Radio telescope reveals giant outbursts from binary star system

Radio telescope reve…

The first scientific paper based on observations performed with South Africa’s new KAT-7 radio telescope has been accepted for publication by the prestigious journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomy Society.
“This is a significant milestone for South Africa’s SKA (Square…

Radio telescope reve…
Mars Rover Curiosity drills second rock target

Mars Rover Curiosity…

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has used the drill on its robotic arm to collect a powdered sample from the interior of a rock called "Cumberland."
Plans call for delivering portions of the sample in coming days to laboratory instruments inside the…

Mars Rover Curiosity…
Meade Instruments Corp. to be acquired by Jinghua Optics & Electronics

Meade Instruments Co…

Meade Instruments Corp. (est. 1972), one of the world's largest designers and manufacturers of telescopes and accessories for amateur astronomers, and Jinghua Optics Electronics Co., Ltd. (JOC) announced May 17 that Meade and JOC's wholly owned subsidiary, JOC North America…

Meade Instruments Co…
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Archive for human spaceflight

Future of Canada’s Human Spaceflight Program Uncertain

By alkaon on January 31, 2013 No Comments

An astronaut in training remains upbeat about the country’s human spaceflight future.

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NASA: Reaches for New Heights – Greatest Hits Video

By alkaon on January 26, 2013 No Comments

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter

Video Caption: At NASA, we’ve been a little busy: landing on Mars, developing new human spacecraft, going to the space station, working with commercial partners, observing the Earth and the Sun, exploring our solar system and understanding our universe. And that’s not even everything.Credit: NASA

Check out this cool action packed video titled “NASA: Reaching for New Heights” – to see NASA’s ‘Greatest Hits’ from the past year

The 4 minute film is a compilation of NASA’s gamut of Robotic Science and Human Spaceflight achievements to explore and understand Planet Earth here at home and the heavens above- ranging from our Solar System and beyond to the Galaxy and the vast expanse of the Universe.

The missions and programs featured include inspiringly beautiful imagery from : Curiosity, Landsat, Aquarius, GRACE, NuSTAR, GRAIL, Dawn at Asteroid Vesta, SDO, X-48C Amelia, Orion, SLS, Apollo, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser, Boeing CST-100, Commercial Crew, Hurricane Sandy from the ISS, Robonaut and more !

And even more space exploration thrills are coming in 2013 !

Ken Kremer



About

Dr. Ken Kremer is a speaker, scientist, freelance science journalist (Princeton, NJ) and photographer whose articles, space exploration images and Mars mosaics have appeared in magazines, books, websites and calanders including Astronomy Picture of the Day and the covers of Aviation Week Space Technology, Spaceflight and the Explorers Club magazines. Ken has presented at numerous educational institutions, civic religious organizations, museums and astronomy clubs. Ken has reported first hand from the Kennedy Space Center and lectures on both Human and Robotic spaceflight – www.kenkremer.com

Tagged as:
Apollo,
boeing CST 100,
Curiosity,
Dawn Asteroid Orbiter,
GRAIL,
ISS,
Landsat,
Mars,
NASA,
NuSTAR,
Orion,
SLS,
Space Launch System (SLS),
SpaceX Dragon

Article source: http://www.universetoday.com/99621/nasa-reaches-for-new-heights-greatest-hits-video/

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Congress Girds For Future NASA Budget Battles

By alkaon on January 4, 2013 No Comments

A housekeeping measure for the U.S. civil space program adopted in the final hours of the expiring Congress includes language reaffirming congressional support for NASA’s current spending priorities in the budget battles ahead.

The legislation, needed to extend government indemnification of third-party damages from commercial space launches and to allow NASA to continue buying human-spaceflight services from Russia, also included “sense of Congress” language reaffirming support for a mix of government and commercial human spaceflight vehicles.

The “Space Exploration Sustainability Act” adopted Jan. 2 specifically lists the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS), the Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle and commercial crew and cargo space vehicles under development with NASA backing as “inherently complementary and interrelated,” and forbids the use of SLS or Orion funding to pay for commercial-vehicle development.

“This action by Congress reaffirms the intent of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, which reflected a hard-fought Congressional and Administration consensus for the future of NASA in the post-shuttle era,” stated retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who was credited by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden with forcing the White House budget office to free funding for the SLS. “I am delighted that this will be one of my final acts as a U.S. Senator.”

