July 20 News Items

Florida Team Considers Google Lunar X-Prize Bid (Source: Space Florida)
A multi-university student-led group called Omega Envoy is planning to pursue the Google Lunar X-Prize, offering $30 million to land and operate a robot on the Moon. University groups interested in supporting the Omega Envoy team will meet on August 1 at Kennedy Space Center, with support from Space Florida. Visit http://www.omegaenvoy.org for information. (7/18)

Arizona State University Sponsors High School Bioscience Internships (Source: ASU)
While many of their peers were off enjoying summer holiday, 58 talented and dedicated Valley high school students and teachers engaged in solving real-world problems alongside Biodesign Institute scientists as part of Arizona’s largest high school bioscience internship program at Arizona State University. In all, 24 high schools in 14 districts with existing or emerging biotechnology programs were each invited to send a teacher to participate in the internship program. The teachers, in turn, helped select students for the paid six-week internship. (7/19)

Canada Part of Group Planning Mars Sample Mission (Source: Canadian Press)
Canada, which is part of a group working to bring samples of Mars back to Earth, has helped the mission exploring the Red Planet to get more bang for its buck, says a key American scientist. The lead scientist behind the Phoenix Mars Lander describes the Canadian contribution to the mission as "a godsend," and says a $37-million Canadian-built weather station on board the spacecraft has worked "flawlessly" since it landed on May 25. (7/20)

Lockheed Lands Satellite Communications Contract (Source: AIA)
Lockheed Martin will provide the Air Force with advanced materials for a military satellite communications system as part of a $119 million contract. The satellite system will provide a secure communications network for warfighters. (7/19)

NASA Eyes Purchasing Japan's HTV Spacecraft for Space Station Missions (Source: Daily Yomiuri)
NASA has begun unofficial negotiations with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on purchasing units of the H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV), an unmanned cargo transfer spacecraft developed in Japan, as the successor to its space shuttles, which are to retire in 2010. Behind the move is NASA's concern that the retirement of its space shuttles will make it difficult for the United States to fulfill its responsibilities to deliver water, food and materials for scientific experiments to the International Space Station. Japan has never sold such an expensive, domestically developed item of space hardware as the 14 billion yen HTV to other countries. If a contract is concluded, it will be the biggest in the country's 50-year space development history. (7/20)

Editorial: Bold New Frontiers--and Markets--Await Us in Space (Source: Naples Daily News)
Although the news media make it sound as if space exploration is the most expensive program in the whole government, the fact is that all the money NASA has been given since the agency’s inception in 1958 doesn’t add up to one year’s expenditure by the Department of Defense or the Department of Health and Human Services. In return for that investment, space technology has poured trillions of dollars into the U.S. economy in areas such as electronics and computers, aircraft, medical sensors, communications, new fabrics and materials, and many other industries. In balance, space development has been the biggest bargain for the American taxpayer since the Louisiana Purchase.

But where do we go from here? Since NASA’s inception in 1958, virtually all our efforts in space have been done by the government. The major exception is communications satellites, which have been a trillion-dollar global market since the 1960s. That situation is changing. A handful of private companies are working to develop rocket launchers that can carry people and payloads into space much more economically than NASA’s space shuttle, which is slated for retirement in another decade or less.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich recently wrote about the future of space developments in Aviation Week & Space Technology, the weekly newsmagazine of the aerospace industry. Whatever you think of Gingrich’s politics, he is a bright fellow and offers much more insight than the typical politician’s partisan posturing. Gingrich suggests that the federal government encourage private space developers with strong economic incentives. “We can do this,” he writes, “by creating a 25-year tax-free window for any profits from space tourism and space manufacturing. (7/20)

