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The Obama administration is launching a new space arms-control initiative that critics say will lead to restrictions on U.S. military activities in space, a key U.S. strategic war-fighting advantage. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce the initiative as early as Tuesday. The plan will be built on work contained in a European Union draft code of conduct for space that the Pentagon and State Department have criticized as too restrictive. “The United States has decided to enter into formal consultations and negotiations with the European Union

NASA: Instead of awarding our retired space fleet to museums, we should be awarding contracts to go to Mars and beyond. Once we triumphed over the vacuum of space. Now we face a vacuum of leadership. A nation whose world leadership was unquestioned once held its breath as an American spacecraft placed American astronauts on the surface of the moon. It was a triumph of exceptionalism that was officially laid to rest this week as a nation held its breath to see which museums our space shuttle fleet would be awarded to. In these difficult economic times and with a...

Former Cosmonaut Offers First-Hand Account Of The Death Of Yury Gagarin Russian pilot and cosmonaut Vladimir Aksyonov has offered the most plausible account to date of the crash of the fighter jet that killed Yury Gagarin, the first man in space, and Vladimir Seryogin, a regimental commander at the cosmonaut training center where Gagarin was enrolled. Aksyonov, a two-time Hero of the Soviet Union, was with Gagarin at a pre-flight medical exam on March 27, 1968, the day of the crash. He flew in a different plane on that fateful day. Aksyonov presents his unofficial version of events in his...

Soviet officials lied about the success of Yuri Gagarin's historic 1961 flight into space and covered up the fact that he had landed more than 200 miles away from where they were expecting him, a new book discloses. The Soviet Union held up his mission, the first manned flight into space, as a major Cold War propaganda coup, portraying it as a glitch-free triumph of Communist ideology. However, a new book published on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Gagarin's famous flight has revealed that scientists twice miscalculated where he would land which is why there was nobody there...

Summary Obama is a liar. Pure and simple. I know some of you are offended to hear him called a liar, but he is. He is also a coward for not facing the people whose hopes and dreams for our Human Space Flight Program are being destroyed by this man and his accomplices in Congress and NASA. There is no new Human Space Flight Program. There is just a poorly written Powerpoint, lacking in specifics or even a name, posted on Obama’s teleprompter. No ship, no hardware, no employees, nothing but crap. There is no destination, no idea what NASA...

Competitiveness: The president spent Tax Day reassuring Florida voters that money will keep flowing to NASA. But in space as well as on Earth, we'll be an unexceptional nation. In space, no one can hear you scheme. President Obama's speech at the Kennedy Space Center will never be confused with President Kennedy's clarion call in 1961 to send an American to the moon within a decade. Rather it was an admission that we will now boldly go where no one wants to go.

“The West, particularly the USA, is a civilization of packages. They can give a very good visual presentation of things, but the package does not imply good quality of products. US space products often lagged behind Soviet products especially in the space industry. In the USSR the situation was different. The quality of packaging was poor, but the quality of products was superb,” Mr. Sivkov said.

Harrison H. Schmitt Was an Apollo 17 astronaut who walked on the moon. A very good friend involved with LRO, sent me this. ******************** From: Lunar List [mailto:LUNAR-L@********.**.***] On Behalf Of Harrison H. Schmitt User Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 4:21 PM To: LUNAR-L@********.**.*** Subject: Re: LPOD on future NASA goal Dear all, As promised, my reaction to the FY2011 NASA budget proposal follows: Jack NEW SPACE POLICY CEDES MOON TO CHINA, SPACE STATION TO RUSSIA, AND LIBERTY TO THE AGES. The Administration finally has announced its formal retreat on American Space Policy after a year of morale destroying clouds...

Achievement: The nation that put the first man on the moon may have put its last as budget cuts slash NASA's plans to return. Men will return to the moon, but they will likely speak Chinese. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced in front of a joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American to the moon by the end of that decade. It was a clarion call to the American spirit and technology to rise up and prove that America's best days were still ahead. Forty-one years after Neil Armstrong set foot on...

MOSCOW – A nuclear-powered spaceship that can carry passengers to Mars and beyond may sound like science fiction. But Russian engineers say they have a breakthrough design for such a craft, which could leapfrog them way ahead in the international race to build a manned spacecraft that can cover vast interplanetary distances. They claim they’ll be ready to build one as early as 2012. In a meeting with top Russian space scientists Wednesday, President Dmitry Medvedev gave the nuke-powered space craft a green light and pledged to come up with the cash to cover its $600-million price tag. “It’s a...

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...

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's position on space exploration continued to evolve Sunday as the Illinois Democrat endorsed a congressional plan to add $2 billion to NASA's budget and agreed to back at least one more space shuttle mission.

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...

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.