The space legislation passed both houses of Congress on voice votes as lawmakers focused on deal-making to avoid the “fiscal cliff” of mandatory tax increases and spending cuts. But budget “sequestration” was only delayed by two months, setting the stage for more bitter battles over spending priorities and strong downward pressure on the discretionary spending that funds NASA.

The sense-of-Congress approach isn’t binding on the White House, which has made no secret of its preference for commercial human spaceflight over the government-backed SLS sometimes dubbed the “Senate Launch System.” But it sends a signal that a majority in the outgoing Congress still supported the compromise embodied in NASA’s 2010 authorization act, and space-policy leaders in the new 113th Congress will continue to do so.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the new chairman of the House Science Committee that authorizes NASA spending, handled final passage of the sense-of-Congress resolution on the House floor, and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who worked with Hutchison on the Senate Commerce Committee to hammer out the 2010 compromise, vowed to continue that work in the new Congress. The 2010 authorization expires this year, and it remains to be seen exactly what the White House will propose for NASA in its fiscal 2014 budget request. “This legislation reaffirms our commitment to a robust future for the space program,” Nelson stated.

The resolution extended NASA’s waiver to buy seats on Russia’s Soyuz capsule and other Russian human spaceflight services until the end of 2020 under the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act. With the first commercial human spaceflights not scheduled until 2017, and then only if NASA gets its full budget request, the agency needed the waiver to begin negotiating access for its astronauts to the International Space Station after mid-2016.

The original House version of the bill sought a two-year extension of third-party liability sharing for commercial space launches, but that chamber accepted a Senate amendment limiting the extension to one year.

Article source: http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/asd_01_04_2013_p05-01-533427.xml

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NASA will remain a leader in human spaceflight, top official says

By alkaon on December 20, 2012 No Comments

NASA’s human spaceflight program is “alive and well,” NASA chief Charles Bolden told a committee convened to explore the space program’s future goals and direction.

“Those who question whether we can still lead in space fail to understand that a nation which has achieved so many firsts never follows and never will,” Bolden told the National Research Council committee during a daylong meeting in Washington meant to help gather evidence to review the human spaceflight program. 

Bolden’s remarks to the committee come soon after the decommissioning of the iconic space shuttle program, leaving the U.S. without its own space-worthy vehicles to take astronauts to low-Earth orbit. And just this month a separate NRC committee report examining NASA’s overall strategic direction concluded that the human spaceflight division suffered from a lack of consensus on what its goals should be. 

While President Obama has called for sending a manned mission to an asteroid in the mid-2020s and to Mars in the 2030s, there doesn’t appear to be much support for that goal in NASA’s ranks and among the public, the earlier report found. Many interviewed argued for a return to the moon first, according to the report.  

Bolden acknowledged the long-lived enthusiasm for the moon, but called it a “generational” gap — many of his colleagues from the days of the Apollo program have expressed their dissatisfaction with the current direction, he said.

When it comes to revisiting our next-door neighbor, other countries may have to step in and take up the challenge, he added.

“We can’t do everything,” Bolden said. “We can lead through inspiration.”  

Bolden also said the report writers may have missed certain things because the study was conducted during the generally quieter times just before the presidential election.

Follow me on Twitter @aminawrite. 

Article source: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-nasa-human-spaceflight-moon-mars-nrc-20121219,0,1828598.story?track=rss

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Report: NASA Lacks Focus, May Need to Cut Programs

By alkaon on December 7, 2012 No Comments

Astronaut Alan Shepard Jr., Apollo 14 Commander, stands by the U.S. flag on the lunar Fra Mauro Highlands.

Astronaut Alan Shepard Jr., Apollo 14 Commander, stands by the U.S. flag on the lunar Fra Mauro Highlands.

A panel of experts said Wednesday that NASA lacks focus—especially where human spaceflight is concerned—and has increasingly relied on a series of expensive, risky missions in a time when funding is scarce.

“Other than the long-range goal of sending humans to Mars, there is no strong, compelling national vision for the human spaceflight program, which is arguably the centerpiece of NASA’s spectrum of mission areas,” says the report, compiled by authors from the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The report says there is a “lack of consensus” about where the agency should head next, and the agency may be spreading itself too thin.

[READ: NASA Finds New Evidence of Ice on Mercury]

Albert Carnesale, chair of the Committee on NASA’s Strategic Direction, said in a conference call that while the agency still does important work, it needs to narrow its focus to only the most important missions. With the federal government looking to make budget cuts wherever it can, NASA continues to add new missions while its budget remains fairly stagnant.

