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All Good Things: Countdown Begins Toward Cassini's 'Grand Finale' Around Saturn By Leonidas Papadopoulos Artist's concept of Cassini's final orbits between the Saturn's innermost rings and the planet's cloud tops. This set of orbits will consist the last leg of Cassini's mission, called "The Grand Finale," which will culminate with a plunge on Saturn's atmosphere in September 2017. Image Credit: Image Credit: NASA/JPL It has become something of a hackneyed phrase, but in the case of NASA's Cassini spacecraft it is rather fitting: an epic mission of exploration of Saturn that has single-handedly changed our view of the ringed planet,...

The company said it is planning to send their Dragon spacecraft to the red planet as early as 2018 SpaceX is planning to be the first private company to land on Mars within the next two years. The company said it is planning to send its Dragon spaceraft to the red planet as early as 2018. Bosses announced their intentions in a statement on Twitter this afternoon. A spokesperson tweeted: "Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons will inform overall Mars architecture, details to come." Earlier this month the US aerospace company successfully landed a...

Links: SpaceX - CRS8 Booster at Port Canaveral 04-12-2016 CRS8 Comes Home - SpaceX Falcon 9 Booster 04-19-2016

National Space Society members have voted the 2016 Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award to Dr. Jerry Pournelle... (This award is distinguished from the Heinlein Award given by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society and co-funded by The Heinlein Society, and the Heinlein Prize for Accomplishments in Commercial Space Activities administered by The Heinlein Trust.)

Be Educated, not just entertained! Listen to The Jacki Daily Show! Jacki speaks with Robert Zubrin, author of Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism about the origins of the Green Party. @JackiDailyShow Jack Ekstrom of Vice President, Corporate and Government Relations Whiting Petroleum https://soundcloud.com/jacki-daily/the-dark-history-of-the-green-party-322016

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is on his way back to Earth. Kelly has completed a nearly yearlong mission on the International Space Station, the longest any U.S. astronaut has been in space. He’s set to come home on Tuesday, riding back to Earth on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The spacecraft undocked from the station shortly after 8 p.m. ET. Undocking complete at 8:02pm ET! @StationCDRKelly is on his way home from a #YearInSpace pic.twitter.com/qaPqva0jsU — NASA (@NASA) March 2, 2016 Kelly is scheduled to land in the Kazakhstan desert at 10:27 Wednesday morning (11:27 p.m. ET Tuesday).

SpaceX aborted the launch of a commercial communications satellite less than a second before liftoff this evening (Feb. 28), delaying the mission yet again. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was scheduled to launch the SES-9 satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 6:46 p.m. EST (2346 GMT) today, but that initial liftoff time was pushed back 35 minutes because a boat wandered into the mission's "keep-out zone," launch controllers said. At 7:21 p.m. EST (0021 GMT on Monday, Feb. 29), the Falcon 9's engines began firing up, but they shut down just as the countdown clock was reaching...

The Obama Administration has put forth its FY 2017 NASA budget proposal, according to GeekWire. The overall spending level is $19 billion, an almost $300 million cut from the current fiscal year. Much of the money comes out of the development for the Orion deep space vehicle and the heavy lift Space Launch System, the very basis of the space agency’s plans for exploring deep space beyond low Earth orbit.

NASA can't afford to put humans on Mars while also pursuing missions to put astronauts back on the moon, according to a panel of experts who testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space yesterday (Feb. 3). "Today the future of NASA's human spaceflight program is far from clear," said Tom Young, former director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "There has been continual debate about should we go to the moon or Mars or both ... It is clear, again, that we cannot do both. And there is a need to focus our attention, capability and resources...

If you've been keeping up with 3D printing news at all, you're probably pretty familiar with metal 3D printing by now. It's one of the fastest-growing sectors in the industry; just about every major 3D printer manufacturer is scrambling to keep up with the rapidly developing metal technology. Not only is it becoming less expensive and more accessible, but material capabilities keep expanding, with new metals and alloys being introduced on what seems like a weekly basis by certain companies. Even if you have only a basic knowledge of metal 3D printing, you probably know that it's done with powder...