Funding in Jeopardy to Speed Orion Work (Source: Florida Today)
NASA's chances of getting the money it needs to speed development of the space shuttle's replacement dimmed this week amid fresh reports that the Orion space capsules are behind schedule and over budget. "It clearly doesn't make it any easier," said Sen. Bill Nelson, the Orlando Democrat who chairs the Senate panel that oversees NASA. "It makes it that much harder to get the funding." Compounding the problem, he and other lawmakers said, is the current impasse over budget bills. Congress has yet to pass any of the 12 annual appropriations bills, and probably won't until a new president takes office. (7/20)

Search for Alien Life Gains New Impetus (Source: Washington Post)
When Paul Butler began hunting for planets beyond our solar system, few people took him seriously, and some, he says, questioned his credentials as a scientist. That was a decade ago, before Butler helped find some of the first extra-solar planets, and before he and his team identified about half of the 300 discovered since. Biogeologist Lisa M. Pratt of Indiana University had a similar experience with her early research on "extremophiles," bizarre microbes found in very harsh Earth environments. She and colleagues explored the depths of South African gold mines and, to their great surprise, found bacteria sustained only by the radioactive decay of nearby rocks.

The experiences of these two researchers reflect the scientific explosion taking place in astrobiology, the multi-disciplined search for extreme forms of life on Earth and for possibly similar, or more advanced, life elsewhere in the solar system and in distant galaxies. The confidence that alien life will ultimately be found is strong enough to have kindled formal discussions among scientists, philosophers, theologians and others about the implications that such a find would have for humanity's view of itself, and how to prepare the public for the news, should it come. (7/20)

Asteroid Switched Mars's Magnetic Field On and Off (Source: New Scientist)
Can you flip a planet's magnetic field on and off like a light switch? An asteroid could have done just that to Mars 4 billion years ago. Mars once had a magnetic field, which may have been driven by a dynamo formed from the convection of material in the core, much like the Earth's is today. Yet crater records suggest the Martian dynamo died quickly, over a few tens of thousands of years, something researchers struggle to explain. (7/20)

Discoveries Out There Require Preparation Right Here (Source: Washington Post)
Reports in 1996 that a meteorite from Mars that was found in Antarctica might contain fossilized remains of living organisms led then-Vice President Al Gore to convene a meeting of scientists, religious leaders and journalists to discuss the implications of a possible discovery of extraterrestrial life. Gore walked into the room armed with questions on notecards but, according to MIT physicist and associate provost Claude R. Canizares, he put them down and asked this first question: What would such a discovery mean to people of faith? Visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/19/AR2008071901642.html to view the article. (7/20)

Preview of Downey's Columbia Memorial Space Center (Source: Long Beach Press Telegram)
Want to know how much you weigh on the moon and on Mars? In less than six months, standing in the space boots of an astronaut will be within Earthly reach. The Columbia Memorial Space Center is scheduled to open its doors this winter, four years after Congress passed the resolution that named the city as the facility's home. It's a fitting honor for Downey, whose history includes the rise of its aviation and aerospace industries.

About $10 million has been invested in the project, with an additional $5 million coming from federal funds. But don't call this two-story 18,000-square-foot aluminum-coated building a museum. City officials say the facility is designed as a learning center equipped with state-of-the-art offerings from a high-definition computer lab to a revolving series of exhibits on loan from institutions such as the Smithsonian, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA. (7/20)

Editorial: NASA and the Air Force Should Spare Endangered Wildlife (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
There's dodging a bullet, and then there's dodging tons of rocket propellent composed of liquid hydrogen, nitrogen tetroxide or kerosene. Eleven threatened or endangered kinds of wildlife, some 300 bird species and thousands of tourists and outdoorsmen wanting a peek at them may have dodged the latter, thanks to two government agencies doing what, incredibly, government agencies seldom find it practical to do. Talking to each other. NASA hadn't wanted to talk to the Air Force, its neighbor along the Space Coast, about siting a new 200-acre commercial launch complex on Air Force property. Why bother, it thought, when it had plenty of vacant land along its own 140,000-acre property that might fit its needs? Click here to view the editorial. (7/20)