spaceflight

A final report issued by a blue-ribbon commission on NASA's future enthusiastically embraces in-space refueling and commercial spaceflight to low-Earth orbit, but curiously leaves out NASA's Ares-I rocket in future scenarios.

[ Read Full Story ]

In preparation for its October 27th test flight, the Ares I rocket has successfully made its way to the launch site at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Situated on launch pad 39B, the Ares I represents the first step towards NASA's new, post-shuttle era.

This is the first new rocket design to blast off from that launch pad in almost 25 years. The rocket arrived at the launch pad at 9:17 AM yesterday, after a six-hour slow roll from its hanger. It took another 15 and a quarter hours to get the rocket fully situated.

[ Read Full Story ]

As planets of our solar system tug at each other with their gravitation tethers, they create a protean sea of forces and counter forces. But within that maelstrom lay gravitational channels that could serve as highways for future spacecraft, just as soon as Professor Shane Ross of from Virginia Tech University finishes mapping them out.

[ Read Full Story ]

Of the many obstacles preventing manned travel to Mars, spending over a year weightless ranks as one of the biggest. Extended weightlessness degrades the muscles and bones of astronauts so thoroughly that by the time they get to Mars, they may not have the strength to walk on it.

[ Read Full Story ]

What if you knew that a ten-minute podium presentation could alter your life's course for decades? Seasoned entrepreneurs sweat out this kind of tension when they make elevator pitches to venture capitalists. But at the Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Awards Summit, the presenters on the hot seat are all between 14 and 18 years old.

[ Read Full Story ]

The X Prize Cup, an annual rocket race and showcase set to touch down every October in Las Cruces, New Mexico, held its inaugural gathering on October 9. Founder Peter Diamandis, whose X Prize Foundation last year awarded $10 million for the first private manned spaceship, plans for the XP Cup to be a chance for space fans to meet the engineers and pilots of a new generation of commercial spaceships and to watch them compete in rocket races both in and out of the Earth's atmosphere.

[ Read Full Story ]