This file photo released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Nov. 26, 2007 shows China's first picture of the moon captured by Chang'e-1, China's first lunar orbiter. (Xinhua Photo) BEIJING, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- China published the first picture of the moon captured by Chang'e-1, the country's first lunar probe, on Monday, marking the full success of its lunar probe project. The white and black picture, in a glass frame, was unveiled by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center. It shows a rough moon surface scattered with big or small round pits. The area...

Sergei Khrushchev is used to having a seat on the front row of history. Not only because his father, Nikita, was a premier of the Soviet Union, but also because he worked as an engineer at the forefront of Russia's space programme. As a young man, he was at his father's side on many of his official visits around the Soviet Union and abroad, including the historic visit to the US in 1959. On 4 October 1957, Sergei was in Kiev, Ukraine, where his father was visiting on military business. What started out as a routine engagement for the...

Secrets of 1957 Sputnik launch revealed By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago   MOSCOW - When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph. But 50 years later, it emerges that the momentous launch was far from being part of a well-planned strategy to demonstrate communist superiority over the West. Instead, the first artificial satellite in space was a spur-of-the-moment gamble driven by the dream of one...

Fifty years ago, a small Soviet satellite was launched, stunning the U.S. and sparking a massive technology research effort. Could we be in for another "October surprise"? Quick, what's the most influential piece of hardware from the early days of computing? The IBM 360 mainframe? The DEC PDP-1 minicomputer? Maybe earlier computers such as Binac, ENIAC or Univac? Or, going way back to the 1800s, is it the Babbage Difference Engine? More likely, it was a 183-pound aluminum sphere called Sputnik, Russian for "traveling companion." Fifty years ago, on Oct. 4, 1957, radio-transmitted beeps from the first man-made object to...

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...

Rocketeers By Michael Belfiore Smithsonian, 305 pages, $26.95 American space exploration had a rough time of it on Thursday. NASA's already bruised reputation took a one-two punch with revelations that on at least two occasions astronauts were allowed to fly even though they were intoxicated and that a computer due to be delivered to the International Space Station in August had been sabotaged. The news might have bolstered the case for the increasingly robust efforts at privately funded space ventures, except Thursday also brought news of a deadly explosion at a Mojave Desert airport where a propellant system for a...

BEIJING (AFP) - China aims to launch its first lunar orbiter later this year, part of a three-step plan it hopes will eventually see moon samples brought back to Earth, state media said Sunday. The launch of the Chang'e I, envisaged in the second half of 2007, would be a landmark for China's space programme, China's space agency chief Sun Laiyan was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency. "The moon probe project is the third milestone in China's space technology after satellite and manned spacecraft projects, and a first step for us in exploring deep space," he...

Last week, Wally Schirra, Jr., a member of a shrinking and nearly extinct daredevil brotherhood, died of a heart attack. Schirra was the only astronaut to fly in all three of NASA’s original manned spaceflight programs: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Of the original Mercury Seven, only Scott Carpenter and John Glenn are still alive. As a matter of fact, John Glenn was still cheating death as late as last year. Last summer, John Glenn and his wife were injured in a traffic accident near Columbus. The astronaut and former Ohio senator now holds two historical distinctions: He was the first...

This is the second attempt to loft the rocket Privateer Elon Musk has launched his budget rocket, Falcon-1, from Omelek Island in the South Pacific. The 21m-long vehicle lifted off at 1810 California time (0110 GMT) and rose to an altitude of 200 miles (320km). Mr Musk, who co-founded the internet financial system PayPal, wants to lower the cost of access to space. The flight did not achieve all its goals, but the businessman said it demonstrated the vision of his Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. The mission was the second attempt to loft the rocket; the first ended when...

The Chinese are beating the U.S. in the new "space race," a military strategy expert says. Australia-born defense analyst Greg Copley claims Communist China is working fast towards controlling space with its weapons technology and may even set up the first military base on the moon. Hear This Report Greg Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), says the United States may have won the race to put a man on the moon decades ago; but the Communist Chinese, he believes, have clearly moved ahead of America in the military space race. One recent indication of that, he...

China's anti-satellite weapon test on 11 January could push the USA in one of two directions: towards developing its offensive and defensive capabilities in space or towards negotiating an international treaty banning space weapons. But under the USA's new, more militaristic national space policy, released in October last year, simply ignoring the Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) test would not seem to be an option. In its first policy update since 1996, the US government made clear it would take all threats to its space assets seriously. Washington led condemnation of the January test, which made China the third nation after the...

Russia's Rocket and Space Corporation Energia said Wednesday it will create a new spaceship capable of flying to the Moon. "We have started developing the final design of a modernized spaceship that has been given the working name of Soyuz-K," Nikolai Sevastyanov, the corporation's president, told RIA Novosti. "The new version will be equipped with digital control systems and is being designed in such a way that it could be launched both from the Baikonur space center and equatorial Kourou space center, located on a peninsula in French Guiana," he said. Sevastyanov said Soyuz-K will be able to fly to...

