Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
NASA has decided to abandon efforts to contact the rover Spirit, incommunicado for more than a year.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, both video and transcript.
If you want to watch or read a clear description of the real problems in the Middle East, you must watch or read this speech. It is all too rare in these sad days for political leaders to be so blunt.
NASA announces that the Orion program will continue, though under a different name.
This is a non-announcement, made to appease those in Congress who are requiring NASA to build the program-formerly-called-Constellation. NASA will do as Congress demands, and in the process will build nothing while spending a lot of money for a rocket and space capsule that can’t be built for the amount budgeted.
Evidence mounts for liquid water on Enceladus.
Facing a launch window that ends December 18, the next rover mission to Mars was damaged last week upon arriving at the Kennedy Space Center.
What the hell? In signing the guestbook at Westminster Abbey today, Obama dated his comments 24 May, 2008.
The next budget negotiations have started, and so has the squealing: Republicans propose cutting 12 percent of FDA’s budget.
Note that this would give the FDA a budget of $2.2 billion in 2012, about the same as its 2008 budget. Hardly painful if you ask me.
Video: Is it a blimp? Is it a plane? It’s both!
There is a pattern here: Gasoline prices by county.
Another Soyuz upgrade in the works.
Soyuz TMA-20 lands safely in Kazakhstan.
The United Kingdom’s Skylon spaceplane has passed a key European Space Agency review.
I’ve seen hundreds of these kinds of stories over the years. Skylon looks cool, and would be revolutionary if built. We shall see if it actually happens.
A hint at what today’s images of the station and shuttle, taken from the Soyuz capsule, will look like.
Satellite monitoring of the new Iceland volcano eruption.
More on the new Kepler results: Lots of multiple planet systems.
Republican Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty today called for phasing out ethanol subsidies — in Iowa.
We need more candidates like this, willing to say these kinds of things face-to-face with the very people who benefit from the funding.
New results from Kepler.
Though the data is sketchy in places, it appears there has been no decline in the polar bear population for the past four years.
An excellent analysis of Obama’s Middle East speech, and why the reaction to it has been so hostile.
The crisis, then, was caused by three factors: The ignorance of the Obama Administration over the issues involved; Obama’s chronic lack of friendliness toward Israel; and his refusal to recognize the threat from revolutionary Islamism.
Our government in action: No restrooms were included in the soon-to-open 9/11 memorial at ground zero.
The nonprofit foundation running the $508 million project is expecting millions of visitors from across the globe to flock to lower Manhattan when it opens this year on the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. But there won’t be a single toilet available on the eight-acre green plaza — a planning oversight now raising concerns in closed-door meetings.
Analysis has shown that the damaged shuttle tile on Endeavour is not a problem for re-entry.
Grimsvotn, Iceland’s most active volcano, has started a new eruption, the first since 2004.
Images of Robert Bigelow’s ambitious private space station plans.
Local authorities warn gun owners that they will be “inconvenienced” if they carry unconcealed handguns legally in Philadelphia.
Or to put it another way, the police have decided they can harass citizens who happen to be obeying the law.
All your Moon rocks are belong to us: A NASA sting nets a woman offering to sell a Moon rock for $1.7M.
The departing Soyuz crew will do a photo-op fly around on Monday to photograph the completed station with a docked shuttle.
