May 23 News Items

National Space Club Luncheon Features Economic Development Leaders on June 10 (Source: NSC)
The National Space Club's Florida Committee will sponsor their next monthly luncheon on June 10 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Cape Canaveral. This evvent will feature Lynda Weatherman of the Space Coast Economic Development Commission, Declan Reiley of the Orlando Economic Development Commission, and Steve Kohler of Space Florida. For information and reservations, contact LaDonna Neterer at 321-505-2037 or mailto:ladonna.j.neterer@boeing.com.

Space Florida Sponsors Space Investment Summit (Source: Space Florida)
As part of Space Investment Summit 4 (SIS-4), entrepreneurs and investors will meet on May 28, 2008 at the Capital Hilton Hotel to engage in a frank dialogue about the best investment opportunities in new space-related ventures. The summit comes at an exciting time for space-related business, with space startups like Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk’s SpaceX nearing commercial operations, while space-related ventures like Google Earth and Garmin expand to reach global markets. (5/23)

Florida Space Group Discusses 2009 Priorities (Source: ERAU)
The statewide task force that proposed space-related legislative priorities for 2008 will meet again on May 29 in Brevard County to discuss the outcome of Florida's 2008 legislative session, and requirements for continued support in 2009. The retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2010 remains a major concern for the state's economy, and the 2009 legislative session may be the state's best opportunity to take actions to mitigate the economic impacts. The group is composed of state/local government, industry and academic leaders, with support from the Brevard Workforce Development Board. (5/23)

Inaugural Land Launch Mission "Off-Nominal" (Source: Space News)
The April 28 inaugural flight of the Land Launch vehicle placed Israel's Amos-3 telecommunications satellite into an orbit whose apogee was slightly more than 1,000 kilometers above its intended position because of a software-programming error in the rocket's Block-DM upper stage, according to Amos-3's operator and the future operator of the Land Launch system. (5/23)

U.S. Senate Approves $200 Million NASA Bonus (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Senate voted 75-22 to approve part of a wartime spending bill that includes an additional $200 million for NASA this year. (5/23)

University of Michigan's Link to Mars Mission (Source: MLive.com)
As the Phoenix Mars Lander encounters the Red Planet Sunday, Nilton Renno will be monitoring the landing with a mixture of interest and expertise. Renno, an associate professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan, has been working on the mission for seven years. He is a co-investigator and the leader of the Atmospheric Science Theme Group that will evaluate results. He will spend the next two months at the Phoenix Mars Mission Science Operations Center at the University of Arizona. Renno will study the chemical composition of the soil and clouds in effort to determine how much water Mars has today and in the past. (5/23)

Russia, China Against Deployment of Weapons in Space (Source: RIA Novosti)
Russia and China want an international agreement to be drafted banning the deployment of weapons in space, the countries' leaders said on Friday in a joint declaration after talks in Beijing. "The sides are in favor of the peaceful use of space, but are against the deployment of weapons in space or a space arms race," the declaration said. In February Russia and China presented at a United Nations conference in Geneva a joint draft of a new international treaty to prevent an arms race in space. The document relates to all weapons, not only nuclear. (5/23)

RIT Scientist Making Mapquest for Mars (Source: WHEC)
NASA still knows very little about the surface of the Red Planet---but that's about to change. "It was science fiction for a while - now it's not," said Dr. Don Figer at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). "So now we're doing it, so it's becoming science fact." Figer was recruited to RIT to work at the school's Rochester Imaging Detector Laboratory. The lab recently won a contract with NASA to develop a series of detectors that could one day develop a type of Mapquest for Mars. The detectors use something called LIDAR technology to create a 3-D topographical readout of a planet's surface. Figer was heavily recruited by many top notch universities, including several Ivy League schools. He says he chose RIT because of Rochester's reputation as the imaging capital of the world, dating back to George Eastman and the creation of Kodak. (5/23)

