Cyrille Fournier performs his test on the treadmill after the first 35 days period of isolation.

ESA NEWS

Mars500 Diary: Testing, Testing
5 May 2009

The Mars500 crew is now one-third of the way through their 105-day stay inside the isolation facility in Moscow. As ESA-selected crewmember Oliver Knickel reports in his latest diary entry, the past week has been dedicated to tests.

Oliver Knickel writes:

We could tell last week already from our timetable that the fifth week was going to be quite strenuous, with intensive and extensive testing of all crew members physiologically as well as psychologically.

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Artists conception of WhiteKnightTwo and the SpaceShipTwo space tourism vehicle. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)

Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn has been making predictions about the future of travel this week:

Long-haul trips could be made in spaceships instead of planes in 20 years’ time if Virgin’s efforts to commercialize space travel succeed, the president of Virgin Galactic told Reuters in an interview.

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NASA-ESA Cassini Huygens Mission

Fuel for deep space exploration running on empty
Associated Press

NASA is running out of nuclear fuel needed for its deep space exploration.

The end of the Cold War’s nuclear weapons buildup means that the U.S. space agency does not have enough plutonium for future faraway space probes — except for a few missions already scheduled — according to a new study released Thursday by the National Academy of Sciences….
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The crew of Apollo 11

PRESS RELEASE

“Moon Beat” the nostalgic 40th anniversary, behind-the scenes-of-Apollo XI documentary, featuring top news reporters and senior NASA officials has won the 2009 Special Jury Remi Award at the 42nd Annual WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival. WorldFest Houston is one of the oldest and largest film & video competitions in the world.

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What do you get when you mix optimism with an equal amount of pessimism and a dash of anxious anticipation?

Space Canada: 2009.

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UP Aerospace Spaceloft XL rocket lifts off from Spaceport America in New Mexico on May 2, 2009.

Leonard David at Space.com reports that an incorrect flight parameter caused UP Aerospace’s SpaceLoft XL rocket to fail during a launch from Spaceport America on Saturday:

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Kottkamp: ‘Stay tuned’ on Space Florida front
Orlando Sentinel

Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, who heads the board of Brevard-based Space Florida, said Wednesday to “stay tuned” for potential changes to be made at the maligned economic development agency tasked with transitioning the state’s economy into the post-space shuttle world.

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NASA's Ares I rocket lifts off in this artist's conception. (Credit: NASA)

Word of new NASA rocket study causes unease at KSC
Orlando Sentinel

The Obama administration’s pending announcement on Thursday of a comprehensive review of NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon is causing growing anxiety among Kennedy Space Center workers and NASA contractors.

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Cyrille Fournier of Mars500 Team

ESA NEWS

Mars500 diary: week four and still alive!
28 April 2009

Four weeks into their stay inside the isolation facility in Moscow, the Mars500 crew is busy with scientific experiments. In the latest diary entry, ESA-selected crewmember Cyrille Fournier describes how one experiment looks at how blue light might help a crew on their way to Mars.

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NASA's COLBERT Treadmill

NASA PRESS RELEASE

NASA is serious about its space station crew members exercising in orbit, but that doesn’t mean the agency can’t have a little fun along the way.

That’s why a treadmill engineers had called simply T-2 for more than two years is suddenly famous as the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT. NASA selected the treadmill’s name after comedian and host Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” took interest during the Node 3 naming census and urged his followers to post the name “Colbert,” which received the most entries.

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NASA's Ares I rocket lifts off in this artist's conception. (Credit: NASA)

Over at NewScientist, aerospace engineer Henry Spencer opions that NASA should abandon its Ares I plan in favor of existing expendable boosters like the Atlas and Delta:

As I wrote last summer, it’s been clear almost from the start that Ares I was a very marginal, optimistic design, just barely adequate if everything went right. But there are always problems, and Ares I had no margin for problems.

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Richard Garriott

Fly me to the moon, just don’t fire me while I’m recovering from the trip. That’s the gist of a complaint filed by Ultima creator and nascent citizen space spelunker Richard “Lord British” Garriott against his former employer, Korean games publisher NCsoft, after the two parted ways late last year.

At stake: $24 million. At issue: Whether Garriott voluntarily resigned, or was involuntarily terminated….

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