Space Station Threshold

Communication with spacecraft is vital for NASA, and since the World Wide Web has enabled easy, reliable and quick contact for people around the world, the space agency decided to model a new deep space communication system on the internet. A month-long test of this "Interplanetary Internet" was successfully conducted by transmitting ...

NASA appears to be in the position of being a priority for our new president, somewhat of a rarity. So what can NASA expect under the Obama administration? NASA administrator Mike Griffin met with employees at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday where workers asked if he would continue as administrator under [...]

Oh dear. This is a tough lesson in "don't sell NASA defective goods!" It would appear that even NASA suffers from common infliction of shoddy contractors. Have you ever hired a plumber to find the leaking got worse? Have you hired a landscaping company who accidentally ripped up your prize hydrangeas? Have you purchased a passive ...

Just when we were worrying we might be losing two Mars surface missions within a week of each other, it turns out Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has survived its recent run-in with a Sun-dimming dust storm. On Tuesday, Nancy reported that Spirit had generated a record low power output from its solar panels, indicating the [...]

Astronauts realise that there are some things they will miss out on. Whilst living on the International Space Station (ISS) for months at a time they may miss out on their child's first words, they may forget to record the new season of Heroes, they may also miss out on a terrestrial celebration of their [...]

We've known about the methane in Mars' atmosphere for over four years now. But we don't know where it is coming from. On Earth, methane is produced from biological agents: rotting vegetation or flatulence from large animals like cows. But, of course, with our extensive explorations of Mars with rovers and high-resolution [...]

In an initiative energized by Google Vice-President Vint Cerf, the International Space Station could be testing a brand new way of communicating with Earth. In 2009, it is hoped that the ISS will play host to an Interplanetary Internet prototype that could standardize communications between Earth and space, possibly replacing point-to-point single ...

There's been a lot of bad news surrounding the development of the Constellation Program of late. We've had news of general design flaws, rebelling NASA engineers, failed parachute tests, budget overruns, vibrational issues and job losses. Now we have a new one to add to the mix, the Ares I launch vehicle could bump into [...]

The Russian spacecraft producer Energiya has warned that it might only have enough money to launch the next two Soyuz flights unless funds are raised urgently. This situation poses a difficult problem for future access to the International Space Station. The spacecraft producer requires funding in advance to pay for the construction of future ...

A company owned by Google's founders has just brought a 1982 light attack Dornier Alpha Jet. H211 LLC owns several aircraft that are frequently used by Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and in an "unusual" agreement signed last year, H211 managed to get the rights to operate from an airstrip ten minutes away [...]