While saddened by the loss of Columbia and its crew, engineers, scientists, and technologists are committed to regrouping and moving forward on new approaches that could revolutionize robotic exploration and allow astronauts to reach destinations beyond Earth orbit, anywhere, anytime.
February 4th, 2003
Nuclear-powered spacecraft plan feared San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday’s space shuttle disaster has stirred grassroots opposition to the Bush administration’s recently announced plan to develop nuclear-powered space rockets. “If there had been a nuclear reactor on board (the Columbia space shuttle), this debris field they’re warning people not to come too close to would be a considerably bigger mess,” said physicist Edward Lyman, head of the private Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, D.C. But many space enthusiasts say nuclear-powered spaceships offer the only way to penetrate the deepest, darkest corners of the solar system. Out there, billions of miles from Earth, sunlight is too weak to energize existing forms of solar-electric cells.
February 3rd, 2003
Visionary Goals Energized by Nuclear Power at Space Tech Gathering
Stunned by the ill-fated flight of space plane Columbia, scientists and engineers from government, industry, and academia have gathered here at the Space Technology & Applications International Forum (STAIF-2003), being held February 2-5. High hopes remain for the future of space exploration. That’s what the optimism fuel gauge still reads as experts discuss everything from nuclear reactor-fed rocketry, microgravity science to next generation boosters and space colonization.
January 31st, 2003
Martian Playground TechTV
The Martian surface is a forbidding landscape of dry riverbeds, craters, and extinct volcanoes. Those geologic features could be found in dozens of places on Earth, but probably not all in one easily accessible location. That’s why Mars has been re-created on a tiny scale by NASA scientists as a test bed for the new Mars rover that will head to the red planet in 2009. “We’ve had a group of geologists and astrobiologists spend time playing God, wondering how things really should be on Mars,” says Liam Pedersen, the project’s principle investigator.
January 30th, 2003
Space water recycling experiment flying high aboard Space Shuttle ScienceDaily
In a remote, hostile, totally alien environment, every life-sustaining resource is precious
January 30th, 2003
Landers feel the heat on space missions
Space is certainly a cold place, but spacecraft have to face extremely high temperatures when they are exposed to the Sun’s radiation. However, there are other extreme situations in which spacecraft are subject to tremendous heat. ESA’s spacecraft must endure temperatures from hell…
January 30th, 2003
Technology Update: Displays & Indicators: Flex Time Appliance Manufacturer
Flexible displays are on the way. Wristwatches using flexible, unbreakable, plastic LCDs could be on the market by late summer this year, according to David Freeman, chief operating officer and co-founder of Viztec, Inc., Twinsburg, Ohio. And cell phone applications could soon follow. Freeman adds that, while monochrome versions of the displays will become available first, color versions are in the works and could become available by year’s end.
January 25th, 2003
Marshall will help power NASA’s nuclear program The Huntsville Times
Marshall Space Flight Center will play a key role in NASA’s plan to develop and build nuclear-powered spacecraft, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said during a visit to Huntsville Friday. Dubbed Project Prometheus – after the Greek god who gave humans fire – the space agency plans to develop nuclear-power technologies that will advance exploration of space. O’Keefe, in a speech to Marshall employees, said nuclear power will extend man’s reach beyond where chemical rockets and solar arrays can take spacecraft today. “There is a need . . . to concentrate on how to do things in the future that we can’t do today,” O’Keefe said.
January 22nd, 2003
Nasa to go nuclear
President Bush is set to endorse using nuclear power to explore Mars and open up the outer Solar System. He is expected to back the US space agency’s recent nuclear propulsion initiative, Project Prometheus, either in his State of the Union speech, due on 28 January, or later this year when he submits his 2004 budget to Congress.