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USATODAY.com - NASA mulls cash prizes for private spaceflight milestones: "NASA is considering going where it has never gone before, offering cash prizes for space exploration achievements.

In the wake of the first private, manned mission to space earlier this week, a NASA official said the federally funded space agency might offer awards for commercial spaceflight milestones.

According to Reuters news agency, the prizes might range up to $30 million for the attainment of goals such as a soft lunar landing or bringing back a piece of an asteroid."

Popular Science | SpaceShipOne Soars: "Near the end of the climb, one of the electrical actuators that controls the craft in pitch and roll apparently failed. When Melvill called for a pitch maneuver that should have moved the left and right wing controls, only one of them moved, and SpaceShipOne rolled to the left, skidding 20 miles off course in seconds. 'I really thought I had a big problem,' Melvill said after the flight. But the vehicle left the atmosphere at that point--and with no air, the position of the control surface no longer mattered, and Melvill was able to stabilize it with pneumatic jet thrusters and activate a back-up trim system. 'If I hadn't popped out of the atmosphere at that moment, it would have been all over,' Melvill said...

"...The failure and the course deviation caused the flight to miss its target altitude of 360,000 feet, but navigation data showed that SpaceShipOne reached 328,491 feet, a few hundred feet above the 62.5-mile altitude that defines space.
The control problem may affect Rutan's X-Prize attempt. To win the prize, SpaceShipOne will have to fly above 100 kilometers twice in two weeks, with two passengers or equivalent ballast. Rutan had hoped that the vehicle's next flight would be its first prize flight, but that decision will wait. 'There's no way we'll fly again without knowing the cause and knowing that we've fixed it,' he said..."

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Tiny craft takes big step in new space race: "It was not much bigger than the four-wheel drives gathered in the dust to watch, but a small, oddly shaped white machine made history yesterday when it soared through the Californian sky to become the world's first commercial craft in space."

CNN.com - Private craft soars into space, history - Jun 21, 2004: "The man who became the first person to pilot a privately built craft into space called his flight 'almost a religious experience' after his safe landing Monday morning."

News: "The stuff of pulp science fiction and children's adventure books could become reality this week high over the Mojave Desert, when an innovative rocket plane points its nose toward space."

CNN.com - Mars rover Spirit develops wheel problem: "PASADENA, California (AP) -- The Mars rover Spirit has developed a problem with one of its six wheels, but NASA officials said Tuesday they believe the robot geologist can continue working."

CNN.com - Private spacecraft to launch June 21: "The world's first privately built spacecraft is scheduled to leave Earth on June 21 and -- if successful -- usher in a new era of spaceflight for private enterprise."

Wired News: Commission: NASA Needs to Change: "NASA could cede its dominance over spacecraft launches to corporations in the private sector, if a White House panel has its way.


In a report released Wednesday, the President's Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy said the 'commercialization of space should become the primary focus' of NASA's vision for the future. The report calls on NASA to rely almost exclusively on private companies to launch spacecraft payloads into low-Earth orbit. The only exception would be for manned missions, which would still be managed by the government because of their inherent risk."

The New York Times > Week in Review > For Scientists, It's Hard to Love Venus: "Although Venus was once regarded as Earth's sister planet because it is almost the same size, planetary scientists have of late given it short shrift, instead devoting attention and a parade of space probes in the opposite direction, toward Mars.

Venus' 900-degree, sulfuric acid-laden atmosphere not only makes it a difficult place to explore, but would have obliterated evidence of past life had anything evolved in its younger days. NASA currently has no plans to return, although the European and Japanese space agencies are planning to send spacecraft to orbit Venus.

Expecting just a smattering of curiosity, Mr. Aguilar assigned one volunteer to handle calls from the public about the transit. 'We thought we'd be lucky if we got five phone calls the last day,' Mr. Aguilar said. 'You just never know.'

Instead, Mr. Aguilar's single volunteer was swamped. Ten others joined in answering questions. The Harvard-Smithsonian astronomers put 22 telescopes on the roof of the building and spent last weekend making devices to allow people to watch the eclipse safely.

On Tuesday, around the world, millions looked up at a Sun with a black hole in it as Venus leisurely loped in front before sliding off again six hours later. Still more people watched the planet's movement on video streamed across the Internet.

Instead of a scientific event, this transit of Venus was a communal one, a once-in-a-lifetime event - twice if you live another eight years. "

The New York Times > Science > Private Space Travel? Dreamers Hope a Catalyst Will Rise From the Mojave Desert: "ne week from today, from a runway in a barren reach of the Mojave Desert 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, Burt Rutan will try sending a pilot higher than anyone has ever flown in a private plane.