Military Space Projects Over Budget, Government Audits Show (Source: Florida Today)
Government audits show five large military space programs are a combined $16 billion over their original budgets. The figures indicate the situation gets worse each year for most of the projects. Contractors note that space projects often encounter unpredictable problems that push up costs. (5/23)

New Red Spot Appears on Jupiter (Source: HubbleSite.org)
In what's beginning to look like a case of planetary measles, a third red spot has appeared alongside its cousins — the Great Red Spot and Red Spot Jr. — in the turbulent Jovian atmosphere. This third red spot, which is a fraction of the size of the two other features, lies to the west of the Great Red Spot in the same latitude band of clouds. The visible-light images were taken on May 9 and 10 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. (5/23)

From Rockets to Electric Cars: Marveling at Musk (Source: ABC News)
America is brimming with entrepreneurs, young and old, already successful or dreaming of becoming so one day, famous or forgotten. But in my mind there is no more interesting entrepreneur alive today than Elon Musk. Musk, who will soon be 37, was raised in South Africa (there is still a slight Afrikaans lilt in his voice), but left when he was about to be drafted into the apartheid army, traveling first to Canada, then down to Pennsylvania to attend grad school at Wharton. Musk first became interested in technology at age 10, when his father gave him an early personal computer. Within two years, he had not only taught himself to program, but had already designed and was selling his first product, a computer game. Visit http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4912259&page=1 to view the article. (5/23)

Florida Casino Offers Space Travel as Prize (Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
If you play slots, and if the casino calls your name and if you make two good guesses, then you may be headed out to space. As soon as such space flights are available, perhaps in 2009. Taking promotions to an otherworldly level, the casino is offering a space flight, worth $200,000, as its grand prize for its "Million Dollar Giveaway" promotion, starting Monday. The casino hired a Delray Beach travel agency to book the flight, but declined to name the flight company. Virgin Galactic, has been taking reservations since 2004, using a network of travel agents worldwide. (5/23)

To Boldly Grow Where No One Has Grown Before (Source: CNN)
When Neil Armstrong took one small step onto the moon in 1969, it seemed only a matter of time before the advent of thriving space colonies and summer vacations on distant planets. But after an initial flurry of moon landings, manned lunar expeditions dwindled: the last time an astronaut left his footprints on the moon was in 1972. But in January 2004, President Bush announced NASA's intention to return humans to the moon by 2020, and in 2006, NASA announced plans to set up a manned lunar outpost by 2024, with the European and Russian Space Agencies now planning bases of their own. After years in limbo, the dream of living in space is alive once more. (5/23)

When it comes to permanent settlements, food supply voyages from Earth would be prohibitively expensive, so we will need to grow our own food in space. Raymond Wheeler, a plant physiologist at Kennedy Space Center, explained to CNN, "In the near term it's not needed, for example on the space station and initial short sorties to the moon, but as you go further and stay longer, regenerative systems become much more cost effective." Wheeler sees this development of space farming as a gradual process in which space outposts become increasingly self-sufficient. Visit http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/20/ceac.wheeler/?iref=intlOnlyonCNN to view the article. (5/23)

ISRO Eyes Commercial Launches to Earn Cash (Source: IANS)
After a string of successes, a confident Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is ready to offer its launch capacities on a commercial basis and ring in its cash registers. After meeting the domestic requirement that calls for four to five launches a year. "ISRO launch vehicles are efficient, reliable and cost-effective. Our launch vehicles cost nearly 25 percent less than what international agencies demand," ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair Thursday said. (5/23)

UC Santa Cruz Research Team Earns NASA Award (Source: UCSC)
The outstanding performance of the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) at UC Santa Cruz will soon be recognized with a prestigious NASA Public Service Group Achievement Award. The UARC is a $330-million, 10-year collaboration designed to serve NASA mission needs. It is located in NASA Research Park in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. "Winning the NASA Group Achievement Award is quite an honor, and it is due to the outstanding efforts of many people," said UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal. "Through their excellent work, the UARC team is helping to establish UCSC as a strong and vital presence in Silicon Valley." (5/23)

