China’s space lab is set to be a ghost town no more – a major achievement for the superpower that came late to the space race
From Gizmodo: Airbus Could Ground All Its A380s For Weeks for Wing Repairs
From Engadget: Visualized: Stunning long-exposure ‘star trail’ photo taken from the ISS
Ever wondered what goes on up at the International Space Station? We like to think it’s all floating around and eating freeze-dried steak. Astronaut Don Pettit decided to take a break from his no-doubt mundane routine and capture the spectacular image you see above. We say image, it’s actually multiple 30-second exposure snaps layered on top of each other. Needless to say the result is both humbling, and hypnotic. Best of all? There’s a collection of them, waiting to steal your afternoon with slack-jawed wonderment. Hit the source for the mind-melt.
from Engadget
From Discover Magazine: Shining shoes for NASA | Bad Astronomy
FACT: NASA’s total budget is less than 1% of the Federal spending. Way less than 1%.
FACT: The proposed fiscal year 2013 budget out of the White House has huge cuts to NASA. Planetary sciences alone has $300 million slashed from it.
FACT: If this cut stays in the budget, NASA will have to pull back from some big and exciting planetary missions. It’s already made NASA back out of an agreement with the European Space Agency on two ambitious Mars probes.
FACT: This sucks. A lot. America leads the way in scientific planetary missions, and this cut will hurt that, significantly.
It’s unclear if Congress will reinstate that money. So what can we do?
My friend Alan Stern — head of the new Horizons Pluto probe already on its way to the tiny world — decided to try something radical: raise public awareness about all this by holding various “fund raisers” across the nation — bake sales and car washes! Yes, you read that right: planetary scientists will be washing cars and giving away cookies to help save NASA. It’s not really about raising …
from Discover Magazine
From Gizmodo: The Experimental French Aircraft That Wasn’t
Is it just me or does that aircraft look like a … chicken?! o.O
=============================================================
The Coléoptère was a French experiment from the 1950s which aspired to make a vertical take off and landing aircraft a reality. It looks like something that was an iconic, indelible part of the Atomic Future. The only thing is that it was a complete failure. More »
from Gizmodo
From DailyTech Main News Feed: Congress, NASA Agree on New Commercial Space Regulation System
The commercial crew program will now operate under a Financial Acquisition Regulation (FAR) system
From Ars Technica: NASA’s Commercial Crew gains support in Congress
It appears that SpaceX’s success with the Dragon spacecraft has won some much-needed space in the US House of Representatives. Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) announced Tuesday that his office reached a truce with NASA regarding the Commercial Crew program. Under the agreement, Wolf will lower his opposition to Commercial Crew and hopefully help NASA gain better funding.
Wolf chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, which controls NASA’s budget. His subcommittee has consistently hit the Commercial Crew Development program (CCDev) with heavy cuts. NASA Administrator Bolden has stated that the cuts have delayed access to the Space Station by American vehicles by at least a year, with this year’s cuts expected to delay American access again. In hearings, some of Wolf’s subcommittee members have seemed intent on using the coming Space Launch System (SLS) to ferry astronauts to the Space Station, even though this service would come at a price that’s about ten times higher.
In April, Wolf included language in the 2013 spending bill’s accompanying report that stopped just short of requiring NASA to drop its Commercial Crew competition. Wolf wanted NASA to immediately downsize the program from the current four competitors to either a single “competitor” or a well-funded leader and a weakly funded follower. Commercial space backers have worried that the language would succeed in essentially discontinuing CCDev, given that similar tactics have been used in the Senate.
from Ars Technica