India to launch INSAT-4C on Monday Press Trust of India Chennai, July 9, 2006 India's latest communication satellite INSAT-4C would be launched by a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, on Monday. The GSLV would lift off with the 2168 kg INSAT-4C, the heaviest in its class, at 4 pm on Monday, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair said at the airport on Saturday night. "The preparations for the launch are going on satisfactorily. A rehearsal was held and the results were good", he said on arrival enroute to Sriharikota....

BEIJING (Reuters) - A top official in China's space program has set 2024 for the country's first moonwalk, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Monday, cementing its position as a new space power. The mission would kick off in earnest next year, the Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po paper said, when China launches an unmanned lunar satellite in March or April to orbit and survey the lunar surface. "China now basically possesses the technology, materials and the economic strength" to put a man on the moon, the paper quoted the official as saying.

ON EACH of his four visits, Robert Zubrin found life on Mars a cumbersome and challenging experience. There were personality clashes and arguments inside the 27ft-wide fibreglass and steel living chamber, which he shared with four other crew members. There was the bulky spacesuit he was forced to don every time he wanted to venture outside into the freezing landscape to collect soil and rock samples. There were also difficulties with the inflatable greenhouses in which he and his colleagues attempted to grow their own fresh vegetables to supplement the dried food they had brought with them. And the terrain,...

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. -- A former Nazi scientist who was linked to experiments on prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp in Germany has been ousted from the International Space Hall of Fame. Hubertus Strughold, who had been honored in 1978 for work in developing the spacesuit and space capsule and for his contributions to space medicine, was removed last week by unanimous vote of the New Mexico Museum of Space History's commission. The German-born scientist was brought to this country by the U.S. military after World War II to work on aerospace projects. He died in 1987. The removal process began...

China is stepping up its space program, preparing to launch dozens upon dozens of Earth orbiting satellites over the next five to eight years. Also being readied are several space science missions, fielding a new heavy-lift booster, as well as strengthening its human spaceflight program to include an Earth-circling space lab and initiating a multi-step program of robotic lunar exploration.

The top man at Russia's leading space firm has mooted an ambitious expansion of the country's space effort. President of Energia corporation Nikolai Sevastianov said manned missions to the Moon and Mars were on the cards by 2030. He said: "We can land on the Moon before 2015". His plan is to start mining the Moon for the 1m tons of potential fusion fuel helium-3 scientists say it has. They say this would be enough to power Earth for 1,000 years, and one experts estimates its value at $4bn per ton. This would easily offset the cost of mining it,...

On March 30th, the “Science, the Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, and Related Agencies” subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee held a hearing simply titled “National Aeronautics and Space Administration”, with NASA administrator Michael Griffin as the sole witness. By all appearances this looked to be a routine hearing where members of the subcommittee discussed issues regarding the fiscal year 2007 budget proposal with the administrator, a common early step in the overall appropriations process. As a result, the hearing—which, unlike many other congressional hearings today, was not webcast—got little attention in the press or the space community in...

Why isn’t the United States developing more aerospace scientists and engineers? At one time or another, most kids growing up in the 1950s and 1960s wanted to be astronauts, build rockets, study the stars and travel into outer space. We were fascinated by all things related to space exploration. President Kennedy’s challenge in 1961 to put men on the moon within a decade energized a generation of kids to study math, science and engineering. Just eight years later, the world stood still as it watched Neil Armstrong fulfill Kennedy’s vision. The federal government played a large role in this great...

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped out of a cramped metal spacecraft and onto the moon, creating one of the iconic moments in human history. On Earth, the achievement was broadcast live to billions. Around the same time, in four obscure laboratories in California and Utah, a much quieter revolution was under way. Researchers commissioned by the U.S. Department of Defense were connecting a handful of computers into the first packet-switched network, which they called the ARPANET, giving birth to a computing system that would lead to the global Internet. Four decades later, the Internet has changed the way...

MOSCOW, Dec 28 (Reuters) - The European Union launched its first Galileo navigation satellite on Wednesday, moving to challenge the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS). Russian space agency Roskosmos said the 600 kg (1,300 lb) satellite named Giove-A (Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element) went into its orbit 23,000 km (15,000 miles) from the earth after its launch on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the middle of Kazakhstan's steppe. "The launch of Giove is the proof that Europe can deliver ambitious projects to the benefit of its citizens and companies," said EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot in a...

At 3am tomorrow morning a Russian Soyuz rocket is set to streak into the skies over Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying a satellite that is purpose built to break one of the most ubiquitous monopolies on Earth. If all goes according to plan, the rocket will soar to a height of 14,000 miles before releasing Giove-A, a wardrobe-sized box of electronics, into orbit. Once in position it will gently unfold its twin solar panels and begin to loop around the planet twice each day. In doing so, Europe's most expensive space project, a rival to the US military-run global positioning...

