September 25 News Items

Embry-Riddle Names New Dormitory for Apollo Program (Source: ERAU)
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has completed a new residence hall for students and will christen it Apollo Hall in honor of NASA's historic lunar exploration program. The new facility will open in October at the university's Daytona Beach campus.

Astrium Ties Up with India's Space Agency (Source: SpaceDaily.com)
Astrium, a unit of Europe's EADS conglomerate, announced that India's space agency will assemble satellites for some launch customers under a new partnership. The Bangalore, southern India-based Indian Space Research Organisation will build two satellites, one for France-based Eutelsat to be launched by Astrium in the last quarter of 2008, and the other for Britain's Avanti due for lift-off in 2009. "These satellites will be integrated, assembled and tested in Bangalore," Astrium's chief executive officer Francois Auque told reporters on the sidelines of the astronautics congress under way in Hyderabad, southern India. The company will also market India's "cost-effective platforms" to other launch customers in Europe, and offer India's earth observation services to its clients in the US, Auque said.

Wanted: Billionaire Risk-Takers Seeking Eternal Renown (Source: New York Times)
This is a once-in-a-planet’s-lifetime opportunity to win eternal renown — and perform a lasting public service that won’t be done anytime soon by any public agency. Politicians are understandably leery of a Mars mission, and not only because the payoff would come decades after the next election. It’s hard to make a moral case for cutting social programs and science research (like climatology or unmanned space probes) to spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to put a human on Mars. But a billionaire doesn’t have to answer to voters. It’s not a public scandal when private explorers make fatal mistakes.

Robert Zubrin, the head of the Mars Society, figures a private explorer could get there within a decade for $8 billion to $10 billion, and a good chunk of that cost — maybe all of it — could be offset with revenues from media rights and marketing tie-ins. Elon Musk of SpaceX guesses it could be done for just $5 billion. “It would be neat to have a one-time $5 billion mission to Mars,” he told me, “but $5 billion is still far too much. There’s no way that we could establish any kind of base on Mars or any kind of self-sustaining biology there. We need to get that first mission to under $1 billion, and then the later missions down to under $100 million.” Mr. Musk says his goal is to help establish a colony on Mars by lowering the cost of launching payloads into space, but his company’s not ready to go up there until the venture looks profitable. Click here to view the article.

Arms in Space (Source: New York Times)
The push into space has always been, in part, a push to stay ahead militarily. Successive administrations have explored the possibilities of weaponry that often sounded like science fiction but sometimes lead to breakthroughs -- like lasers, for example. Space weapons are "still definitely part of the program," said Philip E. Coyle III, a former director of weapon testing at the Pentagon. "But they don't emphasize it because the arms-control people come out of the woodwork."

NASA Ames to Co-Sponsor International Space Station Workshop (Source: NASA)
Researchers, educators, venture capitalists and NASA officials will convene at NASA Ames Research Center on Oct. 2-4 to begin identifying and crafting pioneering research opportunities for the International Space Station. Chaired by Nobel Laureate Baruch S. Blumberg of the Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Pa., the International Space Station National Laboratory Workshop will feature panel discussions, presentations and remarks by a variety of space exploration experts. "This major workshop affords an opportunity to bring together some of the best minds in the business of space exploration to discuss future research opportunities for the International Space Station," said S. Pete Worden, director, NASA Ames Research Center. "We're delighted to be a co-sponsor of this conference and look forward to some engaging discussions," he added. The workshop is hosted by the Alliance for Commercial Enterprises in Space.

Space Business Commits to New Mexico (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
The Sierra County Economic Development Organization has landed its first space-related company, a British firm specializing in being "random." British firm Yuzoz Ltd. has made a commitment to base its "mission control" center somewhere in Sierra County, the location of Spaceport America, which is expected to open by 2010. Yuzoz will provide space-themed entertainment and promises to offer a new way of interacting with the solar system. With its Generator-I, the company plans to use satellites and observatories to capture impulses from space that can be converted into random data and applied to general numbers. Those numbers can be used for everyday decisions, including what movie to watch, choosing names and what color shirt to wear, according to the company's Web site. "We're not about hardware," Yuzoz CEO Jeff Manber said. "We're the first company that's about emotion. There is a renaissance of interest in our connection to space and space explorations. We're the first to come in and say, "we know the power of space, we want to provide that emotional link.'"

