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Welcome. You've landed at the official Web site of the Coalition for Space Exploration. We're a collaboration of space industry businesses and advocacy groups supporting an inspiring agenda of human and robotic space exploration by NASA and America’s space industry that spurs new technologies that improve our everyday lives. We want to help educate and inform you about the value and benefits of space exploration. Here you'll find links to the latest space news, collections of educational material and tips on how to encourage your nation's leaders to support the space program. Whether you think space is cool because it inspires your spirit, has practical economic benefits or strengthens our national security, this Web site has something appealing for everyone. Be sure to join our social networking community so we can stay in touch.
The U2 rock band has kicked off their U2 360 Tour earlier this week in Barcelona, a first-class space trek that does suborbital hops between 14 cities across Europe, ending in Cardiff in late August.
U2's Bono calls the impressive staging of this newest tour as the "space station" - so much so, in fact, that U2's opening concert hooked up with the International Space Station, with the audience joining in on the station-to-station visit.
Take your own Earth-based tour of U2's space station by going to:
Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home From the Moon by Buzz Aldrin with Ken Abraham; Harmony Books; New York, New York (hard cover); $27.00, 2009.
The word "magnificent" glued to a sense of desolation is unusual - yet Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin found himself face to face with that view and uttered that word play on the Moon. In this book you'll find the ups and downs of a space traveler - the magnificence of walking on an exotic world to a human desolation caused by depression and other inner-demons.
What Aldrin has written here, ably assisted by the writing talents of bestselling author Ken Abraham, is a fascinating, personal account of space travel mixed with a chronicle of self-destruction and self-renewal.
For the space aficionados out there, you'll find this book a compelling read that provides more insight, for example, into the Apollo 11 mission, but also a feel for Aldrin's post-landing dealings with being "second on the Moon" just 20 minutes after Armstrong's first footfall.
Moreover, the book also delivers Aldrin's on-going passion to make space tourism a reality via his ShareSpace Foundation and his infectious visionary zeal to see humans step onto Mars...and travel beyond - viewpoints of today 40 years after he stepped onto the Moon this month.
Magnificent Desolation is also an account of an individual that, seemingly, has never actually stepped back on terra firma after his space adventure; this globe-trotting astronaut is his own cycling spaceship cruising between movie stars and TV shows, countless interviews, meet and greet receptions with Presidents, handshakes with rock musicians and other personalities and attending space and non-space events around the world.
The reader will find both a generous helping of Buzz the space explorer, along with his arm in arm, life in love with wife Lois - as their voyage continues.
NASA plans to host a 1 p.m. news conference to discuss this morning's fuel-loading test at Kennedy Space Center.
Since no leaks of hydrogen gas were reported during the roughly three-hour operation, officials are expected to confirm a July 11 launch date for Endeavour's 16-day International Space Station assembly mission.
Gas leaks scrubbed launch attempts on June 13 and June 17, but repairs since then apparently worked during today's test.
Mike Moses, chairman of the Mission Management Team, and Pete Nickolenko, launch director for Endeavour's STS-127 mission, will appear at the briefing.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is now undergoing checkout as it circles the Moon. Carrying a powerful imaging system, the LRO Camera, dubbed LROC for short, is being prepared for a roster of science-gathering and sharp-shooting duties – including the imaging of Apollo landing sites.
That’s the world from LROC’s Principal Investigator, Mark Robinson of Arizona State University in Tempe.
However, the resolution of any images of Apollo sites will not be as good as those made later during the probe’s primary mapping orbit, a time when LRO will be at a lower altitude as it orbits the Moon, Robinson told this Coalition reporter.
The LROC Science Team has opened up a public request opportunity to suggest LROC Narrow Angle Camera targets using a public targeting tool.
Certain classes of targets are objects of intense interest to both NASA and the LROC Science Team and will be imaged extensively as part of a scientific investigation.
