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STATUS REPORT Date Released: Wednesday, December 6, 2006 Source: NASA HQ Global Exploration Strategy and Lunar Architecture Briefing (transcript) Monday, December 4, 2006 Johnson Space Center [TRANSCRIPT PREPARED FROM A DIGITAL RECORDING. Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Friday, December 8, 2006 Source: Planetary Society Foundation Joins Planetary Society Call for An International Lunar Decade The Secure World Foundation has joined forces with The Planetary Society in calling for an International Lunar Decade to begin in 2007. Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Monday, December 11, 2006 Source: Ames Research Center Join the Grand Finale to the Lunar Research Station Design Challenge For the past several months, students, primarily in grades 5 - 8, have been challenged to design and build a full- or scale-model of an... Read more…

G. Madhavan Nair seems to think so. Nair, the chairman of the Indian space agency ISRO, told attendees of an Indian Law Institute seminar that "International Space Law" is losing its relevance because of new developments, such as orbital debris and space weaponization. The space law he refers to is the series of treaties anchored by the Outer Space Treaty (OST) that governs, at the broadest level, what countries and their representatives can and cannot do in space. "There is a need to replace the entire set of treaties by a comprehensive space law," Nair said. The idea of revisiting or replacing the OST and related treaties is not new, although it's rare to hear the head of a space agency make such a suggestion. (Usually, such calls come from space advocates concerned about sovereignty and property rights issues.) Actually making such a change, though, is easier said than done: there's no broad consensus yet that the OST needs revision or replacement, and doing so could open up a very big bag of worms. Read more…

The British government has tended to be disdainful of space exploration and human spaceflight over the years, focusing its ESA contributions and its own national space agency, the BNSC, on earth and space sciences as well as commercial applications. However, the UK now seems willing to take on at least a small role in the Vision for Space Exploration: on Thursday the new UK science minister, Malcolm Wicks, met with NASA administrator Michael Griffin in London. Wicks, who replaced the retiring Lord Sainsbury as science minister just a few weeks ago, expressed an interest in cooperating with NASA in lunar exploration, although the specific role(s) the UK would play were not described. "This could be the world's largest science and technology program." Wicks said in a statement. "We will be considering whether there is an opportunity to build a partnership with the US." One potential role hinted at in the release would be the development of small satellites to carry out some missions: UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. is arguably the leading developer of smallsats worldwide. More details about the roles other countries could play in carrying out the Vision are expected to be released at a press conference Monday in Houston, just before the AIAA's Second Space Exploration Conference. Read more…

When Boeing and Lockheed Martin jointly announced the formation of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) 19 months ago, they noted that they believed that the deal would close by the end of the year. They were right—so long as they're not specific about what year. Today the ULA deal finally closed, as the joint venture started operations (they're so official now they have their own web site). Now that the ULA is a fait accompli, let's see how well it lives up to original expectations about saving the government over $100 million, and how it affects competition in the launch market, particularly as SpaceX develops the EELV-class Falcon 9. Read more…

According to an AP report, Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), a former chairman of the House Science Committee, is seeking to become the ranking minority member of the committee. Sensenbrenner had served the last six years as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and because of internal term limits would have had to give up the position regardless of how the November election turned out. With Democrats taking control of Congress, Sensenbrenner had sought to stay on the committee as its ranking minority member, but was told by House Republican leadership that the same term limit provisions that would have ended his chairmanship even if Republicans had retained control also applied to the ranking member position. Prior to chairing the Judiciary Committee, Sensenbrenner spent four years as chair of the House Science Committee, where he often cast a critical eye on the International Space Station project and Russia's role in it. Sensenbrenner's spokesman said that the congressman would indeed focus on NASA, as well as climate change and general oversight issues should he win the Science Committee post. He'll have competition, though: two current committee members, Ralph Hall of Texas and Vern Ehlers of Michigan, are also interested in the post. The GOP is expected to make a recommendation next week. Read more…