India Not Interested in Space Station (Source: DNA)
The International space station (ISS) is perhaps the most important project as far as space exploration is concerned. In fact, for ISS members it is a launchpad for lunar and interplanetary missions. However, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientists seem to be least interested in becoming a member of this prestigious project. This was revealed by ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair during an interaction with the media. About reports that India had approached Russia for membership of the exclusive group, Nair said ISRO had not initiated any dialogue with the Russians. “There is no such proposal from the scientific community,” he said.

Space Makes Bacteria More Dangerous (Source: ASU)
A germ that causes food poisoning and other illnesses can be three times more dangerous in space than on the ground, an experiment has shown. The finding spells out tougher challenges for astronauts taking trips to the moon or Mars, as recent work also hints that the body's immune system weakens during extended stays in space. "Space flight alters cellular and physiological responses in astronauts including the immune response," said Cheryl Nickerson, a microbiologist at Arizona State University and leader of the experiment. "However, relatively little was known about microbial changes to infectious disease risk in response to space flight." Bacteria express different sets of genes in different environments to ensure their survival. Inhospitable conditions, for example, can turn on a "master switch" in some bacteria and allow the microbes to form tough spores that can survive the extreme conditions of space.

E'Prime Judgement Not Final (Source: ERAU)
A report last week on competing lawsuits related to E'Prime Aerospace Corp. relayed that an Orlando judge ordered the company's new president to pay its previous president over $4.3 million. The judgement was not final and is still pending a judicial review of a recommendation filed by the plaintiff in the Orlando lawsuit.

NASA Awards Lockheed Martin $178M Deal (Source: AP)
NASA on Monday awarded Lockheed Martin a solar instrument contract worth up $178 million. The pact is for one solar ultraviolet imager that will fly on the next generation of geostationary satellites, the first of which is scheduled to launch in December 2014. The deal also includes three options for additional instruments. The imager will help monitor dynamic features on the sun, including flares, and provide better direct measurements of those features, according to NASA.

Constellation Services and United Launch Alliance Study Atlas V Cargo Missions (Source: CSI)
Constellation Services International (CSI) and United Launch Alliance (ULA) will study the potential of launching LEO Express cargo canisters on Atlas V rockets. Destinations could include the International Space Station and other commercial orbital destinations. The CSI LEO Express cargo service uses low-risk systems including the ISS-certified Progress “spacetug” along with a Progress-derived cargo Canister, each launched separately. In the first step, the standardized canister would be launched by an Atlas V launch vehicle. Next, the proven Progress spacecraft would leave ISS and act as a reusable tug to dock with the cargo canister and return it to ISS. This low-risk approach could be implemented as early as 2009, and would eliminate any potential gap in ISS cargo delivery after the Shuttle is retired.

Editorial: Moon Base Project Sucks Up Potential Climate Research Dollars (Source: Grist)
In the annals of self-delusion, NASA's Moon-Mars mission ranks right at the top. Let me be clear. There is a 0 percent chance that NASA's Moon base or anything like it will ever be built, for the following reason: the moon missions in the '60s and early '70s cost something like $100 billion in today's dollars. There is no way that setting up a semipermanent lunar base will be anything other than many times more expensive. That would put the total cost at one to a few trillion dollars. NASA, however, is spending a few billion dollars each year on this -- something like 1 percent of the money they would need to spend each year to actually accomplish this task, well short of the $100 billion or so actually required.

NASA Imagines Earth-Like Worlds (Source: Space.com)
Astronomers have yet to find an Earth-size planet beyond our solar system, but that hasn't stopped them from modeling what these worlds might look like. A new catalog of 14 types of such planets, some fantastical, could help planet hunters spot what has until now remained fictional. The computer models provide specs for 14 planet types, varying according to mass, diameter, composition and where the worlds could be found in our galaxy. Some are made mostly of pure water ice, carbon, iron, silicate, carbon monoxide or silicon carbide, while others are mixtures of these various compounds.