A longtime designer of innovative aircraft, he plans to shoot his creation, a rocket called SpaceShipOne, 62 miles above the earth. If the flight is successful, Mr. Rutan and his sponsor, Paul G. Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, say it will usher in an age of privately financed space travel and even spacefaring laboratories and manufacturing plants, at down-to-earth prices.

The flight would also be a milestone on the way to winning the Ansari X Prize, a competition begun by a group of entrepreneurs and space enthusiasts in 1996 in hopes of spurring a private space race. Modeled on the $25,000 Orteig Prize, which inspired Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic, the $10 million X prize has spurred the efforts of more than two dozen teams worldwide, some of them financed by patrons like Mr. Allen and John Carmack, a founder of Id Software.

To win the X Prize, SpaceShipOne will have to travel 62 miles up twice in two weeks with three people aboard; Mr. Rutan said those flights would be tried at a later date. In May, SpaceShipOne reached an altitude of 40 miles."

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Satellite images 'show Atlantis': "Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the fabled utopia."

The New York Times > Science > Rover Unearths More Evidence of Water on Mars, Scientists Say: "The Mars rover Spirit has dug up more evidence of water on the red planet, scientists said yesterday.

At a news conference at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Dr. Steven W. Squyres, the mission's principal investigator and a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, said the rover found residue of sulfur and magnesium in a trench it had dug in the Gusev Crater in concentrations that suggest the minerals are combined as magnesium sulfate, or Epsom salt.

Finding the salt below the surface suggests that water percolated through the soil, Dr. Squyres said, dissolving the minerals and leaving a residue of salt. He called it 'much more compelling evidence than we have found anywhere else' of water in the Gusev Crater region..."

Autos: "These new diesels are not like the rattling, coughing, smoke-spewing slugs of the past. The E320 CDI, for example, can make it to 60 mph from a stop in less than 7 seconds, yet returns 40 mpg--better fuel efficiency than most of today's compact-size economy cars. The diesel V-10 Touareg should offer a no-compromises SUV with performance as good as or better than V-8 gasoline engines--but without bleeding its owner white at every fill-up.

Suddenly, diesels are very much 'in' again.
"

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Skies clear for historic Venus transit: "Millions of people across the world today were able to watch the transit of Venus, with clear skies over most of Britain granting astronomers a good view of the rare cosmic event.

At 0619 BST the Earth's closest planetary neighbour began to cut a diagonal path across the face of the sun. Appearing as a black disc 30 times smaller than the sun, its transit lasted six hours.

The entire event was visible throughout Europe, north and east Africa and Asia, except for the far east; it could not be seen from western North America, including California, the eastern Pacific, including Hawaii, South America or Antarctica."

The New York Times > Science > Space & Cosmos > Free From Gravity, These Students Taste Outer Space: "Such is life aboard KC-135, the four-engine military version of the Boeing 707 that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration uses to train astronauts for weightlessness, to test in-space technology, to help Hollywood shoot weightless scenes - and to let dozens of engineering students each year know that the space program might be a cool place to work."

The Hindu : A down-to-earth approach is the need of the hour: "IT HAPPENED 121 years ago. After tomorrow's celestial occurrence of the transit of Venus between the sun and the earth, the next major transit will take place after 121 years and the minor transit after eight years.

Venus orbits around the sun faster than the earth, which also has a longer distance to cover. The transits of the Planet of Love happen in pairs, eight years apart every century. A previous transit pairs occurred in 1761 and 1769 and again in 1874 and 1882.

On Tuesday, Venus passes directly across the face of the sun — a phenomenon astronomers call `occultation'. A similar transit of the moon is called an eclipse. Venus will appear as a small disc moving across the sun between 10.45 a.m. and 4.51 p.m. The next transit, on June 6, 2012, is considered the minor transit and is significant from an astrological perspective.

Astrologers consider the planet benign and governing aesthetics, rhetoric and literary skills. It signifies mundane love and worldly pleasures. Venus in the ascendant makes one handsome and attractive to the opposite sex and confers good children."

Historic Space Launch: "A privately-developed rocket plane will launch into history on June 21 on a mission to become the world’s first commercial manned space vehicle. Investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and aviation legend Burt Rutan have teamed to create the program, which will attempt the first non-governmental flight to leave the earth’s atmosphere.


SpaceShipOne will rocket to 100 kilometers (62 miles) into sub-orbital space above the Mojave Civilian Aerospace Test Center, a commercial airport in the California desert. If successful, it will demonstrate that the space frontier is finally open to private enterprise. This event could be the breakthrough that will enable space access for future generations."