28 April 2011
First Cuban cosmonaut receives award from Russian gov't
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27 April 2011
US shuttle flight is a celebrity love story, too
It may be hard to top the royal wedding, but the second-to-last US space shuttle flight set to coincide with the Friday nuptials of William and Kate is a star-studded love story in its own right.
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26 April 2011
US budget cuts mean no more ET monitoring
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26 April 2011
Russia To Develop New Space Rocket By 2015
The Rus-M carrier rocket is being developed by the Energia space corporation, to launch new-generation spacecraft from the Vostochny space center currently under construction in the country's Far East.
"We are planning to start test-launches of light and heavy Angara rockets in 2013, and develop the Rus-M carrier rocket by 2015," Putin said during his annual address to parliament.
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26 April 2011
Countdown begins for Chineses space station program
Authorities in charge of the manned space program unveiled plans on Monday to build a 60-ton space station, made up of three capsules, and develop a cargo spaceship to transport supplies.
The China Manned Space Engineering Office said at a news conference that it also wants the public to get involved by suggesting names for the space station, due to completed around 2020.
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related:
26 April 2011
China confirms plans to build own orbital station
The China Manned Space Engineering Office unveiled on Monday a blueprint of the future orbital station, which will comprise an 18.1-meter core module and two 14.4-meter lab modules. "The 60-ton space station is rather small compared to the International Space Station (419 tons), and Russia's Mir Space Station (137 tons), which served between 1996 and 2001," China Daily quoted Pang Zhihao, a space researcher and deputy editor-in-chief of the Space International magazine.
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25 April 2011
SpaceX Wins NASA Contract To Complete Development Of Successor To Space Shuttle
NASA has awarded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) $75 million to develop a revolutionary launch escape system that will enable the company's Dragon spacecraft to carry astronauts. The Congressionally mandated award is part of the agency's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiative that started in 2009 to help private companies mature concepts and technologies for human spaceflight.
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25 April 2011
India Eyeing Collaboration With JPL In 2016 NASA Lunar Mission
India could be part of the 2016 NASA Lunar Mission with its space agency ISRO mulling a collaboration with the US-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory on study of farther side of the moon.
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25 April 2011
Technology tested for future manned missions to Mars
This is Mars in Europe," says Gernot Groemer, from the Austrian Space Forum. Looking around, it is easy to see why: the landscape is a vision in red. Only the odd splashes of greenery give the game away.
Rio Tinto in southern Spain is a former mining area, and with its unusual chemical and geological make up, it is surprisingly similar to the Red Planet.
Expedition leader Professor Groemer, who is based at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, explains: "We have a mineral here called jarosite - and that is exactly what we have on Mars."
This makes it an ideal place to test out new technology that could one day make to Mars.
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25 April 2011
Russia may launch light Soyuz carrier rocket by 2012
Russia will be ready to launch a light version of a Soyuz carrier rocket by 2012, commander of the Russian Space Forces Oleg Ostapenko said on Thursday.
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23 April 2011
SpaceX aims to put man on Mars in 10-20 years
Private US company SpaceX hopes to put an astronaut on Mars within 10 to 20 years, the head of the firm said.
"We'll probably put a first man in space in about three years," Elon Musk told the Wall Street Journal Saturday. "We're going all the way to Mars, I think... best case 10 years, worst case 15 to 20 years."
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22 April 2011
Russians 'never ever did it in space': official
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22 April 2011
SpaceX not allowed to dock with ISS until safety proven - Roscosmos
Russia will not permit the first U.S. commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) unless its safety is fully tested, a high-ranking Russian space official said on Friday. The statement comes in the wake of media reports that the spacecraft's designer, U.S. company SpaceX, requested NASA to authorize the docking in December.
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22 April 2011
ESA Halts ExoMars Orbiter Work To Rethink Red Planet Plans with NASA
The multibillion-dollar U.S.-European Mars exploration program has suffered a serious — but not fatal — blow with NASA’s confirmation that it can no longer afford to launch its own rover alongside a European rover in 2018, European government and industry officials said.
Both sides have agreed to design a larger, common rover that will meet U.S. and European mission goals, with a Joint Engineering Working Group scheduled to present a detailed design by late this summer.
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21 April 2011
Iran To Put Monkey Into Orbit
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21 April 2011
Paparazzi In Space
For the second time, an attempt to take a photograph of a Space Shuttle docked with the International Space Station has been thwarted. Russia has again declined to undock a Soyuz spacecraft for a photographic expedition.