After a year-and-a-half long voyage aboard the International Space Station, a group of fungi collected from Antarctica has proven its ability to withstand harsh, Mars-like conditions. More than half of the cells remained intact over the course of the 18-month study, providing new insight for the possibility of life on Mars. These fungal samples, along with lichens from Spain and Austria, have allowed European researchers to assess the survivability and stability of microscopic lifeforms on the red planet. The tiny fungi taken from Antarctica are typically found in the cracks of rocks in this dry, hostile region. Scientists took samples...

Senior Pentagon officials on Wednesday sought to defend the use of Russian-made rocket engines to send U.S. military satellites into space, telling exasperated lawmakers they are moving quickly to end the practice and rely on American-made rockets for the launches. But Air Force Secretary Deborah James and Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall failed to stem sharp criticism from several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee who view Russia as the chief geopolitical threat to the United States. Led by the committee chairman, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., they said using the Russian engines enriches President Vladimir Putin's inner circle and...

Charles D. Walker (a former commercial astronaut), kicked up something of a fuss recently when he opined in the pages of the Arizona Daily Star that NASA should lead the way in space exploration and not leave everything to the private sector. The reasons he cites are risk and lack of a clear profit motive, particularly related to going to Mars. The commercial space sector should be encouraged to bring down the cost of space travel, particularly by operating a space taxi service to the International Space Station, in his view. But NASA must lead the way in exploration, particularly...

One of the interesting aspects of any modern presidential campaign has been the lack of detailed policy positions from the candidates on NASA and space exploration. The reason for this can be illustrated by what happened to Newt Gingrich when he made an exception and proposed building a moon base when he ran for president in 2012. More of that anon.

2015 ended and 2016 began with the space program on the cusp of tremendous and potentially very positive change. Congress gave NASA a great Christmas present in the form of a $1.3 billion budget increase. The perennial argument between advocates of commercial space and supporters of space exploration was settled. The commercial crew program, designed to build NASA-funded, commercially operated spacecraft that will return crewed space flight capability to the United States was fully funded for the first time. The heavy lift Space Launch System, the center of NASA’s plans to explore deep space, also received lavish amounts of money....

Researchers last got a signal from the Philae lander back in July, since then pinging it has resulted in no word from it—and i'’s all coming to a head now, says the ESA, because time is running out as the comet moves further and further away from the sun. With just a little time left, the plan is to try some off-label uses of Philae's momentum wheel. If the problem is that the lander is simply too dusty to power on, the hope is that spinning the wheel could clear off enough to let it wake itself up one last...

Russia enters 'space race' to build moon base By Graeme Baker Last Updated: 5:57pm BST 31/08/2007 Russia has revived another Cold War rivalry by entering a new “space race” with America to build a permanent base on the Moon. The moon from Moscow's Novodevichy Monastery Anatoly Perminov, the head of the space agency Roskosmos, said Russia would organise a manned lunar mission by 2025 and would be ready to build an “inhabited station” between 2027 and 2032. From there, cosmonauts could strike out on a long-planned mission to Mars as early as 2035. “According to our estimates we will be...

Schaedler and colleagues at HRL invented a resin formulation that can be 3-D printed into parts of virtually any shape and size. The printed resin can then be fired, converting it into a high strength, fully dense ceramic. The resulting material can withstand ultrahigh temperatures in excess of 1,700 degrees Celsius (3,092 Fahrenheit) and is 10 times stronger than similar materials. Ceramics are much more difficult to work with than plastics or metals because they cannot be cast or machined easily, according to Schaedler, who is an author on the new study appearing today in the journal Science. But Schaedler's...

There are several space stories we’re anticipating for 2016 but one story might appear — to some — to belong in the realm of science fiction: sometime in the coming year Elon Musk will likely reveal his plans for colonizing Mars. Early in 2015, Musk hinted that he would be publicly disclosing his strategies for the Mars Colonial Transport system sometime in late 2015, but then later said the announcement would come in 2016.

Flashing some interplanetary gold bling and sipping "space water" might sound far-fetched, but both could soon be reality, thanks to a new US law that legalizes cosmic mining.In a first, President Barack Obama signed legislation at the end of November that allows commercial extraction of minerals and other materials, including water, from asteroids and the moon. That could kick off an extraterrestrial gold rush, backed by a private aeronautics industry that is growing quickly and cutting the price of commercial space flight. The US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 says that any materials American individuals or companies find...