Variety of targets
Already in the request database are a variety of targets on the lunar surface, including the Apollo landing sites, Surveyor spacecraft, early Ranger impact points, Soviet lunar probes, and S-IVB rocket stage and lunar module ascent stage impact points. Now undergoing checkout in Moon orbit, LRO is getting ready for its Moon charting mission.
“The LROC was activated yesterday and engineering data is being collected,” explained Rich Vondrak, LRO Project Scientist. “The goal is to obtain the first images within the next week, hopefully as soon as this weekend.”
As for imaging Apollo landing sites, Vondrak added: “We are evaluating the possibility of obtaining images of the Apollo sites before we reach our primary 50-kilometer mapping orbit. The ability to image Apollo sites depends on the satellite ground track and lighting conditions. If conditions are favorable and an image is made, it will promptly be released to the public.”
Moonwalking mystery
The Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 landing spots are already on a list put together by NASA’s Constellation Program Office, a Tier 1 “Regions of Interest” for the LROC.
Given the sharp-eyed Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, it is expected to peep in on the Apollo 11 site – the first human mission to the Moon back in July 1969. One large item that should be seen by LRO is Apollo 11’s Eagle descent stage.
“You will definitely see this square thing sitting on surface – at low Sun we might be seeing the legs casting shadows,” Robinson said. “Obviously we won’t be able to see the stars on the flag,” Robinson added. But there’s also the prospect of sighting the tracks of the lunar buggies used in the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions.
And LRO may be able to clear up a little moonwalking mystery.
“One of our many goals early on is to look at the Apollo 14 site and see if we can see exactly where they [the astronauts] were in the area of Cone Crater,” Robinson said.
On Apollo 14, several of the planned geology stops were cancelled and the traverse stopped short of Cone Crater’s rim. Post-mission analysis of landmarks in photographs indicated that the crew may have been just 65 feet (20 meters) from the crater rim when Mission Control ordered them to return to their lunar module. The crew did not know this during that moonwalk because of the difficulty in determining their precise location in the rugged terrain.
NASA and the Japanese government have published what is claimed to be the most complete topographic map of our planet yet. The new data cover 99% of Earth, up from about 80% available before. Each data set measured Earth at a distance of just 98 feet apart, which creates the foundation for stunning images that are provided free of charge.
The new global elevation model, released by NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), has been created from 1.3 million individual stereo-pair images taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra spacecraft.
The image data is expected to appeal especially to scientists and engineers working in topic areas such as engineering, energy exploration, conserving natural resources, environmental management, public works design, firefighting, recreation, geology and city planning. However, any user will have free access to the data, which shows global elevation imagery in more detail than ever before. At the time of this writing, the access was restricted, due to an apparently high volume of download requests.
Previously, the most complete topographic set of data publicly available was from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, NASA said. That mission mapped 80% of Earth's landmass, between 60 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south. The new ASTER data covers 99% of the landmass, from 83 degrees north latitude and 83 degrees south. According to NASA, each elevation measurement point in the new data is just 98 feet apart.
Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Virginia has broken ground on a new launch complex at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport launch pad to handle use of its Taurus II rocket to resupply the International Space Station.
The ceremony took place on June 29 at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility near Chincoteague, Virginia. On hand for the festivities was Maryland Senator, Barbara Mikulski.
Orbital’s Taurus II would boost the company’s Cygnus advanced maneuvering spacecraft, loaded with cargo, to the space station.
Orbital, along with California-based Space X, have won contracts to service the ISS, post-space shuttle retirement, under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS.
Working with data gleaned by Japan’s Kaguya lunar orbiter, scientists have found the signatures of uranium - an element not seen in previous Moon-mapping efforts.
According to Robert Reedy, a senior scientist at the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute (PSI), maps constructed by the researcher and the Kaguya advanced gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) team have detected uranium, as well as clear signatures for thorium, potassium, oxygen, magnesium, silicon, calcium, titanium and iron.