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21 April 2011
Taurus 2 risk-reduction flight approved for October launch
NASA has agreed to pay approximately $100 million to Orbital Sciences Corp. for a test flight of the Taurus 2 rocket to reduce risk on future launches to resupply the International Space Station, company officials said Thursday.
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20 April 2011
CSA Celebrates A Decade Of Success With Canadarm2
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19 April 2011
Kazakhstan open to discuss turning Baikonur Space Center into JSC
Kazakhstan is ready to consider Russia's proposal of converting the Baikonur Space Center into a joint-stock company with Russia as a major shareholder, Kazakh chief Talgat Musabayev said on Tuesday.
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19 April 2011
A Tale Of Two Deserts
Because the surface of Mars today is bone-dry and frozen all year round, it's difficult to find any place on Earth that is truly Mars-like. But two locations, Antarctica's Upper Dry Valleys and the hyper-arid core of Chile's Atacama Desert, come close. They have become magnets for scientists who want to understand the limits of life on Earth and the prospects for life on Mars.
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19 April 2011
NASA Awards Next Set Of Commercial Crew Development Agreements
The selectees for CCDev2 awards are:
+ Blue Origin, Kent, Wash., $22 million
+ Sierra Nevada Corporation, Louisville, Colo., $80 million
+ Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), Hawthorne, Calif., $75 million
+ The Boeing Company, Houston, $92.3 million
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18 April 2011
U.S., Europe Plan Single-rover Mars Mission for 2018
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will scale back plans to send a pair of rovers to Mars in 2018 and instead build a single vehicle that would drill into the red planet’s surface and store soil samples for eventual return to Earth, according to NASA officials.
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18 April 2011
Growing Pains for Indian Space Program
Forbes India reports that India's space program has been tarnished by recent launch failures and a minor scandal over allegations that the nation's space agency gave a sweetheart deal to a private company to lease a pair of government-owned satellites for commercial use. The story says the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) needs successes in a pair of upcoming launches to regain its standing among the nation's public.
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16 April 2011
Thousands of shuttle workers losing jobs
Almost 2,000 workers at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., will be laid off after the last shuttle flight, a contractor says.
The cuts announced by United Space Alliance Friday are no surprise, Florida Today reports. They are likely to unfold in waves July 15, July 22 and Aug. 12.
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15 April 2011
Kazakh Space Launch Project Delayed Until 2017
The Baiterek project, co-launched in 2004 by Kazakhstan and Russia, will serve to launch new environmentally safe rockets to phase out older boosters at the Baikonur Cosmodrome that used highly toxic propellant.
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14 April 2011
Chinese Government Official Urges U.S.-Chinese Space Cooperation
A top Chinese government space official on April 14 appealed to the U.S. government to lift its decade-long ban on most forms of U.S.-Chinese space cooperation, saying both nations would benefit from closer government and commercial space interaction.
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14 April 2011
Spending bill will put an end to the Constellation program
A federal budget bill passed Thursday by the U.S. Congress will loosen restrictions on NASA efforts to shut down the Constellation moon program and start work on fresh launch and exploration vehicles.
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14 April 2011
Drugs in space may need special handling
Drugs intended to treat minor illnesses of astronauts in space may need special handling to remain stable in the environment of space, NASA scientists say.
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13 April 2011
Putin Urges Ukraine To Join New Russian Space Center Project
Ukraine should participate in the construction of the Vostochny Space Center in Russia's Far East, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in Kiev on Tuesday.
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13 April 2011
ESA May Use Russian Technology In Nuke-Spaceship Project
The European Space Agency (ESA) has no immediate plans for cooperation with Russia in creating nuclear-powered spacecraft for future missions to Mars, but is considering using Russian experience and technology in its developments, the agency's head, Jean-Jacques Dorden, said on Monday.
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13 April 2011
Official: Japanese Space Commitment Still Strong
Japan’s space budget will take a hit as resources are diverted to recovery efforts following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but the Japanese government is determined to maintain most space investment efforts, a top Japanese official said April 13.