Later today NASA will hold a press conference to announce its "global exploration strategy and lunar architecture". What exactly this announcement will entail isn't known, although the Houston Chronicle reported in today's edition that NASA has selected a half-dozen justifications for its lunar exploration program, ranging from science to improving international relations. While these reasons "differ significantly" from the Cold War rationale behind NASA's initial missions to the Moon four decades ago, some of the reasons mentioned in the article sound similar to the justifications previously made for Space Station Freedom and the ISS. While NASA is taking this step forward in outlining the rationale for the Vision today, there are still many issues with its implementation. In an article this morning, Florida Today reviews concerns about funding shortfalls for the program raised recently by the GAO. Scott Horowitz, NASA's associate administrator for exploration, said some of those concerns have already been addressed through design changes for the Orion spacecraft and the Ares launch vehicles, although the GAO's Allen Li said he believes that NASA needs "to complete key design reviews before continuing to commit large amounts of taxpayer money to the project" in an effort to avoid more expensive surprises down the road. There's also the concern about what a new administration might do to the program two years down the line. That was mentioned in a talk at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory on Friday afternoon by Robert Farquhar of APL and Joseph Veverka of Cornell, who are working on a study of an alternative exploration architecture for the International Academy of Astronautics. As I noted in an article in this week's issue of The Space Review, that alternative would bypass the Moon in favor of missions to the Sun-Earth L2 point, near Earth asteroids, and beyond. Farquhar, who sees a human return to the moon as a "cul-de-sac", said he's briefed people at NASA Headquarters about the study and they're interested, since they want to have some alternatives to the current plan in place for whomever is in the Oval Office and the NASA administrator's office in 2009, should the current exploration architecture fall out of favor. Read more…

It's been almost exactly two months since the Bush Administration released the new national space policy, and people are still commenting on it. Yesterday the Council on Foreign Relations published a short synopsis on the idea of American "space supremacy" many see at the core of the new policy. The piece is primarily a review of a number of essays and position papers written on the policy from various points of view (including a couple of articles from The Space Review). One point where this analysis stumbles, though, is that it appears to link an incident earlier this year where a Chinese groundbased laser "dazzled" (or simply "illuminated", depending on who you talked to) an American military satellite to the release of the policy itself: "The Pentagon has avoided specifics about the report, but soon afterward the Bush administration released an unclassified version of its new U.S. National Space Policy, which goes far beyond previous policies in asserting America's right to respond forcefully to such threats." Reading this, one might conclude that the new policy and its language is a reaction to that incident, when in fact the policy had been in the works for a long, long time. Meanwhile, over at The Huffington Post, blogger RJ Esker is taking the credit—or the blame—for trumpeting the perceived militaristic slant of the policy in advance of the mainstream media. He takes issue with a James Oberg piece on MSNBC.com that claims that the media overhyped that slant: he is "sticking with my original interpretation on this one. The Administration has taken a dangerously aggressive stance regarding the militarization of space." Read more…

Last month I noted here that the Coalition for Space Exploration had created a web site to help support the political activities of space supporters. It turns out the site had not yet been officially opened for business (although it was being shown to the public at the X Prize Cup in New Mexico in October), but as of yesterday SpaceAdvocate.com was officially launched at the Space Exploration Conference in Houston. I did notice a few changes to the site from the last time a checked a month ago. There's a legislative update page that lists any "action alerts" and pending legislation. Since we're at the tail end of the current Congress, there's not much in the way of either right now. Oddly, one of the bills they do list in the "current legislation" section is HR 3250, the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. That bill was superseded by other legislation that was eventually enacted, so there's no reason to list it here. There are also a couple of puzzling things here that may just be kinks that have to be worked out of the system. On many pages, like the legislative update page mentioned above, there's a logo with the words "Capwiz XCdemo (won't send messages)". I'm assuming that's a vestige of a test phase of the site that should now be removed; it's also on the user registration page (where you can sign up for email updates), but when I signed up this morning I did receive a confirmation email in response. The legislation update page also has a link to a "Federal Action Alert" that is a very generic form used for composing messages to members of Congress. How generic? The pulldown menu for "Issue Area" doesn't include any space topics, or even simply "space" itself. Read more…

