By Christopher M. Stone Recently, Space Safety Magazine ran an editorial entitled, Sequestration and Espionage: Public Loses Access to NASA, that opined about the recent investigations underway at two NASA centers regarding Chinese espionage and alleged export control violations, as well as NASA decisions to cut education outreach and conference attendance outside the US. This article, and others like it, [...]
Post Tagged with: “NASA”
How to Target an Asteroid
Credits: NASA Like many of his colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., Shyam Bhaskaran is working a lot with asteroids these days. And also like many of his colleagues, the deep space navigator devotes a great deal of time to crafting, and contemplating, computer-generated 3-D models of these intriguing nomads of the solar system. But while many of [...]
Identifying Space Debris: Further Adventures in East Texas
By Merryl Azriel, Tereza Pultarova, and Dean Gentz Ever since Dean Gentz found a 35 cm titanium sphere in his backyard, he’s been on a quest to find out what it is and where it came from. Gentz noted the hand-machining and the safety wire holes around the plug. He photographed the sphere and took it to work to perform [...]
NASA’s Asteroid Capturing Mission Concept
NASA’s budget proposal for 2014 includes plans for a $105 million robotic asteroid retrieval mission. The mission involves scooping up a 5-7m asteroid and bringing it back to lunar orbit where it can be visited by astronauts for further study. Space News, canvasing NASA’s partner agencies for responses to the surprising mission, turned up some interest, but a good deal [...]
A Change of Heart in NEO Size of Interest?
By Jonathan Goff I’ve been following the various twists and turns in NASA and private interest in NEOs for a few years, ever since the Flexible Path concept was suggested by the Augustine Committee. While I’ve always been of the opinion that the Moon makes the most sense of all the potential off-Earth bodies to settle and develop, I at least [...]
Russian Crowdsourcing Project Finds Missing Soviet Mars Probe
The first probe to successfully land on Mars may have been found by Russian space enthusiasts, using images from the NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), revealed NASA in a press statement dated 11th April. The Soviet probe, known as Mars 3, successfully reached the surface of the Red Planet on December 2nd, 1971, but functioned for less than 2 [...]
NASA’s New Budget Request in Detail
NASA unveiled its proposed budget for 2014, with a renewed commitment to ongoing space exploration and an audacious plan for an asteroid capture mission, on April 10. “We are developing a first-ever mission to identify, capture and relocate an asteroid,” said NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden. “This mission represents an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities and [...]
The Incredible Shrinking CCDev
by Edward Wright NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Development (CCDev) program keeps getting smaller all the time. Last June, Congress forced a “compromise” on NASA, which was more like a surrender. Under this “compromise,” NASA was forced to reduce the number of companies in the CCDev competition from five to three. The third company (Sierra Nevada) received a much smaller [...]
NASA’s New Budget
At NASA these days, money is the talk of the town. On April 10, Us President Obama released his budget request for fiscal year 2014, including the NASA budget. This is just the start of the process: the budget doesn’t reflect the actual funds that will be allocated to NASA, this is just the official ask. Here is NASA’s official [...]
Boeing Completes Launch Vehicle Adapter Review
Source: NASA The Boeing Company of Houston, a NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) partner, has successfully completed a preliminary design review (PDR) of the component that would connect the company’s new crew capsule to its rocket. The review is one of six performance milestones Boeing has completed for NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative, which is intended to make [...]