“They’re going to have to think about reducing or eliminating parts of programs in NASA’s portfolio, otherwise they’ll all just get stretched out in time,” Carnesale said. “They have many valuable programs, but what they don’t have is adequate funding for the portfolio of programs they do have.”

Carnesale says the agency will have to make some tough decisions, including the consideration of consolidating some of its locations, and headquarters having tighter management of each location. They also have to make sure their missions succeed: “The programs are growing more and more expensive, more and more long-term, and more and more risky,” he said.

Though it has been one of NASA’s most successful missions in recent memory, Carnesale said the $2.5 billion Mars Curiosity rover is emblematic of the expensive missions NASA has been running lately.

[MORE: NASA Aims to Send Another Rover to Mars by 2020]

“These are high-stakes missions, even the ones that don’t involve humans,” he said.

In August, Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society, said the “stakes could not be higher” with the Curiosity mission and that failure of such an expensive mission would lead to huge backlash in Congress.

“If it [failed], NASA [would] have been discredited at exactly the wrong time,” he says. “The voices of criticism [would have been] phenomenal.”

[READ: Below Surface, Moon Is Battered, Cracked Heap]

In September, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden defended his agency, saying that “some have claimed we’re adrift, that we have no clear human space missions.”

“Those who perpetuate that myth are hurting the space program … it couldn’t be further from the truth,” he added.

More News:

Jason Koebler is a science and technology reporter for U.S. News World Report. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at jkoebler@usnews.com.

Article source: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/12/06/report-nasa-lacks-focus-may-need-to-cut-programs

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China to Grow Veggies on Mars?

By alkaon on December 6, 2012 No Comments

It’s no secret that China’s space program is progressing at fast rate, but could the nation leapfrog the US in the realm of human spaceflight by landing the first extraterrestrial “greenhouse” on Mars? The plan, as reported by the Chinese state media on Monday, saw a 300 cubic meter “ecological life support system” test being carried out in Beijing — an experiment that was supported by German scientists. In this trial run, four types of vegetables were grown and two people lived inside. It is not clear how long the test lasted or whether the test subjects remained healthy for the duration.

This system forms the basis of a far grander scheme that would allow astronauts to cultivate fresh fruit and vegetables, produce water and generate oxygen to breathe on the moon and Mars.

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NASA Eyes Year-Long Missions on Space Station

By alkaon on October 5, 2012 No Comments

GPN-2002-000078

With an eye toward preparing for eventual human missions to Mars,
NASA is considering doubling an astronaut’s stay aboard the International Space
Station from six months to one year.

spaceflight
WATCH VIDEOS: SPACEFLIGHT AND EXPLORATION

ANALYSIS: Interstellar Travel Is Hard, Why Bother?

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported this week that
the Russian space agency and its space station partners had agreed to launch a
cosmonaut and a NASA astronaut to the station in 2015 for a year-long
experimental mission.

NASA spokesman Rob Navias told Discovery News the U.S. space
agency had been “exploring the idea,” but that no agreements have been signed.

SLIDESHOW: Space Station Astronauts Log One Million Photos

“We have had
discussions,” Navias said. “A one-year increment on the ISS would be a natural
progression as part of preparations for missions beyond low-Earth orbit.”

So far, only four people have spent a year or longer in
orbit during a single mission. All four are Russian cosmonauts who served
aboard the Mir space station, which was removed from orbit in 2001.

“Getting contemporary medical data with modern equipment would be
helpful,” Navias said.

The station is a $100-billion research laboratory that flies
about 250 miles (about 400 km) above Earth. The partnership is led by the United States and
Russia and includes Europe, Japan and Canada.

If the long-duration mission proves successful, Alexei
Krasnov, head of human spaceflight for the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said
the partners discuss implementing year-long assignments on a permanent basis,
according to RIA Novosti.

