The deputy administrator of NASA was in Huntsville Tuesday. He’s assessing the city as a potential site for a new NASA financial center. 500 jobs are on the line. Huntsville’s up against 5 other cities for NASA’s ‘Shared Services Center.’ Governor Riley, Congressman Cramer, and local leaders met with Deputy Administrator Fred Gregory yesterday, trying to land this big fish.
The center could have a 50-million dollar impact on north Alabama.
March 10th, 2004
NASA Meeting WAAY TV - Alabama
March 9th, 2004
Democratic Presidential Contender Kucinich Calls for Tripling NASA’s Budget Kucinich for President
Ohio Congressman and Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich today called for a tripling of NASA’s budget. Kucinich, co-sponsor of the Space Exploration Act of 2003, said the current budget for NASA “is far from adequate. Our shuttle fleet is based on 30-year old technology and this is only because of a lack of funding. Although the shuttle program requires $4 billion a year to operate, NASA has been forced to operate the shuttle with a budget of only $3 billion a year.” Kucinich issued a far-reaching statement on the importance of the space program a day before he arrives in Florida Monday for two days of campaigning. Additional funding for space exploration and new technologies “is in our national interest,” he said.
February 13th, 2004
MDA to Help Search for Proof of Life on Mars MacDonald Dettwiler
MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (TSX: MDA) announced today that subsidiary, MD Robotics, has won a $1.5 million CDN ExoMars Mission contract from the European Space Agency. The prime contract is one of two parallel Phase A studies to define a robotic rover and its science payload that will be sent to the Red Planet in 2009.
February 9th, 2004
EADS Astrium Wins Study For First European Mars Rover
EADS Space has been awarded a EUR900k study by ESA to carry out the first definition of a Rover to explore the Martian surface and search for life. The study led by EADS Astrium is part of ESA’s Aurora programme that aims to one day put a European astronaut on Mars.
February 6th, 2004
Bush Budget a Bonanza for Mars Discovery News
The president’s new marching orders for NASA to leave low-Earth orbit and return to outer space exploration promises to be a bonanza for robotic missions to Mars, which not only will continue the search for clues to past life, but also pave the way for human expeditions to the Red Planet.
February 4th, 2004
NASA Releases Budget and Vision Details
NASA unveiled its budget request to Congress Tuesday with the release of two companion documents: the “Fiscal Year 2005 Budget Estimates” and “The Vision for Space Exploration,” a framework for exploration of the solar system and beyond.
February 3rd, 2004
Budget proposal for NASA blueprint puts emphasis on Mars, beyond
Forget about spending much time on the moon. President Bush’s $16.2 billion NASA budget proposal envisions annual lunar missions, by humans and robots, as mere steppingstones to exploring Mars and beyond. “This is not about sending humans back to the moon,” NASA Comptroller Steve Isakowitz said, showing a computer-aided presentation with “Humans to the Moon” in a circle with a red slanted line through it. “The reason we’re going to the moon is because we don’t know today how to go to Mars,” he said. “We’re going to be using the moon first and foremost as a test bed to prepare the way for things we know humans could do of great value on Mars.”
January 23rd, 2004
Bringing space costs back down to Earth
A trillion dollars to send astronauts to Mars? If such claims are valid, it’s no wonder that the public might waver in its general support for space exploration. But despite the repeated use of this figure in the news media, the actual cost is expected to be much, much less. Engineering cost analysis that has worked in the past suggests that the actual cost of Bush’s proposals will be only a fifth to a tenth as great as the frightening numbers being waved around. The slowly mounting NASA allocations, as shown on budget proposals, are in line with these estimates.
January 21st, 2004
NASA details new space goals to staff
In a presentation now being delivered to NASA employees across the country, the space agency is providing details of how it plans to implement the broad new space goals announced by President Bush last week. The presentation, a copy of which was obtained by MSNBC.com, includes a list of guiding principles, specific program plans and details of budgetary rearrangements.
January 21st, 2004
Bush Vision Was Key to Saving NASA from Budget Cuts
In the months preceding U.S. President George W. Bush