It’s all about the future in this week’s edition of The Space Review: Bob Mahoney reviews the prospects of President Barack Obama’s plan for NASA. Edward Ellegood offers some suggestions on how the President can improve his proposal and make it more palatable to Florida. Jeff Foust ponders the prospects for export control reform in the United States. Andrew Weston forecasts the possibilities of greater U.S.-U.K. cooperation now that the […]
Pete Conrad
CONRAD FOUNDATION PRESS RELEASE
Online voting for the Spirit of Innovation Awards begins today, Monday, March 29, and ends Friday, April 9, on www.conradawards.org. The Spirit of Innovation Awards, challenges high school students to create innovative products using science, technology and entrepreneurship. Teams are now vying for the public’s votes to be selected as the 2010 Pete Conrad Scholars, win grants to help commercialize their products and receive two seats on a Zero Gravity flight.
The 24 finalists from across the country are designing our future. “It’s not science fiction; it’s where education meets innovation and entrepreneurship. It’s where real science gets real. Teams have created innovative products to solve 21st-century challenges. From rural water collection devices, to robotic astronaut assistants; from Satellite altitude-control systems, to Navajo Solar Frybread Ovens, these students will rock your world!†said Nancy Conrad, founder of the Conrad Foundation.
Virginia Del. Lynwood Lewis is pushing for an increase in state funding for the Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority. In a blog post, he criticized the $838,000 that has been allocated for each of the next two years as being insufficient for the authority to oversee its growing operations on Wallops Island: Another area of concern for me was the lack of full funding for the budget request, which had been […]
Cape Breton, Fort Churchill eyed for satellite launches
The Canadian Press
Cape Breton may become a Canadian version of Florida’s historic Cape Canaveral where astronauts and rockets have been launched into outer space for decades.
The Canadian Space Agency is looking at the Nova Scotia island as one of two possible sites to blast small satellites into orbit using an indigenous rocket launch system. The other possible micro-satellite launch site is Fort Churchill in Manitoba, near Hudson Bay, where hundreds of small research rockets have been launched in the past….
Mockup of India's human spacecraft (Credit: ISRO)
ROSKOSMOS PRESS RELEASE
According to Vladimir Putin, Russia and India will realize Indian cosmonaut space flight joint programme in 2015. This statement was made March 12th after the negotiations with Indian Prime-Minister at New Delhi.
Russian Prime-Minister notes, that Russian-Indian space cooperation is developing quite well and both sides plan the manned spaceflight for Indian cosmonaut for 2015.
Vice-premier Sergey Ivanov imposed the responsibility for this project to ROSCOSMOS. He said that Russian side must provide spaceship and descent module. He also stressed that this project isn’t related to ISS programme.
India isn’t ISS programme member state. ISS programme is cooperation between Russia, USA, Europe, Japan and Canada.
The Space Show schedule for this week: Monday, March 29, 2010, 2-3:30 PM PDT: We welcome back Robert Zimmerman for space news updates, policy updates, and more. CLASSROOM AND SPECIAL TIME: : Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 8- 9:30 PM PDT: The Space Show Classroom subject is New Space, what it is, its capabilities, its possibilities. Our guest panelist is Paul Breed of Unreasonable Rockets. This program is co-hosted with Dr. […]
Astronaut Jeff Williams, Expedition 22 Commander, aboard the International Space Station with the SpaceX-developed controller for the Dragon spacecraft communications system. Credit: NASA
SPACEX PRESS RELEASE
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) announces the successful activation of its new Dragon spacecraft communication hardware aboard the International Space Station (ISS) during a series of operations conducted in January and March.
Dubbed the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Communication Unit, the new system will allow ISS crewmembers to monitor and command approaching or departing Dragon spacecraft during cargo delivery missions to the orbiting laboratory.
X PRIZE FOUNDATION
On Saturday, May 15, the luminaries of the world will unite in San Francisco for the X PRIZE Foundation’s A Radical Benefit for Humanity: Making the Impossible Possible, One Prize at a Time, an extraordinary evening of entertainment, intelligence and vision, hosted by James Cameron, Larry Page & Sergey Brin at Lucasfilm’s Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco.
NASA PRESS RELEASE
The team that operates NASA’s Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity will receive the 2010 International Space Ops Award for Outstanding Achievement.
The citation for the award, to be presented April 29 in Huntsville, Ala., says, “For remarkable success in meeting unique and varied challenges of operating a rover on Mars and establishing a model for future in-situ operations.”
A brief update from Reaction Engines, which is developing its Skylon single-stage-to-0rbit vehicle: The first firm results from the Reaction Engines trade mission to the USA (as reported last month) came in February with the placing of a small study contract with the Physical Science Laboratory at the New Mexico State University. NMSU will be undertaking a preliminary evaluation of the requirements that SKYLON D1 will need to meet for […]
ESA PRESS RELEASE
A crew of six, including two Europeans, will soon begin a simulated mission to Mars in a mockup that includes an interplanetary spaceship, Mars lander and martian landscape. The Mars500 experiment, as long as a real journey to Mars, is a test of human endurance.
Their mission is to mimic a full mission to Mars and back as accurately as possible without actually going there: Mars500 will be the first full-duration simulated mission to Mars, starting in a special facility in Moscow next summer. 250 days for the trip to Mars, 30 days on the surface and 240 days for the return journey, totalling 520 days.
There wasn’t much isolation yesterday on Monday 22 March though, when the four European candidates for Mars500 were presented to the press at ESA’s Technology Centre ESTEC in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
Russia to boost share in global space market
RIA Novosti
Russia wants to increase its share in the global space market by building a new space center, the head of Russia’s Energia space corporation said on Friday.