While living at Johnson Space Center the weekend of February 11, Houston area high school students will use their imagination and knowledge to design complete details of a human settlement on Mars in the year 2050. Interested Houston area high school students are encouraged to ask their math and science teachers or school principals for more information about this project. The target deadline for registration is Friday, January 28.
January 7th, 2000
Air-Breathing Rocket Engines for 21st Century Space Travel
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Rocket engines that breathe oxygen from the air could dramatically reduce the cost of getting to space, making it more accessible. Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, and NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, OH, are developing technologies for such an air-breathing rocket
January 7th, 2000
NASA’s 1999 Feats Presage its Next Millennium
NASA’s achievements in 1999 extended from terrestrial airport runways to extrasolar planets and addressed concerns ranging from the environmental to the cosmological. Here are our picks for the top 10 NASA stories this year.
December 17th, 1999
Young to Lead Mars Program Assessment Team
A. Thomas Young has been named by NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin to chair the Mars Program Independent Assessment Team which will review the agency’s approach to robotic exploration of Mars in the wake of the recent loss of the Mars Polar Lander mission.
December 15th, 1999
Mars Polar Lander Mission Status
Flight controllers for Mars Polar Lander have continued their attempts to communicate with the spacecraft so that they can be certain they have exhausted all possibilities before they conclude their search. While a recovery is still a possibility, the likelihood of hearing from the lander is considered remote at this point. In parallel with the communications attempts, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft will start taking high-resolution images of the landing site to search for signs of the lander.
December 5th, 1999
Mars Polar Lander Mission Status
Mission controllers for NASA’s Mars Polar Lander have revised their strategy as they continue trying to make contact with the spacecraft. “We’re nearing the point where we’ve used up our final silver bullets,” said the mission’s project manager, Richard Cook of JPL, after Sunday night’s unsuccessful attempt to communicate with the spacecraft.
December 4th, 1999
Mars Polar Lander Mission Status
Mission controllers for NASA’s Mars Polar Lander and the accompanying Deep Space 2 microprobes will continue attempting to communicate with the lander and the probes throughout the weekend. Controllers did not hear from the spacecraft in their first few attempts to communicate with the lander and the probes during the first 12 hours after the scheduled landing time. The Deep Space 2 team will try to contact the probes approximately every two hours. The next opportunity for the Mars Polar Lander to contact Earth will be on Saturday evening, Dec. 4 at about 8:30 p.m. PST.
November 10th, 1999
Mars Climate Orbiter Failure Board Releases Report
Wide-ranging managerial and technical actions are underway at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, in response to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter and the initial findings of the mission failure investigation board, whose first report was released today.
November 5th, 1999
Mars Climate Orbiter Investigation Board To Release Report
The NASA failure review board investigating the loss of Mars Climate Orbiter will release its findings in a press briefing at 2 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 1999.
October 26th, 1999
ASPERA-3 Receives Confirmation Approval
Welcome to ASPERA-3, the first Mission of Opportunity to be selected as part of the Discovery Program. The ASPERA (Analyzer of Space Plasmas and Energetic Atoms) experiment is one of seven scientific instruments that will fly on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express mission, planned to launch in mid-2003. The main objective of the mission is to search for sub-surface water from orbit and drop a lander on the Martian surface. The instruments onboard the orbiting spacecraft will perform remote sensing measurements designed to answer questions about the Martian atmosphere, the planet’s structure and geology. The Mars Express team consists of ESA engineers, industry and hundreds of international scientists.