I have to admit that I was a little surprised at the level of media attention NASA's lunar exploration announcement Monday received, since it had been clear since the beginning of the Vision that part of the overall plan included establishing a base of some kind on the Moon. That coverage included front-page articles by the Washington Post and New York Times, the latter of which attracted the attention of none other than Stephen Colbert. ("That's right, a giant project with no blueprint, no budget parameters, and no timetable. That means there's only one person who can make this thing work: Donald Rumsfeld.") The announcement attracted its fair share of editorial reactions, most of which fell into two predictable camps: many approved it, saying there was "abundant justification" for the venture, while others worried about the cost of the project and suggested the money could be better spent elsewhere. Yeah, you could see that coming. A few editorials do stand out: yesterday USA Today ran a pro-and-con pair of editorials on the proposal. The "opposing view" piece, by NASA administrator Mike Griffin, called the overall exploration effort "a down payment on our future" and drew parallels to Lewis & Clark and Seward's purchase of Alaska. "Our great-great-grandparents accepted the challenge of their frontier. Will today's generation do less? And if so, why? To save 15 cents per day?" The "pro" piece, by the newspaper's editors, admits that NASA's vision is "compelling" but argues that technology and cost issues argue for an alternative approach: "That approach might use off-the-shelf rockets, such as those that launch commercial satellites and military and scientific payloads, to save money. It might also take a look at the low-budget operations of space pioneers such as Burt Rutan to see whether they might be tweaked to advance beyond suborbital space tourism." As the editorial also notes, "The human inhabitation of space in any significant numbers won't happen until someone can tackle the costs of getting astronauts the first hundred miles up." An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal also proposes an alternative that is music to the ears of many commercial space advocates. The editorial requires a subscription, but here's the key paragraph: Say NASA believes it can build a permanent moonbase for $100 billion in today's dollars. Why not take half of that and offer it as a bounty to the first private company to build the station and man it. A prize in the neighborhood of $50 billion is bound to attract plenty of interest -- and that number is probably much less than a realistic guess of what it would cost NASA in the end. The taxpayer would save 50% of NASA's cost to build the base, and the result would be much more likely to be attractive to the private interests that NASA wants to draw to the project. So, should NASA focus on space transportation versus exploration, even though previous efforts by the agency to reduce the price-per-pound of reaching orbit have failed? Is $50 billion enough to lure private interests to develop a lunar base—and if the $50 billion alone isn't enough to the venture to be profitable, could a base eke out revenue elsewhere? What about alternative mechanisms, like a 25-year tax holiday for the first company to establish a lunar base, as has been proposed in the past by the likes of former Congressman Robert Walker and others? Read more…

As expected, House Democrats have named Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN) chairman of the House Science Committee for the 100th Congress, starting in January. Gordon had been the ranking Democrat on the committee the last three years and was all but assumed to be chairman when the Democrats won a majority of the House in the November election. "Under my leadership, the Science Committee will be the committee of 'good ideas,'" he said in a statement. He also emphasized bipartisan cooperation on issues "from education and research to energy and security." On the Republican side, Ralph Hall (R-TX) will be the ranking member of the committee in the next Congress. Hall said that he looks forward "to advancing a vision for science that promotes space exploration", among other issues. He added that "Chairman Bart Gordon and I have a good working relationship." Which makes sense, of course, because up until about three years ago Hall was a Democrat, and was the ranking member of the committee at the time he changed party affiliations (out of concerns linked to Texas redistricting). Gordon replaced Hall then as the ranking committee Democrat. Hall beat out former committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who sought to return to a leadership position on the committee after chairing the Judiciary Committee the last six years. Sensenbrenner told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he lost to Hall in part because Texas is bigger than Wisconsin, and also because of Sensenbrenner's "willful, aggressive" style. "I'm certain there was baggage," he told the paper. "The only way you're successful as a committee chairman around here is by being forceful." Read more…

Both houses of Congress passed a continuing budget resolution late last night to keep much of the federal budget, including NASA, funded through February 15. (A Reuters article in particular noted NASA as one of the many agencies included in the stopgap measure; a NASA spokesman said that even without the bill's passage "The poor astronauts are not going to be stranded in space.") With Congress adjourning in the early morning hours of Saturday, it will be up to the next Congress to complete work on the 2007 budget, presumably shortly after the 110th Congress begins work in January. Read more…

Remember when NASA administrator Mike Griffin got into a bit of hot water when he told USA Today that the shuttle program had not put NASA on "the right path"? Griffin, apparently chastened to some degree by the reaction, clarified his remarks in a memo a short time later. However, in today's New York Times Griffin makes it clear that that he is still critical, if not of the shuttle and ISS programs themselves, but of the decisions that led to them. Griffin: "Viewed from the point of history several decades out… the period where the United States retreated from the Moon and quite deliberately focused only on low Earth orbit will be seen, to me, a mistake." Griffin, perhaps forestalling another round of internal criticism, said that the problem was not with the agency itself. "The space shuttle is a response to a policy mistake – it isn't the mistake. The mistake was tearing up all the infrastructure that we built for Apollo and saying, 'let's just focus on low Earth orbit.'" Could another President of Congress make the same mistake? Griffin doesn't seem to be worried about it, even as Democrats take control of Congress: "Unless you believe that a future U.S. president or a future U.S. Congress actually wants to cancel the U.S. spaceflight program, then I actually do not perceive a big threat from changing administrations and changing Congresses." (One could see, though, a future administration preserving a manned spaceflight program but twisting it in another direction, as Nixon did in 1972.) The only Congressional reaction to Griffin's remarks came from Congressman Bart Gordon, the incoming chairman of the House Science Committee, through his spokesperson: "I would rather focus on where we go from here. I support human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. However, it's got to be paid for." More interesting would have been the reaction from another Democrat and a strong supporter of the shuttle, like Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida. Read more…

