Space Coalition Blog

Ground Control to U2s Bono

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:34:00 -0500

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 sta...

Book Review: Magnificent Desolation

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:18:00 -0500

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...

Live STS-127 Updates

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:14:00 -0500

From Florida Today 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 conf...

NASA Moon Orbiter: Spotting the Apollo Landing Sites

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:03:00 -0500

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 dutie...

NASA and Japan Release Topographic Map of 99% of the Earth

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:56:00 -0500

From TG Daily 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 ...

Groundbreaking on Spaceport Launch Pad for Commercial ISS Resupply

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:26:00 -0500

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 o...

Uranium Spotted on the Moon

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:18:00 -0500

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 Scie...

Tour the ISS with Flight Engineer Michael Barratt

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:14:00 -0500

Inspiration from Exploration--a program for Buffalo Public School students

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:08:00 -0500

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 &nda...

Doing the Radio Moon Bounce

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:42:00 -0500

From MSNBC 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 ha...

Old Apollo 11 Tapes Found? New Look at First Humans on the Moon

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:43:00 -0500

Calling it a “World Exclusive” the UK newspaper, Sunday Express, claims that Apollo 11 TV tapes have been recovered, providing a far-sharper view of Apollo 11 moonwalkers, Neil Armstong and Buzz Aldrin. For years, there’s been an o...

NASA Wants You... To Digitize Notes

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:36:00 -0500

From Wired.com NASA is taking the rare step of reaching out to the public for help. The space agency is looking for the best way to analyze and electronically catalog a precious collection of notes that chronicle the early history of the human space...

Hotels in Space?

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:45:00 -0500

From ABC News Imagine yourself, sometime in the next decade, with a fantastic idea for a new business that requires manufacturing in the weightlessness of space. Or maybe, having made your fortune on Earth, you'd simply like to vacation in a very hi...

Stop Tweeting and Look Up

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:51:00 -0500

From Universe Today Want to know when to stop tweeting and look heavenward for a view of the International Space Station? Follow one more account, then. Several websites carry information about the space station's path through the sky, but until no...

Testing Rockets a Dream Come True

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:45:00 -0500

From Florida Today Dan Kovalchik is living his childhood dream. The 58-year-old Merritt Island resident was 12 in 1962, the year John Glenn became the first American astronaut to orbit Earth, when Telstar 1 made the first trans-Atlantic telecast an...

Share Your Views: Humans on the Moon - Past and the Future

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:05:00 -0500

Want to share your memory of the day two Americans landed on the Moon…or what do you think about humans going back to the Moon? That’s the offer from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. thanks to a ...

Boldly Going...

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:10:00 -0500

NASA regularly produces posters for their missions, like this Star Trek inspired one for Expidition 21. You can find more here

And you can follow NASA on various social networks here

Window Damage May Delay STS-129

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:16:00 -0500

From NASASpaceFlight.com Meetings have been taking place on Wednesday into evaluating damage to the pressure pane on Atlantis' number 5 window, after a work light knob was observed to be embedded between the pane and the dashboard panel. The damage ...

Senate Panel Approves Full NASA Budget

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:48:00 -0500

From Florida Today A key Senate panel approved a NASA budget Wednesday that would retain nearly every dollar sought by President Barack Obama in his $18.7 billion request for the agency. The vote sets up a battle with the House, which last week pas...

Stalled Rover Doing Dirt Science

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:28:00 -0500

From Mars Daily Spirit remains stationary on the west side of Home Plate in the location called "Troy". The rover continues to be busy with an ambitious observation campaign employing both remote sensing and in-situ (contact) science with the roboti...

1908 Tunguska Event: Space Shuttle Missions Provide New Insight

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:51:00 -0500

An assessment of the exhaust plume from the NASA space shuttle has given insight into an event that took place a century ago. According to new research at Cornell University, the mysterious Tunguska explosion that flattened hundreds of square miles ...

Dr. Rendezvous Meets Snoop: Hip Hop Video - Off the Planet Charts!

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:07:00 -0500

Stand by for a video featuring Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin and Snoop Dogg on a hip-hop Rocket Experience. Check out the background video on this, including Quincy Jones. The Moon Dawg is full-throttle on this…check it out at: http://www.fu...

Learn More About Constellation

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:04:00 -0500

From NASA

NASA's Constellation Program, which is developing the Orion spacecraft, the Altair lunar lander and the Ares rockets, will take Humans to the moon for the first time in 50 years.

Click here to learn more about Constellation!

The Backup Plan to Get to the Moon

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:17:00 -0500

Shown at the 2009 Review of U. S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, this video details the DIRECT alternative to the Ares rocket system.

Shuttle Fuel Testing Begins Next Week

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:05:00 -0500

From SpaceFlightNow Shuttle managers plan to meet Wednesday to review procedures for a fueling test next week to assess the performance of an alternative internal seal and shim-like washers intended to eliminate a leak in a gaseous hydrogen vent lin...

Book Review - Climate Change

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:43:00 -0500

Climate Change: Picturing the Science by Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe; W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.; New York, New York (soft cover); $24.95; 2009. This is an inspired work, teaming the talents of NASA scientist Schmidt with camera-shooting Wol...

Deciding the Future of Space Exploration

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:01:00 -0500

From MSNBC When the Soviet Union was beating America's pants off heaving cosmonauts into orbit, a young president named John Fitzgerald Kennedy called a handful of top space experts in and decided Americans would walk on the moon. Kennedy wanted to...

Faux-Flesh Flies to Full Moon

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:05:00 -0500

From Discovery.com NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which blasted off for the moon on Thursday, will not only scout out safe spots for astronauts to land, it will let them know how the harsh radioactive environment might impact their bodie...

The Race Back to the Moon

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:06:00 -0500

From Wired.com When a NASA spacecraft returns to lunar orbit Tuesday morning for the first time in a decade, the space agency will be building on 40 years of largely unheralded, but fundamentally important discoveries wrung out of shoestring-budget ...

100 Sites for Learning About Space

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:12:00 -0500

From Photography Colleges Everyone from kids to teachers to adults who want to reach for the stars encounters problems. Telescopes are expensive and complex to operate. Observatories can be difficult to access. Information can be loaded with jargon....