China: To the Moon Alice!

China's space program wants to go around the Moon by 2007 in an un-manned capsule. (Their rockets look like Russian clones to me.) They target 2020 for a manned flight. NASA in the Vision plan to do another manned landing by 2018.

Also in today's Orange County Register has an article on rules for space tourists here.

More Rings around Uranus

My brother-In-Law Alan would love this one. When Voyager found the first ring around Uranus he would tell people, "Do you know there are rings around Uranus?" So now a Hubble has found two new Moons and two faint rings around Uranus.

NASA reauthorization bill

I'm glad that the Senate passed legislation to fund the "Vision for Space Exploration.". Much has been said and done this week on the "Patriot Act" that Space was not on the MSM's radar.

The focus will be to return to the Moon, Shuttle until 2010 and finishing the International Space Station.

"Our national policy will determine the nation's role in future space exploration and its contribution to broad research and our national security," Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science and Space, said in a statement.

The bill will now go to President Bush to sign. I'm glad something positive came out of our lovely legislators this week!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! Space exploration will defantly be a good in 2006 and the future years. The Moon and Mars will be ours!

Beagle Found

The Mars Global Surveyor found evidence the Beagle 2 did land with the air bags deployed. Pictures of the airbag tracks were found. Beagle might have landed on its side damaging equipment so it could not communicate back to Earth.

Foam on External tank showed cracks

I've been lax in keeping up on Space news and such. I ran by this article onCNN before thanksgiving on the Shuttle and the crack problems on the external tanks.

"How do these cracks that we've found figure into that? We don't know," said John Chapman, manager of the External Tank Project at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "It would certainly be premature to say the cracks play a factor in that. We don't know that right now. But they might."

....

NASA is still conducting tests to determine if the tank incurred cracks during testing and if the tank Discovery actually used had similar cracks.

"We haven't found any eureka, or smoking gun so far," Chapman said.