More than two months after the Bush Administration released the new national space policy, an administration official will give an on-the-record speech about the policy. Robert Joseph, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department, will speak about the policy at a Marshall Institute event Wednesday afternoon. Joseph "will discuss the importance of space for U.S. national security as well as our economic prosperity and why the National Space Policy should enjoy international support," according to the event invitation. It's not the first time an administration official has discussed the policy, but previous discussions have been off the record. Read more…

In his blog at wired.com, noted sci-fi "cyperpunk" author Bruce Sterling reprints an email alert he apparently received earlier this week from The Planetary Society. "NASA Science Situation More Dire Than We Thought!" reads the subject line of the message, which begins with this statement: "The disastrous anti-science, anti-exploration agenda being foisted on NASA and Space Science has become more dangerous than we ever imagined possible." More dire? More dangerous? Is this a reaction to NASA's lunar base plans? (The message is dated December 5, one day after the announcement.) Reading through the message, though, that new development is this: "Now, in yet another slap at the value and future of Space Science and Exploration, NASA head Mike Griffin unceremoniously requested the resignations of two distinguished scientists from the NASA Advisory Council (NAC)." The problem is, though, that these resignations took place in August, not December. Oops. (The Planetary Society's "Save Our Science" web site, last updated in late November, refers to the lame-duck Congress and the NASA budget, not the NAC resignations.) So, did the Planetary Society send out the wrong message last week, or did Sterling get, um, well, cyber punk'd? Read more…

Just before Congress adjourned last week, both houses passed a stopgap funding bill to keep most federal agencies, including NASA, funded at 2006 levels through February 15, leaving it to the next Congress to pass the pile of appropriations bills that the 109th Congress did not complete. Now the incoming chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Rep. David Obey (D-WI), have decided how they will, as they put it, "clean up the mess left behind" in January: by passing a continuing resolution that would last through the end of the fiscal year. This allows Congress to "clear the decks quickly", as Byrd and Obey put it, so they can focus on the FY2008 budget, the Administration's proposals for which will be released in early February. What this means for NASA is that its programs will continue to be funded at FY06 levels: good news for some science and aeronautics programs that were facing cuts in the 2007 budget, perhaps, but not so good for the exploration program, as a Space News article [subscription required] notes. The agency overall was expecting a minor budget increase, but exploration in particular was planning on a $900-million bump over 2006 to fund work on Ares 1 and Orion. (However, NASA may get some additional flexibility on how it distributes funding within the agency.) One bright note: the continuing resolution will be earmarks-free, according to the Byrd-Obey statement. The statement adds, "We will do our best to make whatever limited adjustments are possible within the confines of the Republican budget to address the nation's most important policy concerns." NASA, though, probably is not among the nation's most important policy concerns at this time. Read more…

Armstrong, British ColumbiaClick here to see picture 1Click here to see picture 2 Read more…

Wilhelminadorp, Zeeland. HollandClick here to see picture Read more…

Apocalypses may not be all fire and brimstone. A growing number of paleontologists say that Earth-smashing meteors cannot take all the blame for the many mass extinctions that dot our planet's fossil record. The true causes seem to be more complex."The [meteor] impact model has been so successful because it's easy to explain and easy to understand," said Nan Arens of Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, NY. "However, the simple answer isn't always the best one."At the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America this week in Philadelphia, Arens and others argued that the combined punch of volcanoes, climate change and impacts leaves many species teetering on the brink of extinction. One final blow brings collapse. The same scenario could be happening now. "Impacts by themselves simply don't cause major mass extinctions," she told LiveScience.The P-T extinction event, or Great Dying, occurred 251 million years ago when up to 90 percent of all species were snuffed out. David Bottjer's group from the University of Southern California has studied the fossil record and found clear signs that species were in peril long before they disappeared. The reason: "The Earth got sick," Bottjer said.The illness began when Siberian volcanoes triggered global warming, he explained. This reduced ocean circulation and the oxygen supply. These hazardous conditions were a boon for sulfur-eating microbes, which released toxic hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere, finishing off most of the life that remained.Common diagnosisA sick Earth succumbing to a final shock is apparently a common extinction formula. Arens and her colleagues analyzed geologic data from the last 488 million years and found more species died out when the environment was first stressed and then stung.Specifically, the researchers compared stress-inducing volcanic activity and catastrophic meteor impacts. Only when the Earth experienced both did extinction rates significantly increase."Periods of stress are going to reduce population sizes," Arens said. With reduced numbers, "species are vulnerable to pulse catastrophes."On the flip side, an unstressed environment is resilient to geologic and climatic disasters because life is diverse and geographically spread out. Read more…

