Private Space Taxi Builders Ponder Future Beyond NASA

The private spaceflight company SpaceX is poised to launch a robotic capsule toward the International Space Station Saturday (May 19) on a test flight that, if successful, could be a watershed moment for the commercial space industry. Continue reading

Picture of the Day: NASA's Mars Rover Gets Back to Roving

After 19 weeks in one place, NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity hit the road — well, not so much road as Martian ground — now that Mars’ winter is over and the sun is shining on Opportunity’s solar panels once again. This was Opportunity’s fifth winter on the planet, and it spent the time on an outcrop called Greeley Haven in Mars’ Meridiani region. Next up for the little robot? Continue reading

NASA survey counts potentially hazardous asteroids

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2012) Observations from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to the best assessment yet of our solar system’s population of potentially hazardous asteroids. The results reveal new information about their total numbers, origins and the possible dangers they may pose. Potentially hazardous asteroids, or PHAs, are a subset of the larger group of near-Earth asteroids Continue reading

NASA astronaut to attend Dunedin science festival

NASA astronaut Stephanie D. Wilson, a veteran of three space flights who has logged more than 42 days in space, will be making her next touchdown at this year's eighth New Zealand International Science Festival taking place in Dunedin, from 30 June to 8 July 2012. Continue reading

NASA estimates 4,700 'potentially hazardous' asteroids

By Matt Smith, CNN updated 8:29 PM EDT, Wed May 16, 2012 This image, taken by NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission in 2000, shows a close-up view of the asteroid Eros. STORY HIGHLIGHTS (CNN) — About 4,700 asteroids are close enough and big enough to pose a risk to Earth, NASA estimated Wednesday after studying data beamed back from an orbiting telescope. The figure — give or take 1,500 — is how many space rocks bigger than 100 meters (330 feet) across are believed to come within 5 million miles (8 million km) of Earth, or about 20 times farther away than the moon. Continue reading

NASA's massive renovation

The best time to do a little renovating is when everyone is out of the house — something homeowners know and something NASA appears to appreciate too. The space agency is experiencing empty-nest syndrome in a big way, with the shuttles heading for museum retirement and the next manned American space vehicle not scheduled to fly until 2016 — unless it's 2018 or 2025 or who knows when? Continue reading

NASA lends Galaxy Evolution Explorer to Caltech

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2012) NASA is lending the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, where the spacecraft will continue its exploration of the cosmos. In a first-of-a-kind move for NASA, a Space Act Agreement was signed May 14 so the university soon can resume spacecraft operations and data management for the mission using private funds. “NASA sees this as an opportunity to allow the public to continue reaping the benefits from this space asset that NASA developed using federal funding,” said Paul Hertz, NASA’s Astrophysics Division director at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. Continue reading

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft unlocks secrets of giant asteroid

After becoming the first probe to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in July 2011, NASAs Dawn spacecraft has spent the last 10 months orbiting said object – the giant asteroid Vesta. During that period it has captured more than 20,000 images of Vesta and a multitude of data from different wavelengths of radiation. Continue reading

NASA Challenges Public To Build Apps Using Planetary Data System

With all of its satellites, telescopes, gizmos and gadgets, NASA collects thousands of data points every month. But what if NASA could present that all of that data in a clean, fun and useful way to the public? Continue reading

Might NASA be Forced to Kill the Commercial Space Race?

It looks like the commercial space race might be over before it’s even really begun. Last week, Congress approved a spending bill that demands NASA immediately choose one company for the commercial crew program, and this week they will be voting on it. Killing the private competition is meant to save money and speed up development, but more likely it will be devastating to NASA’s already stretched budget Continue reading

Report: NASA Training Astronauts for Asteroid Missions

NASA is currently training astronauts to land on asteroids and hopes to send humans to one of the distant space rocks in about a decade, The Telegraph reported over the weekend. As in the movie Armageddon, one motivation for the endeavor is to figure out a way to destroy or deflect a large asteroid that could be on a collision course with Earth. In June, a group of astronauts will begin learning how to operate vehicles and move about on asteroids, according to the U.K. Continue reading

Latest Update on New Space Station Crew on This Week @NASA – Video


11-05-2012 14:29 Activities for new Expedition 31 crewmembers, Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka, NASA Flight Engineer Joe Acaba and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin include a pre-launch fit check in a Soyuz capsule at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the raising of flags outside the Cosmonaut Hotel crew quarters and launch to the orbiting laboratory to meet up with NASA Astronaut Don Pettit, Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency. Also, SpaceX continues its preparations for the planned May 19 launch of the Falcon 9 rocket and unmanned Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, new findings about the asteroid Vesta by NASA’s DAWN spacecraft and more! Continue reading

NASA Asian-American History Month Profile — Daphne Dador – Video


11-05-2012 14:32 Daphne Dador joined NASA as a Legislative Affairs Specialist at the Office of Legislative & Intergovernmental Affairs (OLIA) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, in September 2010. Continue reading

NASA's new carbon-counting instrument leaves the nest

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2012) Its construction now complete, the science instrument that is the heart of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) spacecraft — NASA’s first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide — has left its nest at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and has arrived at its integration and test site in Gilbert, Ariz. A truck carrying the OCO-2 instrument left JPL before dawn on Tuesday, May 9, to begin the trek to Orbital Science Corporation’s Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Gilbert, southeast of Phoenix, where it arrived that afternoon. The instrument will be unpacked, inspected and tested. Continue reading

NASA rover contest gets set for showdown

NASA / JPL-Caltech An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Curiosity rover zapping a rock during a sampling operation on Mars. Laser-zapping is not a requirement for the robots entered in a NASA-backed $1.5 million contest. By Devin Coldewey Mark June 16 on your calendar, interplanetary robot fans: Thats when autonomous rovers will face off in NASA’s $1.5 million Sample Return Robot Challenge at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts Continue reading

NASA Greenlights SpaceX ISS Visit for May 19

SpaceX on Friday confirmed that NASA has greenlighted May 19 as the launch date for the first privately funded cargo mission to the International Space Station following a series of delays. The launch of a SpaceX Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is scheduled for 4:55 a.m. ET, a SpaceX spokesperson said Continue reading