April 13 News Items

Troubles Parallel Ambitions in NASA Mars Project (Source: USA Today)
NASA's new Mars rover aims high. It's bigger, more powerful and more sophisticated than any other robotic vehicle that has landed on another planet. It will try to answer a big question: Has life existed elsewhere in the solar system? Its very ambition has gotten the rover in trouble. Thanks to a mix of technological setbacks and engineering misjudgments, the rover's epic scale is matched by epic problems. Its story offers a cautionary tale as NASA plans to devote large chunks of its science budget in coming years to grand "flagship" missions, including a spacecraft to return Mars rocks to Earth and another that would visit a moon of Jupiter or Saturn.

The new rover, known as the Mars Science Laboratory, is $235 million, or 24%, over budget. Work on it has run so late that engineers are racing to prepare the rover for its blastoff in 2009. After that, the next good launch window, when Mars and the Earth are closest, is in 2011. "They aimed high, and they got burned," says Arizona State University's Phil Christensen, a Mars scientist who helped review NASA's Mars program. Visit http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2008-04-13-mars_N.htm to view the article. (4/13)

T-Minus 367 Days (Source: Florida Today)
A year-long push to NASA's first Ares 1 test-flight will pick up at KSC this week as the agency continues marching toward an American return to the moon. Standing an astonishing 327 feet tall, NASA's Ares 1-X rocket is scheduled to leap off launch pad 39B a year from Tuesday, speeding out over the Atlantic on a mission aimed at testing vital flight control systems. Preparations for the flight already are rocketing along, and those involved with the $320 million project expect the remaining time to fly by. The inaugural test flight scheduled for April 15, 2009, will employ a four-segment shuttle booster topped with an empty fifth segment and replicas of an Ares 1 second stage, Orion spacecraft and Launch Abort System. (4/13)

Russia to Create Manned Assembly Complex in Orbit (Source: Xinhua)
Russia is going to create a manned assembly complex in orbit, the chief of the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) said Saturday. "We shall create this complex in order to make dockings in orbit, build craft there and send them to the Moon, Mars and other planets," he said. "This proposal was on the whole approved at the meeting of the Russian Security Council on Friday, but a specific time has not been determined," he said. (4/13)

Space Lovers Party Like It's 1961 (Source: ABC News)
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides' fascination with space started when she was a little girl who played "star ship" under the stairs. Next, it was reading books about the universe and space. Today, she may not pretend to travel to space or read picture books about the universe, but she's never lost her love of that place beyond the atmosphere of Earth. Whiteside's interest led her to start Yuri's Night, a global celebration of the first human to go to space. The annual event is named after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who traveled to space on April 12, 1961. Another reason to celebrate is that April 12, 1981 was also the launch date of Columbia, the first U.S. space shuttle. (4/13)

Astrium Weathers Weak Dollar (Source: Space News)
Astrium Satellites has been able to remain competitive in the commercial telecommunications market despite a substantial exchange-rate handicap -- its costs are in euros while sales are made mainly in U.S. dollars -- by chipping away at its cost structure and improving its Eurostar satellite design. Part of the proof of the success is visible in the company's satellite integration facility here, where half a dozen telecommunications satellites are nearing completion. Others, in less-advanced stages of integration, are at Astrium's British facilities, while two smaller satellites are being made ready at the Indian Space Research Organization's Bangalore, India, facility. (4/13)