earth by 2020, but did not set aside the necessary funds required to do the job, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Academy of Sciences. Without that funding, NASA will not be able to build the new facilities and telescopes required to track potentially threatening asteroids down to the size of about 460 feet...

EXPLORATION PLAN DOESN'T FIT IN CURRENT BUDGET, PANEL SAYS ---------------------------------------------- A presidential panel wrapping up a review of options for future U.S. manned space flight operations delivered a grim assessment Wednesday, showing NASA's current plan to retire the shuttle, finish the space station and return to the moon by the early 2020s is not even remotely feasible without a significant restoration of previously cut funding. http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0908/12augustine/

Congress assigned the space agency four years ago to watch 90 per cent of potentially deadly rocks hurtling through space by 2020 but never gave it the money to build the necessary telescopes, according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences. The agency estimates that about 20,000 asteroids and comets in Earth's solar system bigger than 460 feet in diameter are potential threats to the planet. Rocks between 460 feet and 3,280 feet in diameter can devastate an entire region Lindley Johnson, NASA's manager of the near-Earth objects program, said. So far, scientists know the whereabouts of about...

Climate Change: NASA's James Hansen leads a protest against a District of Columbia power plant in the middle of a snowstorm. Meanwhile, a scientist fired by Al Gore says we need to emit more carbon dioxide, not less.Speaking before Bill Clinton's Global Initiative in New York City last Nov. 2, Gore advocated the concept of civil disobedience to fight climate change. "I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore said to loud applause. Following Gore's lead, a...

NASA's new exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope has detected the atmosphere of a known giant gas planet, demonstrating the telescope's extraordinary scientific capabilities. The discovery will be published Friday in the journal Science.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Five months after it was launched on a mission to find earth-like planets, the Kepler space telescope has sent back to Earth high-precision images of a planet some 1,000 light years away, NASA said Thursday. But the real excitement at NASA was over how well Kepler was working, and the promise it holds for the future. With Kepler only in the calibration phase, the telescope, which was launched in March on a mission to find earth-like planets in the galaxy, sent back to Earth highly precise images of a planet with the unromantic name of HAT-P-7-B. The...

>b?Betelgeuse Resolved Explanation: The sharpest image ever of Betelgeuse shows a mammoth star that is slowly evaporating. Betelgeuse (sounds a lot like "beetle juice"), also known as Alpha Orionis, is one of the largest and brightest stars known. The star is a familiar orange fixture easily visible to the unaided eye toward the constellation of Orion. The above recent image from the Very Large Telescope in Chile resolves not only the face of Betelgeuse, but a large and previously unknown plume of surrounding gas. This plume gives fresh indications of how the massive star is shedding mass as it nears...

The world just celebrated the 40th anniversary of America's landing on the moon. But a local man has a problem with the official story -- and now he's also got a problem with the law. Bart Sibrel is a well-known conspiracy theorist whose made a bit of a career out of ambushing America's astronauts, trying to make them look like hot-headed fakes. Sibrel, who calls himself an investigative journalist, has produced videos questioning whether the moon landing ever happened.

The panel reviewing NASA's long-range plans is giving a new boost to the old idea of setting up orbital fueling stations for spaceflight. If the space agency and the White House go down that route, it would mark a dramatic change in direction for future journeys beyond Earth orbit.

Ares supporters say headaches normal part of exploration Will NASA make its goal of landing on the moon by 2020? That question hung heavily over the three Augustine Commission meetings held this week across the nation. The commission, which is studying options for the space program at the behest of President Barack Obama, met in Houston, Huntsville, then Cocoa Beach, Fla.

CROWDED on to the International Space Station (ISS) with as many as 12 colleagues, Koichi Wakata's laundry habits might not ordinarily have gone down well with his fellow astronauts. But thanks to the wonders of science, the Japanese spaceman's revelation that he had been wearing the same pair of underpants for the past month did not cause too much of a stink. After landing back at Florida's Kennedy Space Centre yesterday on board the shuttle Endeavour following 138 days in orbit, Mr Wakata told how an experiment designed to test the prototype pants held up well during the final stages...

Shuttle streaks toward Earth to end mission CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - Space shuttle Endeavour and its crew are headed back to Earth. Endeavour's pilots fired the braking rockets Friday morning and put the shuttle on a course toward a touchdown at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Landing is scheduled for 10:48 a.m. ET.

A Briton wanted in the United States for breaking into NASA and Pentagon networks in "the biggest military hack of all time" lost an appeal against his extradition Friday, making a U.S. trial more likely. Gary McKinnon, 43, has fought a three-year battle to avoid extradition, including going to the European Court of Human Rights, but he appeared to have run out of options as Britain's High Court ruled against his latest appeal Friday. The court rejected arguments by McKinnon's lawyers that extraditing McKinnon, who was recently diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, would have disastrous consequences for...

Climate Change: NASA predicts the lowest sunspot activity since 1928. Is a major solar storm in the offing? While we worry about man-made warming, the sun may soon show us who's boss. It's the sort of news that makes one's eyes glaze over. "If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," said Doug Biesecker of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center. Yes, space has weather, in the form of solar radiation that varies with...

NASA will likely have to continue flying its aging space shuttle fleet beyond its planned 2010 retirement date in order to complete construction of the International Space Station, a presidential panel said Tuesday. Former astronaut Sally Ride, a member of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, said that it was unlikely NASA could meet the current deadline of retiring the space shuttle by next year, as is currently planned. The first operational flights of the agency's replacement for the shuttle, the Orion spacecraft, may also be delayed a year or so beyond its 2015 target, she added....

STENNIS SPACE CENTER — History will be made here again Wednesday when the last scheduled main engine test of NASA’s space shuttle program occurs. Provided conditions are right, NASA engineers and others will gather on the testing grounds for the 2 p.m. event. The test is scheduled to run for 520 seconds, bringing a close to 34 years of testing space shuttle engines in South Mississippi. The first space shuttle mission was launched in 1981, but years of preparations came first. The first space shuttle main engine test occurred at Stennis in 1975. Since 1981, NASA has flown 126...

ON October 9,2009 NASA will attempt to bomb the Moon to look for water.But speculation has it that its an aggressive move against a "supposed" extraterrestrial base thats on the Dark side of the Moon.U.S. astronauts, NASA employees, Soviet scientists, NSA confirm the extraterrestrial presence on the moon.

This week, we all saw images on television screens of the solar eclipse that occurred on Wednesday. This was the longest eclipse the earth will see until 2136, which will likely be beyond most of our own lifetimes… unless my Fish Oil and CoQ10 work as I hope (!!!). I digress. When looking at the images at the NASA webpage, some are amazing, especially the one below. “Hinode is an international mission to study our nearest star, the sun. To accomplish this, the Hinode mission includes a suite of three science instruments — the Solar Optical Telescope, X-ray Telescope and...

Video of Obama honoring Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin on the 40th anniversary of man's first steps on the moon and how he remembered watching the splash down from Hawaii, but as one the the commentators stated how could that be when Barry Soetoro lived in Indonesia as a child from 1967 to 1971 and was enrolled in Muslim classes when Apollo 11 splashed down in in the Pacific on July 24, 1969?

False Lessons from the Past From Apollo and its successes we learned that NASA can accomplish anything if given enough resources and that “failure is not an option” (though when failure is not an option, success can get very expensive). From the shuttle and its failures we learned that reusable launch systems should be avoided; that it is futile to try to reduce the cost of access to space at all; that crew should be separated from cargo. From the space station experience we learned that we should return to heavy-lift vehicles and that we should minimize, if not eliminate...