Photo taken on Oct. 17, 2005 shows the re-entry capsule of China's second manned spacecraft, Shenzhou-6, at its landing site in Siziwang Banner (County), north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The re-entry capsule of the Shenzhou-6 sapcecraft, which blasted off on Oct. 12 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gansu Province, touched down at the landing site in Siziwang Banner, at 4:33 am Oct. 17 (2033 GMT) following a five-day mission.

"What China has that other countries don't is political will, because it's a top-down directed program," according to Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert on China's space program at the US Naval War College. "If the Indian government or the Japanese government were to decide that this was a priority for them, I have no doubt that they could in fact excel." A race for the moon, Mars and beyond is in the making with aspiring space power China at its center. Both India and Japan have shown space capabilities to match China, but what makes Beijing the leader is political will....

MOSCOW, September 7 (RIA Novosti) - Russia and China have signed protocol to develop their cooperation in space nuclear energy, the Federal Atomic Energy Agency Rosatom said Wednesday. This came on the heels of the 9th session of the Russian-Chinese sub-commission for nuclear issues, held within the framework of the bilateral commission for regular meetings of the heads of governments from both countries. The document says that space nuclear energy cooperation is envisioned in an inter-governmental agreement on cooperation for the peaceful use of atomic energy, signed in 1996.

TOKYO, April 30 (RIA Novosti, Andrei Fesyun) - Japan and China have started their space race forty years after the USSR and the USA became rivalries in the discovery of space

From the folks who organized the competition that led to the world's first private human spaceflight now comes the X Prize Cup, planned to be an annual showcase of commercial space ventures, with a debut exhibition slated for October. The moniker refers to the $10 million Ansari X Prize claimed last year by a joint venture headed by aircraft designer Burt Rutan and financier Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is to declare today that October 4-9 will be declared as X Prize Cup Week. Those are the dates for festivities to be held in Southern New Mexico – a follow-on event to last year’s back-to-back suborbital runs of SpaceShipOne from the Mojave, California spaceport and securing the $10 million Ansari X Prize purse. At the October X Prize Cup events there will be demonstration flights from at least eight of X Prize Cup team competitors. Also to be previewed will be the Tier-1 X Prize Rocket Racer, according to X Prize Cup spokeswoman, Diane...

Joining a swelling group of countries shooting for the moon, Japan is considering a plan to establish a manned lunar base by 2025, officials said yesterday. If approved, the mission would mark a major change of direction for Japan's space program, which has for decades focused on unmanned, scientific probes. It would also up the ante in an increasingly heated space race in Asia. Both China and India have announced moon missions, and US President George W. Bush has proclaimed that the US will return to the moon in the next decade or so and will try to send astronauts...

Cape Canaveral, FL, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- The Bush administration, with little fanfare, last week unveiled the first update in a decade to the country's official space transportation policy. The eight-page directive, released by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, significantly expands the role of the private sector in space transportation and, for the first time, specifically mentions commercial human spaceflight.

HOUSTON - Russian space officials on Tuesday unveiled a full-scale high-fidelity mockup of the spacecraft they hope will replace the veteran Soyuz space capsule. Descriptions of the Kliper (for "clipper ship") vehicle have been widely circulated in the space community but today’s presentation in Moscow was the most detailed yet. The Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, the organization that has built all of Russian’s human space vehicles for the past half century, hosted the media event at its headquarters in Korolyov, a Moscow suburb. Deputy General Designer Valeriy Ryumin, himself a former cosmonaut, called the craft “a spaceship of the...

MOJAVE, Calif. - It might sound like a space-age case of sour grapes, but Rod and Randa Milliron say they're glad they don't have to think about the $10 million Ansari X Prize anymore. Instead, the founders of Interorbital Systems — Mojave's "other" X Prize team — are back to chasing what they see as the real prize: developing a spaceship that can take tourists into orbit.

MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA -- While SpaceShipOne’s wispy contrail from sky to space quickly vanished into the thin desert air here, Monday’s flight at Mojave Spaceport left a solid line in the sand -- to create a "new space age" of personal space travel.

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... . U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. . . Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family...

BERLIN -- Europe's Mars Express orbiter has sent back its first high-resolution pictures of the planet's surface, capturing in detail part of a huge Martian canyon, the European Space Agency said Monday. Mars Express went into orbit around the Red Planet on Christmas Day on the first European Mars mission. About two weeks later, NASA landed its Spirit rover on the Martian surface. Both missions are searching for signs of past or present life. Over the past week, European controllers have focused on calibrating its on-board instruments -- including, in addition to its high-resolution stereo camera, a powerful radar to...