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13 April 2011
Model Of Russian Piloted Spacecraft To Go On Show during MAKS airshow In August
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13 April 2011
Mars flight possible after 2035 - Roscosmos chief
An interplanetary spacecraft for a flight to Mars will be created no earlier than 2025, and the maiden flight to the red planet is possible only after 2035, Russian space agency Roscosmos chief Anatoly Perminov said on Wednesday. "The possibility of a flight to Mars needs to be combined with the construction of a spaceship having a new nuclear power propulsion unit, which will make it possible to reach the planet in a month," Perminov said in Russia's upper house of parliament.
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12 April 2011
NASA Chief Suggests JWST Won’t Launch before 2018
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12 April 2011
Soviet space capsule sells for nearly $3 million
The spherical Vostok 3KA-2 Space Capsule went under the hammer at Sotheby's for $2.88 million, the lower end of the $2-10 million range expected by the auction house.
Winning bidder Evgeny Yurchenko, chairman of the AS Popov investment fund, said he was buying the scorched machine to return it to its homeland.
The battered craft has serious historical credentials as the model used for the final dummy run before Gagarin left on his mission. It was used to carry a small dog, Zvezdochka, and a life-sized human dummy into orbit and back.
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12 April 2011
Budget Compromise Includes $18.5 Billion for NASA
The 2011 budget compromise Congress and the White House reached April 8 to avert a government shutdown includes $18.485 billion for NASA, or about 1.3 percent less than the $18.724 billion the U.S. space agency was given for 2010. Details of the proposal, which includes a $38 billion reduction in nondefense spending, were posted April 12 on the House Appropriations Committee website.
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12 April 2011
Retired Shuttles To Land in Calif., Fla., D.C. and NYC
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center just outside Washington will be given Space Shuttle Discovery to replace Enterprise, an approach-and-landing shuttle that will be moved to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan. Space Shuttle Endeavour will go to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. All six NASA space shuttles were assembled in Palmdale, Calif. Space Shuttle Atlantis will go to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
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11 April 2011
UN Declares April 12 As International Day Of Human Space Flight
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution at a special session on Thursday declaring April 12 as the International Day of Human Space Flight. The resolution was initiated by Russia, which celebrates Day of Cosmonautics on April 12 dedicated to the historic first manned flight to space by Russia's Yury Gagarin in 1961.
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11 April 2011
Putin Touts Russia's Growing Investment In Space Programs
Putin said Russia would develop a whole range of new capabilities over the next five years.
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11 April 2011
Spacelinq The First European Space Liner
SpaceLinq NV, Europe's first spaceliner to propose operating spaceflights from within European airspace, has chosen the Lelystad Airport as its future base for flight operations. With a unique mission profile and vehicle architecture, SpaceLinq is able to launch and re-enter the atmosphere from almost every standard, commercial airport.
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08 April 2011
Europe at Mars: Are we nearly there yet?
You have to wonder sometimes whether it is a rollercoaster that Europe plans on sending to Mars rather than a rover – such are the ups and downs and the sweeping curves on its ExoMars project.
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08 April 2011
Russia sheds light on Gagarin death mystery
Russia on Friday declassified documents that shed light on Yuri Gagarin's mysterious death in a training flight in 1968, saying his jet likely manoeuvred sharply to avoid a weather balloon.
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08 April 2011
Russian Space Agency Events Unchanged As Chief's Retirement Announced
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov confirmed earlier on Wednesday rumors that Perminov, 65, will soon retire. State officials are not allowed to serve after this age.
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08 April 2011
Project Morpheus To Begin Testing At NASA's Johnson Space Center
Johnson's Engineering Directorate is ready to begin testing its prototype lander as part of Project Morpheus - a vertical test bed designed to integrate technologies that could be used to build future spacecraft intended to land on the moon, Mars, asteroids or any other foreign surface.
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07 April 2011
NASA Announces Winners Of 18th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race
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05 April 2011
Branson unveils 'flying' sub to plumb ocean depths
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05 April 2011
European Commission Urges China Dialogue
The European Commission on April 4 said Europe should open a broad dialogue with China on space and toughen its industrial policy to assure European independence in critical space technologies. The dialogue with China should be structured along lines similar to regular space policy consultations that the European Union (EU) has with the United States and Russia, the commission said in a document on space policy.
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Do you always wanted to know what a "sky crane" is?
Look between 2 min and 3:20 min in this animation.
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FOR FURTHER READING
25 April 2011
Funding the seed corn of advanced space technology
The final NASA fiscal year 2011 funding bill provided no explicit funding for space technology activities, a key element of the agency’s future plans. Lou Friedman says that without such investment, it will become increasingly difficult to make new advances in robotic or human space exploration.