Williams College Continues Its Studies of Pluto with NASA Grant (Source: Williams)
Williams College has received a grant from NASA's Planetary Sciences Division to continue its studies of Pluto and objects beyond it in the outer solar system. The grant will support the work of three faculty members. The NASA grant, for a three-year total of $196,500, continues and extends a previous three-year grant under which the faculty members and their students made several observations of Pluto and of its largest moon, Charon. Their work has been in close collaboration with an MIT team. (5/23)

Phoenix Brings Prestige to Tucson (Source: KVOA)
It's NASA's job to get Phoenix to Mars. Then the University of Arizona will run its science mission. UA President Robert Shelton says, "It's a chance for us to do a little bragging, a little strutting of our stuff." Mike Drake, who heads the UA Department of Planetary Sciences, says, "It is a world class event and it will be covered around the world." The university says that's good for recruiting staff and students. Shelton says, "Success breeds success, we all know that. Everybody wants to be part of a winning team." It also helps raise research money. "The University of Arizona receives more federal dollars for physical science research than anyone else. We're basically tied with Caltech. And astronomy and planetary science programs are the reason for that." (5/23)

Indonesia Launches Rocket Into Space (Radio Australia)
Indonesia's space agency has successfully launched a rocket into space. It's the first step in a program designed to make Indonesia less dependent on other nations in the aeronautic field. The launch was the first stage of a five year program to enable Indonesia to launch it's own satellites into space. So far, Indonesia have been forced to use rockets from neighboring countries like India to launch satellites. Space Flight Analyst Morris Jones says the launch shows that Indonesia serious about having a world class space program. And whilst the launch doesn't pose any security threat to the asia region, it may stoke some rivalries with neighboring states. (5/23)

Nations in Asia are currently in the middle of a regional space race: the Koreans have just launched their first astronaut, the Indians are getting ready to build their own crew capsule for putting astronauts in space, China has sent a space probe to the moon, Japan has also done it, and later this year China is going to have their first space walk from their own space craft. So there is a lot of activity going on and it's all to do with national prestige, and technology and economic development. (5/23)

University of Texas Prof to Monitor Mars Experiment (Source: UT Dallas)
UT Dallas Space scientist Dr. John H. Hoffman will join a team of researchers operating and reviewing data from the Phoenix Mars lander. Materials scooped up by the lander will be collected and analyzed in a series of small furnaces, and the effluents from the furnaces will be analyzed by a mass spectrometer system designed by Dr. Hoffman. The system will determine the presence of water and the mineralogical composition of soil samples. In addition to performing sub-surface mineral studies, the UT Dallas spectrometer will analyze the atmosphere of Mars. (5/23)

Australia Needs a Space Agency, Says Astronaut (Source: Adelaide Now)
Astronaut Andy Thomas has urged Australia to play a bigger role in space science and exploration, as a return to the moon is under preparation and a mission to Mars contemplated. Dr. Thomas told a Senate inquiry into the space industry that Australia should establish a dedicated space agency to foster expertise in everything from satellite technology to rocket launching. He said even modest investment now, through collaborative projects with other international space agencies, would help Australia boost national security and strengthen the national economy. (5/23)

Canadian Space Agency Puts Out Call for Astronauts (Source: CBC)
Canadians and residents of Canada with science and engineering degrees or a licence to practice medicine might want to start checking the want ads, because the Canadian Space Agency is now accepting applications for the lofty position of astronaut. It's only the third time since the creation of the Canadian Astronaut Corps in 1983 the agency has sought applicants, and comes after Dave Williams retired in the spring and Bjarni Tryggvason announced he would retire in June. (5/23)

UK Professor Wins 'Space Oscar' (Source: LabNews)
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, chairman of UK space exploration company Surrey Satellite Technology, has won the 2008 Sir Arthur Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award. The ‘Arthurs’ - the space industry’s Oscars - pay tribute to those who have worked for the advancement of space exploration. Sir Martin, knighted in 2002, is recognised across the world for his pioneering development of small satellites which use low-cost engineering techniques. (5/23)