Image: Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who holds the  record for the single-longest stay in
space, gazes through a window on Russia’s Mir space station as shuttle
Discovery conducts a practice rendezvous on Feb. 6, 1995. Polyakov wrapped up
his 437-day, 18-hour spaceflight on March 21, 1995 — five days after a Russian
Soyuz capsule carrying U.S. astronaut Norm Thagard and two Russian cosmonauts arrived
for a series of joint missions that set the stage for the International Space
Station partnership. Credit: NASA



Article source: http://news.discovery.com/space/nasa-eyes-year-long-missions-on-space-station-121004.html

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Why SpaceX is setting the pace in space race

By alkaon on August 1, 2012 No Comments

After spending the better part of a week docked to the International Space Station, SpaceX's Dragon cargo spacecraft is suspended in the grasp of the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm, 240 miles above the home planet, before its May 31 return to Earth.The innovative company known as SpaceX has earned a leading role in the next phase of NASA’s effort to revive U.S. human spaceflight. Guest commentary by Stewart Money.

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See China’s capsule and lab module in night sky

By alkaon on June 18, 2012 No Comments

China's Long March 2F rocket launches from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Saturday, sending the country's first woman astronaut and two male crewmates into space aboard their Shenzhou 9 capsule.The launch of China’s fourth human spaceflight this weekend kicked off a major docking test flight, and there’s a chance you can see the two spaceships involved in the orbital rendezvous in tonight’s night sky.

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NASA Commercial Partner SpaceX Completes Crew Accommodations Milestone

By alkaon on May 9, 2012 No Comments

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., May 8, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has finished an important evaluation of a prototype Dragon spacecraft designed to carry people into orbit. This key milestone is part of SpaceX’s partnership with NASA under a funded Space Act Agreement to advance the design of crew transportation vehicles.

The primary goal of the tests was to determine whether the layout will allow astronauts to maneuver effectively in the vehicle. Several veteran space shuttle astronauts and NASA engineers conducted the evaluation during a pair of two-day-long reviews.

“I am very pleased with the progress SpaceX and our other commercial partners are making during the CCDev2 effort,” said NASA Commercial Spaceflight Director Philip McAlister. “Together with NASA’s development of beyond low-Earth orbit systems, commercial crew and cargo transportation is an integral part of our overall human spaceflight program.”

As part of the Commercial Crew Development Round 2, or CCDev2, agreement, the company invited the astronauts and engineers to its headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., to conduct the evaluation. The prototype was equipped with seats, lighting, environmental control and life support systems, conceptual displays and controls, cargo racks and other interior systems.

“This milestone demonstrated the layout of the crew cabin supports critical tasks,” said SpaceX Commercial Crew Development Manager Garrett Reisman. “It also demonstrated the Dragon interior has been designed to maximize the ability of the seven-member crew to do their job as effectively as possible.”

During the reviews, space shuttle veterans Rex Walheim, Tony Antonelli, Eric Boe and Tim Kopra participated in so-called “human factor assessments.” This included entering and exiting Dragon under normal and emergency scenarios. They also performed reach and visibility evaluations.

“As an anchor customer for commercial transportation services, we are happy to provide SpaceX with knowledge and lessons learned from our 50 years of human spaceflight,” said Commercial Crew Program Manager Ed Mango. “We appreciate the opportunity SpaceX gave us to provide feedback on these critical interior systems while the company maintains its flexibility to appeal to other customers.”

This is the seventh of 10 milestones SpaceX must meet under the CCDev2 agreement, which continues through July 31. This includes the development of a launch abort system for crew escape during launch or ascent.

All of NASA’s industry partners continue to meet their established milestones in developing safe, reliable and affordable commercial crew transportation capabilities.

For more information about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

SOURCE NASA

Copyright (C) 2012 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Article source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nasa-commercial-partner-spacex-completes-crew-accommodations-milestone-2012-05-08

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NASA Image of the day

Launching Balloons to Study Space Weather

 
In Antarctica in January, 2013 – the summer at the South Pole – scientists released 20 balloons, each eight stories tall, into the air to help answer an enduring space weather question: when the giant radiation belts surrounding Earth lose material, where do the extra particles actually go? This NASA-funded mission is called BARREL, for Balloon Array for Radiation belt Relativistic Electron Losses. Each balloon launched by the BARREL team floated for anywhere from three to 40 days, measuring X-rays produced by fast-moving electrons high up in the atmosphere.BARREL works hand in hand with another NASA mission called the Van Allen Probes, which travels directly through the Van Allen radiation belts. The belts wax and wane over time in response to incoming energy and material from the sun, sometimes intensifying the radiation through which satellites orbiting Earth must travel. Scientists need to understand this process better, and even provide forecasts of such space weather, in order to protect our spacecraft.› Read MoreImage Credit: NASA
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