More than 40 years after an official Defence Force photographer snapped an image of the navy cruiser Royalist, debate is raging over the unidentified flying object in the background. The print is believed to have languished since being taken in February 1965, but a plan to display it by the Devonport Navy Museum has sparked speculation about the mystery object. UFO expert Peter Hassall, who wrote a book on the subject in New Zealand, is excited by this previously unreported sighting. The image was captured by the photographer on large-format black and white negative film shot from the cruiser's wing bridge as it approached what looks like Cape Brett in Bay of Islands. The Royalist was on its way back from Waitangi celebrations in February 1965. It was first spotted by museum staff member Paul Restall as he was assembling images for the museum's new website. He checked the negative on a light table and called in digital imaging expert Hans Weichselbaum to perform a high resolution scan. This established that the object was part of the original image. Museum director David Wright said there was nothing to explain what it was. The object appeared to be some distance in front of the ship and none of the sailors working on the bow was taking any notice, as would be expected if something was going on. Museum staff did not have the time to hunt down former crew members who might be able to solve the mystery but "if people are interested in it and want to pursue its provenance we'll assist them", Mr Wright said. Mr Hassall said it was an intriguing photo. His first thought was that it might be a flaw on the negative but, if that was the case, it was an unusual one. "It is a very interesting image and the classic dome shape that's often reported." However, he is mystified that the photograph has never been reported before. Click Here to see picture Read more…

At 6 p.m. local time Monday, the History Channel will air a new episode from the series "UFO Files" that will feature interviews from the 2006 UFO Symposium in Aztec.The episode is titled "Hangar 18: The UFO Warehouse" and will discuss what happens when a UFO crashes, according to the History Channel's Web site. Many people believe the Wright Patterson Air Force Base contains a top-secret facility named "Hangar 18," where alien crafts are taken."They filmed just about all of it last March at the UFO Symposium," Ramsey said. The episode will explore several UFO crash sites in the New Mexico desert and where the space vehicles were taken after they landed, he said. The city of Aztec gained prominence among UFO enthusiasts after a crash reportedly occurred in March 1948, almost 12 miles outside of Aztec in Hart Canyon, according to the UFO Symposium's WebNew Mexico ranks highest in the world for UFO-related sightings.During the 2006 UFO Symposium, Ramsey provided The Daily Times with documents he claimed were declassified government reports. The documents included a letter written to former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, one written by the United States Department of the Air Force and an investigative report sent to the Wright Patterson Air Force Base. He claimed all of his declassified documents were written internally by the U.S. government. Read more…

SCENES for a television documentary about a major UFO incident were filmed at the Lakenheath American Air Force base.The massive triangularshaped UFO was reported by police and military personnel on two days in March 1993.The programme was based on a UFO file obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.Nick Pope, who used to run the British Government's UFO project, said the UFO was believed to measure several hundred feet across and was estimated to have accelerated away at more than 1,000 mph.He said: "This is the most convincing UFO incident I've ever come across. It raises serious defence and national security issues. This is the case that turned me from sceptic to believer."Kay Hill said: "We got all the documents on this incident except the MoD's letter to the American Embassy. They said it had gone missing. It is a genuinely mysterious case and one I was unaware of until making this film." Read more…

The former head of the British military`s UFO program says that studying the evidence convinced him aliens are out there -- and could come here.Nick Pope recently left the Directorate of Defense Security at the Ministry of Defense, The Guardian reports. As a private citizen, he feels free to discuss the views he formed while heading the UFO project -- which has since been disbanded -- between 1991 and 1995.He said he is especially worried because the government`s 'X-Files have been closed down.''The consequences of getting this one wrong could be huge,' he said. 'If you reported a UFO sighting now, I am absolutely sure that you would just get back a standard letter telling you not to worry.'Frankly we are wide open -- if something does not behave like a conventional aircraft now, it will be ignored.'Pope said that studying the files convinced him that some UFO sightings are credible -- including a large triangular shape reported in 1993 civilians and Royal Air Force personnel at bases in the Midlands. Read more…