“We’ve already gotten uranium results, which have never been reported before,” Reedy said. “We’re getting more new elements and refining and confirming results found on the old maps” produced from earlier Moon-charting efforts, he noted in a PSI statement released today.
This data will assist scientists in not only gauging available lunar resources but also help with planning for future lunar missions, Reedy added.
Kaguya was a lunar orbiter operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The orbiter was launched in September 2007 and was purposely crashed into the Moon at the end of its mission on June 10 of this year.
Reedy has been an official co-investigator on the Kaguya GRS team since 2007, and has received some support from JAXA.
Reedy’s continuing mapping work now is being funded for two years through NASA’s Stand-Alone Missions of Opportunity (SALMON) program.
The school day for 250 middle school students on a warm sunny day in early May at Buffalo Public School 80 was anything but usual. Instead of regularly scheduled classes the students came to the auditorium for a different kind of education – an education on space exploration!
The program, called Inspiration from Exploration, consists of a multimedia interactive presentation which compares past explorers like Christopher Columbus and Lewis and Clark, with space explorers on the Moon, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station. Between videos and animations of past, present, and future space exploration students are shown that they can be a part of this exploration and that the future is in their hands to create.
“This program is really great,” said teacher Mauri McCoover-Reid “it allows these students to dream and be a part of something bigger than themselves, something that they can really aspire to.”
The students were engaged by the presentation for approximately 45 minutes and given a folder containing space exploration materials before the floor was opened to questions.
“I was amazed by the questions that the students asked,” said Bradley Cheetham who put together the presentation for the students, “I had questions about the safety of space travel, the technical requirements of a Moon base, lunar resources, and even a 5th grader who asked about space debris.”
At the end of the school day lesson plans about rockets and lunar exploration were distributed to teachers. While distributing these materials multiple teachers commented that many of their students were continuing to talk about the presentation the rest of the day and on their way home.
This program was made possible by the generous support of numerous sponsors including NASA, The University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, The Bernard Harris Foundation, the Coalition for Space Exploration, the University at Buffalo chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (UB SEDS), and the Buffalo Astronomical Association.
More information on the program complete with photos and contact information for future programs can be found online at www.IfromE.org
Bradley Cheetham
Coalition for Space Exploration Advisory Board Member
Radio hams and amateur astronomers around the world spent the weekend bouncing radio conversations off the moon to one another in commemoration of the Apollo 11 landings 40 years ago, organizers in Australia said Sunday.
Although they had some clear and extensive conversations, they had to be patient. It takes around 2.5 seconds for a radio signal to reach the moon and bounce back to another part of the Earth, so it took around five seconds to get a reply.
Initiated a few months ago by science buffs in Australia and the United States, "Moonbounce" was just winding up on Sunday Australian time after a 24-hour special event that organizers hope will become annual.
It brought together hundreds of amateur radio hams around the world, event co-founder Robert Brand told Reuters, some armed with their own radio dishes.
The Augustine Commission is currently reviewing America's human space exploration program. In an effort to relay public opinion to the commission, please choose the top 3 benefits that you value as the most important benefit gained from human space exploration.
For more information on each category, click here.
Thanks for taking the poll! To submit your twitter ID for your free poster click here.
News conferences, events and operating hours for the news center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., have been updated for the launch of space shuttle Endeavour.
NASA astronaut Jose Hernandez, set to fly aboard space shuttle Discovery in August, is providing insights about his training on Twitter in both English and Spanish. It will be the agency's first bilingual Twitter.
El astronauta de NASA Jos? Hern?ndez, quien volar? a bordo del Transbordador Espacial Discovery en Agosto, nos permitir? ver los detalles de su entrenamiento por medio de un "Twitter" en Ingles y en Espa?ol
Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home From the Moon by Buzz Aldrin with Ken Abraham; Harmony Books; New York, New York (hard cover); $27.00, 2009.
