On April 15, President Barack Obama will visit Florida to host a White House Conference on the Administration’s new vision for America’s future in space, the White House today announced.
The President, along with top officials and other space leaders, will discuss the new course the Administration is charting for NASA and the future of U.S. leadership in human space flight. Specifically, the conference will focus on the goals and strategies in this new vision, the next steps, and the new technologies, new jobs, and new industries it will create. Conference topics will include the implications of the new strategy for Florida, the nation, and our ultimate activities in space.
March 8th, 2010
President Obama to Host Space Conference in Florida in April The White House
March 8th, 2010
Unusual Gullies and Channels on Mars
What could have formed these unusual channels? Inside Newton Basin on Mars, numerous narrow channels run from the top down to the floor. The above picture covers a region spanning about 1500 meters across. These and other gullies have been found on Mars in recent high-resolution pictures taken by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor robot spacecraft. Similar channels on Earth are formed by flowing water, but on Mars the temperature is normally too cold and the atmosphere too thin to sustain liquid water. Nevertheless, many scientists hypothesize that liquid groundwater can sometimes surface on Mars, erode gullies and channels, and pool at the bottom before freezing and evaporating. If so, life-sustaining ice and water might exist even today below the Martian surface — water that could potentially support a human mission to Mars. Research into this exciting possibility is sure to continue!
March 4th, 2010
Their Mars mission is set to blast off St. Petersburg Times
Remember the people who said the moon landing was a hoax?
A New Port Richey company hopes to create a simulated trip to Mars that everyone will know is fake but will appear as realistic as possible.
“This is not Disney World or Universal Studios,” said Mark Homnick, 52, one of the managers of NewSpace Center LLC.
The company has submitted site plans for a 75-acre lot in Titusville on Florida’s Space Coast to build Interspace, a space-themed entertainment and research facility that would include the simulated Martian environment. The men estimated the project will cost about $30-million and said their plans began in 2005. Homnick and his vice president, Joseph Palaia, run the company and its parent, 4Frontiers, out of Homnick’s waterfront stilt home.
March 3rd, 2010
Opinion: Mars Is Within Our Reach — Here’s How AOL News
In his recent testimony before Congress, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden told lawmakers the goal of the U.S. space program under President Barack Obama was Mars. But he also warned that getting to Mars would require a step-by-step evolution, because NASA lacked the technology to safely send astronauts so deep into space. The Obama budget contained the down payment on a Mars mission, with billions set aside for research and testing of advanced, cutting-edge technologies that could be employed to make a mission to Mars a reality.
I believe we can be well on our way to Mars by July 20, 2019 — which just happens to be the 50th anniversary of my Apollo 11 flight to the moon. The plan I’ve designed, called a unified space vision, contains ideas for the development of a deep-space craft that I call the Exploration Module, and development of a true heavy lift space booster evolved from the existing space shuttle.
March 3rd, 2010
Ten Questions for Space Suit Designer Dava Newman Motherboard.TV
On this final segment of NOVA scienceNOW’s chat with awesome MIT engineer Dava Newman, she’s asked to pick between Star Wars and 2001, talks about what foods to eat while sailing around the world (that is, when food isn’t being used to steer the boat), and shares the highest complement she’s received for her form-fitting next generation space suit. Nope, it’s not about how much it makes astronauts look like Spider Man.
March 2nd, 2010
Scientist eyes 39-day voyage to Mars
A journey from Earth to Mars could eventually take just 39 days — cutting current travel time nearly six times — according to a rocket scientist who has the ear of the US space agency.
Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former astronaut and a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), says reaching the Red Planet could be dramatically quicker using his high-tech VASIMR rocket, now on track for liftoff after decades of development.
The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket — to give its full name — is quick becoming a centerpiece of NASA’s future strategy as it looks to private firms to help meet the astronomical costs of space exploration.
NASA, still reeling from a political decision to cancel its Constellation program that would have returned a human to the moon by the end of the decade, has called on firms to provide new technology to power rovers or even future manned missions.
Hopes are now pinned on firms like Chang-Diaz’s Texas-based Ad Astra Rocket Company.
February 24th, 2010
Senators to NASA chief: Go somewhere specific Washington Post
NASA needs to go somewhere specific, not just talk about it, skeptical U.S. senators told the space agency chief Wednesday.
President Barack Obama’s proposed budget kills the previous administration’s return-to-the-moon mission, sometimes nicknamed “Apollo on steroids.” That leaves the space agency adrift without a goal or destination, senators and outside experts said at a Senate Commerce science and space subcommittee hearing, the first since Obama unveiled his new space plan this month.
On top of that the nation’s space shuttle fleet is only months away from long-planned retirement, an issue for senators from Florida, where NASA is a major employer. And while the new NASA plan includes extra money – $6 billion over five years – for private spaceships and developing new rocket technology, NASA shouldn’t be just about spending, the senators said. It should be about John F. Kennedy-like vision.
February 22nd, 2010
Will Clean Electricity Blossom with Bloom Box? Tonic
Its origins were in providing NASA with a device to manufacturer oxygen for a manned Mars colony. But when the mission was scrubbed, K.R. Sridhar set his sights back down here to the challenges on Earth, and, figuratively speaking, turned his device inside out. Instead of giving off oxygen, it would take oxygen in. And the output would be cleanly generated electricity.
A 60 Minutes segment offered an introductory peek into the people and the principle behind a clean energy innovation that will be officially introduced on Wednesday, February 24. Bloom Energy, and its Bloom Box fuel cell technology, have been mum until now on the details while they have been raising a staggering $400 million in investment capital with the hope of launching what Sridhar insists will be a clean energy game-changer.
February 22nd, 2010
Mining Mars? Where’s the Ore? Discovery
Future Mars prospectors will likely find mineral riches in some unusual settings, say planetary scientists studying the different ways valuable metals might have been concentrated on the red planet.
On Earth, surface waters, ground waters and even chemicals left by living things play major roles in leaching, concentrating and depositing valuable metals and minerals like iron, gold, silver, nickel, copper and many more.
But on Mars there are no oceans or surface waters; no microorganisms either. What’s more, the planet is so cold that even groundwater is frozen as permafrost and functions as little more than another mineral in the ground.
So where does a starving miner look on Mars for usable quantities of ore?
February 22nd, 2010
2009 “Good Design” Award Goes To Manned Mars Exploration Rover Release-news.com
Westmont Illinois based Montgomery Design International (MDI) and Santa Barbara California based Ergonomic Systems Design have announced they have jointly been awarded the Chicago Athenaeum and Museum’s “GOOD DESIGN” award for 2009 as creators and designers of the Manned Mars Exploration Rover (MMER). Designed as an independent study for the 2037 Mars mission, the Rover was cited for its bold, futuristic design as well as providing transport and life support for Mars astronauts.