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25 April 2011
Commercial crew’s final four
Last week NASA announced that four companies would share nearly $270 million in commercial crew development awards, the next step in efforts to develop commercial vehicles to carry astronauts to orbit. Jeff Foust reports on the outcome of the competition and whether there’s room for other companies to compete later in the program.
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25 April 2011
Fifty years of piloted spaceflight: Where are we going?
It’s clear to many that, half a century after the era of human spaceflight began, we have fallen fall short of our early dreams for the exploration and settlement of space. Claude Lafleur take a look at what went wrong.
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25 April 2011
Paul Allen’s past (and future) in space
While best known for co-founding Microsoft, Paul Allen is known in the space community for funding development of SpaceShipOne. Jeff Foust discusses some insights about that effort Allen reveals in a new book, and his potential to return to the commercial space field.
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25 April 2011
An exercise in the Art of War: China’s National Defense white paper, outer space, and the PPWT
China continues to press for a treaty banning the placement of weapons in outer space, even while developing its own ASAT capability. Michael Listner examines what may be at the root of Chinese strategy regarding space weaponization.
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18 April 2011
Tobacco and beaver pelts: the sustainable path
Debates about human space exploration often focus on destinations and technologies. Charles A. Gardner argues that a more important requirement is finding an economically sustainable path for human exploration into and settlement of the solar system.
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18 April 2011
Following SpaceX down the rabbit hole
Earlier this month SpaceX announced plans to develop a more powerful version of its Falcon 9 rocket, called the Falcon Heavy. Stewart Money examines what the implications are of a vehicle with the performance and cost goals of the Falcon Heavy.
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18 April 2011
Shuttle scavengers
NASA used the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle launch last week to announce where the orbiters will go once the fleet is retired. Jeff Foust reports this set off a new debate about one aspect of the agency’s past when attention should be focused on its future.
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18 April 2011
NASA’s continuing problems
More than six months after the fiscal year started, NASA finally got its final 2011 budget last week. Taylor Dinerman notes, though, that the agency still faces a host of problems in its human spaceflight, science, and other programs.
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18 April 2011
Review: Starman
While one of the most famous individuals of the Space Age, surprisingly little is known about Yuri Gagarin. Jeff Foust reviews a controversial reprinted book about the life of the first person to fly in space.
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12 April 2011
The Meaning of Human Spaceflight: 20 Essays on Its 50th Anniversary
On the anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's historic trip around the Earth, NASA administrators, former astronauts, science museum curators and other thinkers from various fields reflect on 50 years of human spaceflight.
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11 April 2011
Whither human spaceflight?
Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight, and it comes at a time of uncertainty about NASA’s future human spaceflight plans. Jeff Foust discusses some of the root causes of that uncertainty and what it means for the long-term future of human spaceflight and space exploration.
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11 April 2011
Vostok: an aerospace classic
The legacy of Vostok goes far beyond Yuri Gagarin’s flight 50 years ago. Drew LePage examines how the Vostok design evolved over the decades into applications far beyond human spaceflight.
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11 April 2011
Review: Fallen Idol: The Yuri Gagarin Conspiracy
For decades there have been conspiracy theories claiming that Yuri Gagarin was not the first Soviet cosmonaut. James Oberg critically reviews a documentary claiming to have new evidence about those allegations, but finds it lacking.
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11 April 2011
Gagarin’s flight and the Cold War
Yuri Gagarin’s flight 50 years ago was one of the major milestones in not just space exploration, but the Cold War. Taylor Dinerman explores the lasting impact that event had on Russia and its competition with America.
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11 April 2011
At the altar of smoke and fire
This year will mark the end of many aspects of the shuttle era, including the various cultures associated with it. Dwayne Day describes one of those little-appreciated mini-cultures: those who photograph the shuttle launches.
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11 April 2011
Space shuttles and the wisdom of the crowd
On Tuesday, the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle launch, NASA will announce where the orbiters will go after the final launch later this year. Ben Brockert discusses the results of an online experiment to predict where the shuttles may go.
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11 April 2011
An open letter to Senator Mikulski
On Monday NASA administrator Charles Bolden will appear before a Senate appropriations subcommittee to discuss the agency’s FY12 budget proposal. Lou Friedman offers an open letter to the chairperson of that subcommittee, asking her to make a critical examination of the agency’s future.
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