Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
NASA, crunched for money due to overages on James Webb Space Telescope, has cancelled its participation in the space gravitational wave mission LISA.
Two Americas: public vs. private. The graph illustrates our nation’s problems quite clearly.
After much fussing in the vote-counting process, the conservative judge has won in Wisconsin. This probably ends the debate over the union law passed last month, which will now become law.
The future is here: Spaceship lands at San Francisco airport. And yes, that is an accurate headline!
Picking the landing spot for the next Mars rover: down to four finalists.
The strange fluctuating polar vortex over Venus’s south pole.
Kepler does asteroseismology on 500 sunlike stars. The data says that the theories of star formation need to be revised.
Russian spaceship “Gagarin” arrives at ISS.
Newly discovered asteroid follows the Earth as it orbits the Sun, and has been doing it for a quarter million years.
Currently, three other horseshoe companions of the Earth are known to exist but, unlike 2010 SO16, these linger for a few thousand years at most before moving on to different orbits. Also, with an estimated diameter of 200–400 metres, 2010 SO16 is by far the largest of Earth’s horseshoe asteroids. The team has already used the Las Cumbres Observatory’s Faulkes Telescope in an on-going campaign to track the object and refine its orbit further. “It is not that difficult to spot with a medium-sized professional telescope”, says Dr Asher. “It will remain as an evening object in Earth’s skies for many years to come.”
Walking in Nyiragongo Crater in Africa. The pictures are stupendous.
More progress, if true: The Republican 2012 budget proposal includes nothing for Obamacare.
Scientists have found strong evidence that liquid water once existed in the interior of a comet.
Looks like he has decided to shut the government down: Obama rejects latest Republican budget.
Astronauts in ISS take cover as Chinese space junk flies past.
From the British science journal Nature: NASA human space-flight programme lost in transition.
SpaceX unveils its plan for the Falcon 9 Heavy, what would be the world’s most powerful private rocket.
The new rocket will be able to carry about 117,000 pounds (53,000 kilograms) of cargo to orbit – about twice the payload-carrying capability of the space shuttle. The Falcon Heavy would launch more than twice as much weight as the Delta 4 heavy, currently the most powerful rocket in operation. Only NASA’s Saturn 5 moon rocket, which last launched in 1973, could carry more cargo to orbit, SpaceX officials said.
Musk said the rocket should lower the launch cost of cargo to about $1,000 per pound, about one-tenth the cost per pound on NASA shuttle launches.
Progress! The House Republicans propose $6.2 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years.
Russia is accelerating its space program.
“It is the first time that the government has allocated decent financing to us,” Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said in a phone interview on April 2. The agency’s $3.5 billion budget for 2011 has almost tripled since 2007, reaching the highest since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. “We can now advance on all themes a bit,” Perminov said.
Unlike 50 years ago, when beating the U.S. into space marked a geopolitical victory in the Cold War, Russia is focusing on the commercial, technological and scientific aspects of space travel. President Dmitry Medvedev has named aerospace one of five industries the government plans to nurture to help diversify the economy of the world’s largest energy supplier away from resource extraction.
The House Republicans last night introduced a one-week stopgap continuing resolution with $12 billion in spending cuts.
Software engineers to the Moon!
Crazy? Absolutely! Impossible? Probably not! There are a growing number of people who believe that with federal funding for our space program getting scarce, the future lies in private-public partnerships. Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s third job (after leading electric car company Tesla and acting as the Chairman of solar installer SolarCity) is heading up SpaceX, which was the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a rocketship. Virgin’s Richard Branson has a similar private space venture.
My heart bleeds: Federal workers in shutdown limbo.
Considering government workers generally make twice the salary of workers in the private sector, I have little sympathy for them and consider this to be nothing more than a pig squealing.
The Supreme Court decision today on school choice reveals a greal deal about how the justices might vote on the legality of Obamacare.
The Republican response to the various Democratic claims that a budget deal is imminent: There is no deal, and $33 billion in cuts is “not enough.”
Will the EPA lose control of greenhouse gas rules?
The article above, written for the journal Science, is clearly on the side of the EPA. Nonetheless, it does outline well the political dynamics of this regulatory battle between the EPA and Congress.
