space

Bad news on the Constellation front this morning: the Orlando Sentinel reports this morning that sources inside the Obama administration say the budget proposal to be released Monday contains no money for the Constellation program or the Ares I rocket that was supposed to replace the space shuttle as America’s means to shuttle humans to space. Also axed: the Ares V cargo rocket intended to ferry fuel and supplies necessary for America’s return to the moon.

It must be fun to be NASA. In an attempt to make a lighter, stronger and safer crew vehicle for future manned space missions, they've been beating up on an all-composite version of the Orion flight crew module, the manned portion of NASA's Constellation program. So far the vehicle has passed the structural stress tests with flying colors.

After nearly ten months and countless efforts at twisting, turning and rocking for traction, NASA has conceded defeat in its effort to free the Mars rover Spirit from a sand trap near the Martian equator. But though the rover will likely never coast over the Martian landscape again, researchers do expect it to survive the upcoming winter and serve as a static science station going forward.

In a world of real-time Twitter search and smartphones that whisk pictures and videos around a very mobile Web, it's hard to believe that data transfer rates to and from space often border on dial-up speeds. The ISS is one of the most advanced pieces of technology man has ever dreamed up, yet crew members got their first Internet connection just last week.

It would be adorable if it weren’t so massive, hot and violent: the ESO has just released this brilliant new image of the Cat’s Paw Nebula, one of the most active star nurseries in our galaxy. Through beautiful swirls of gas and dust, the image captures a 50-light-years-wide swath of space that could be home to several tens of thousands of stars, including brand new blue stars just a few million years old, youngsters by cosmic standards.

The space power race is on. Japan announced a plan
in September to put a small solar-power-harvesting demo satellite into orbit by 2015 that will beam energy back to earth via microwaves. Now Europe’s biggest space company, EADS Astrium, is vowing to put its own solar-collecting demonstration satellite into orbit on a tighter timeframe--by decade’s end.

John Hunter wants to shoot stuff into space with a 3,600-foot gun. And he’s dead serious—he’s done the math. Making deliveries to an orbital outpost on a rocket costs $5,000 per pound, but using a space gun would cost just $250 per pound.

Apparently, outer space isn't high enough for some folks over at NASA. Earlier today, NASA confirmed that a small baggie of cocaine was found in the hangar housing the space shuttle Discovery. A shuttle maintenance worker found the dime bag outside the men's room, and reported it to security. So far, no one knows who brought the bag into the Kennedy Space Flight Center.

It's a bit cliché to kick off a story about NASA with "Houston, we have a problem," but seriously, they've got a problem: the plumbing on the International Space Station is clogged, and NASA isn't exactly sure why, or how to fix it. To clarify, it's not the actual toilet component that's broken, but the $250 million system designed to recycle astronauts' urine, sweat, and exhaled vapor into clean, potable water.

Engineers working on the problem believe high concentrations of calcium in the astronauts' urine is causing deposits to build up, clogging the system that provides up to two-thirds of the water used on the station.

The hunt for orbiting exoplanets is in full swing -- NASA recently reported finding five distant orbiting bodies, as well as some other oddities, with its Kepler telescope -- but with so much space between us and these faraway bodies, it's often difficult for researchers to know exactly what they're looking at.