HOUSTON (USRA PR) — The Universities Space Research Association (USRA) is proud to announce NASA’s recent selection of scientists from USRA’s Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Arecibo Observatory, and colleagues at six universities to be one of the nine initial teams in NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI). SSERVI is a new organization that expands the scope of the NASA Lunar Science Institute to one that includes near-Earth asteroids and the moons of Mars.

The LPI/JSC team is led by Dr. David A. Kring, Senior Staff Scientist at the LPI and the founding Principal Investigator of the Center for Lunar Science and Exploration. Under the auspices of SSERVI, the team will continue to integrate science and exploration activities in a coordinated study of the Moon and the asteroids that bombard the Earth-Moon system. Those studies will include observations of existing near-Earth asteroids, studies of past collisional events in the Earth-Moon system, and the collisional evolution of the asteroid belt that delivers those objects to near-Earth space.

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WASHINGTON, DC (NASA PR) — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Wednesday hailed the success of the agency’s public-private partnership with American companies to resupply the International Space Station and announced the next phase of contracting with U.S. companies to transport astronauts is set to begin next week.

A little more than two years after the end of the Space Shuttle Program, the United States now has two space transportation systems capable of delivering science experiments and supplies from U.S. soil to the International Space Station. Under an ambitious plan funded by the Obama Administration, the agency is seeking to partner with American companies to send NASA astronauts to the space station as soon as 2017.

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Video Caption: A little more than two years after the end of the Space Shuttle Program, the United States now has two space transportation systems — SpaceX’s Falcon rocket and Dragon spacecraft and Orbital’s Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft — capable of delivering science experiments and supplies from U.S. soil to the International Space Station.

Students at Howard Phifer Middle School from Pennasauken, NJ, complete their proposal for the Effects of Microgravity on Eggshells and Vinegar. (Credit: NCESSE)

by Jessica Nimon
International Space Station Program Science Office
NASA’s Johnson Space Center

When you’re young, waiting even six months for something you’re excited about can seem like an eternity. So while the returning crew of the International Space Station likely couldn’t wait to come back to their families on Earth, they were not the only ones that counted down the days to this weekend’s Soyuz landing. Select groups of students eagerly anticipated this touchdown, too, knowing the Russian spacecraft also ferried the science experiments they conceived and designed as space station investigations.

“These student researchers are America’s next generation of scientists and engineers,” said Jeff Goldstein, Ph.D., center director of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE). “Their microgravity experiments were selected from more than 1,400 experiment proposals submitted by student research teams.”

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Houston, TX (Ad Astra PR) – Former Cummins Inc. (CMI, NYSE) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Theodore “Tim” Solso, an internationally-renowned technology and business leader, has been elected to the Board of Directors of Ad Astra Rocket Company. The vote was cast by the Corporation’s shareholders at their 2013 annual meeting on November 12, 2013, held at the Company’s Texas Headquarters near Houston. Solso’s election accompanies that of eight Directors who compose the nine-member Board. He becomes the 9th member to join the top leadership of the Company. His term begins immediately. All Ad Astra board members are elected annually.

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Spaceport America, NM (NMSA PR) – New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA) officials announced the launch today of the second NASA “Flight Opportunities Program” rocket from Spaceport America. The public launch of SpaceLoft™ XL 8 (SL-8), which was designed to reach sub-orbital space, took place this morning from Spaceport America’s Launch Complex-1. Today’s liftoff marks the 20th launch at Spaceport America and the 12th flight conducted by UP Aerospace, a long-term spaceport long term customer.

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Artist’s conception of a Bigelow lunar habitat. (Credit: Bigelow Aerospace)

A report by Bigelow Aerospace that was commissioned by NASA urges the U.S. space agency to take a commercial approach to lunar transportation  similar to the one used to develop transport services to the International Space Station, according to published reports.

Company founder Robert Bigelow, who has ambitious plans for private space stations and lunar bases, said on Tuesday that he will be applying to the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Tranportation (AST) for a policy review of lunar property rights by the end of this year, Jeff Foust reports from Washington, DC.

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LAUREL, Mary. (APL PR) — NASA has tapped the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., to look into the processes that shape the surfaces of the moon and asteroids — and provide insight into potential robotic and human exploration of these surfaces and the resources they might harbor.

As part of NASA’s new Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, APL space scientist Benjamin Bussey will head the Volatiles, Regolith and Thermal Investigations Consortium for Exploration and Science (VORTICES) team. VORTICES includes more than 40 co-investigators and collaborators from the U.S. and abroad, including the Homewood campus of the Johns Hopkins University. By combining the talents and facilities of different researchers at multiple institutions, the VORTICES team will tackle problems of interest to NASA’s science and human operations mission directorates.

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Launch of Atlas V NRO satellite on June 20, 2012. (Credit: ULA)

The successful flight of a Russian Proton rocket earlier today was the 63rd orbital launch of 2013. There have been 61 successful launches and two failures: a Sea Launch Zenit crashed into the ocean shortly after liftoff in February; and a Russian Proton crashed at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in July.

Twenty more launches are scheduled between now and the end of the year. If all scheduled launches are conducted by the end of the year, the total worldwide orbital launches will reach 83 — one below the total in 2011.

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SpaceLoft XL rocket launch from Spaceport America (file photo).

A SpaceLoft XL sounding rocket launch from Spaceport America in New Mexico appears to have succeeded, according to initial Twitter reports out of New Mexico.

The flight, which was paid for by NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program, was flown to test six technologies. One of the experiments included the transmission of the first text messages to space.

Descriptions of the payloads and the launch vehicle follow after the break.

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