More than four decades ago, on May 5, 1961, a Navy commander squeezed into a spaceship seat the size of a bathtub and was blasted into outer space for a history-making trip. American astronaut Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. spent a scant 15 minutes in flight aboard his Mercury capsule, Freedom 7, but it was enough to electrify the nation’s space program, sagging in the face of repeated Russian triumphs.
May 5th, 2004
Spirit Encounters New Communication Problem
According to a daily briefing note made available to SpaceDaily.com NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover A – Spirit – is having communication problems. The current information available suggests the problems are not overly critical and can probably be fixed. However the root cause of the problem remains unknown.
May 5th, 2004
DARPA Pursuing A Mobile Energy Recovery System For The Battlefield
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Mobile Integrated Sustainable Energy Recovery (MISER) program has two thrusts. The first will develop technologies to harness the energy content of packaging waste generated during military field operations and convert it to electricity. The second is aimed at developing plastic packaging technologies made from renewable sources using processes that do not require hazardous chemicals or generate toxic waste streams.
April 2nd, 2004
NASA Considers Fly-Off Competition For New Manned Launcher
NASA may borrow a development approach from the U.S. Air Force and seek to build multiple prototypes of its proposed new moon landing craft, and then test competing designs against one another in a celestial version of an airplane designers’ fly-off. Retired Adm. Craig E. Steidle, the new head of NASA’s office responsible for developing the crew exploration vehicle, or CEV, has suggested that a fly-off competition might yield a better spacecraft in the long run, with the agency choosing the best-performing design over its closest competitor.
April 2nd, 2004
DoE To Revisit Cold Fusion
The U.S. Department of Energy is planning to give cold fusion a warmer reception after many years of skepticism and even ridicule as the agency pursues an official review of the controversial technology. James Decker, deputy director of DOE’s Office of Science, said the review actually began last fall when he met with scientists to discuss the state of cold fusion research.
March 17th, 2004
Op/Ed: The Bush Space Initiative: Fiscal Nightmare or… Fiscal Nightmare?
The new space initiative announced by President Bush has the odd distinction of being criticized both for costing too much and costing too little. Many commentators have denounced Plan Bush an insanely grandiose program that will waste $1 trillion dollars of tax money. At the same time, another group of critics says that it is a trivially small program whose funding level is utterly inadequate to achieve its announced goals of manned flights to the Moon and Mars. John Pike goes so far as to call the Bush Plan “a roadmap for the quiet and orderly phase-out of manned space flight.”
March 17th, 2004
Surrey Successfully Demonstrates Steam Micro-Propulsion In-Orbit
SSTL have demonstrated in-orbit the use of a steam propulsion system onboard the UK-DMC satellite, launched on 27th September 2003. The novel micro-propulsion experiment used 2.06 grams of water as propellant. This ‘green’ propellant is non-toxic, non-hazardous to ground operators and results in improved specific impulse over conventional cold gas nitrogen, at a significantly lower cost.
March 16th, 2004
These Boots Are Made For Walking
How will future space suits differ from the current ones? Well, for one thing, the boots will be made for walking. Astronauts who wear space suits for extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) don’t walk. They hover and float, or their feet are placed into foot restraints so they don’t drift away. In the future, however, astronauts may go to Mars as part of NASA’s new vision. And they’ll need very different boots to walk on the planet’s surface or drive a rover.
March 1st, 2004
Mars Express In The Shadow Of Mars
It is the start of eclipse season for Mars Express. That means unavoidable passages of the spacecraft through the shadow of Mars, cutting it off from the sunlight that is converted into electrical power by the orbiter’s solar arrays. This creates a nervous time for engineers at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.
February 26th, 2004
Spirit rover on its way to Mars crater
The Mars rover Spirit will go on a two-week trip through rocky terrain to reach the border of a crater named Bonneville, NASA announced Thursday. The crater is 150 meters (492 feet) long and about 15 meters (49 feet) deep and offers a window into Mars’ geology, said Ray Arvidson, assistant chief of scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.