Bye-bye moon

The budget request, released Monday, would scrap NASA’s Constellation program to build the Orion spacecraft and Ares rockets for new manned moon missions — a $9 billion investment to date. The request calls for $19 billion in funding for NASA in 2011, a slight increase from the $18.3 billion it spent in 2010.

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Lately, NASA throws one hell of a pre-launch party

(CNN) — NASA says it has launched an investigation after finding cocaine in a processing hangar for a space shuttle at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A small amount of cocaine was found in a restricted area of the processing hangar for the shuttle Discovery, NASA said in a statement.

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One second-hand space shuttle… Anyone? “Looking for a good deal during the recession? Space geeks don’t have to look any further than NASA, where they can pick up a retired space shuttle for the bargain-basement price of $28.8 million,” reports Jason Paur for Wired.com.

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WASHINGTON — The list of known exoplanets in the galaxy just got bigger, thanks to the first observations from NASA’s new Kepler space telescope, which found five new lightweight worlds orbiting distant stars. View full article »

We have 20 years to prepare

MOSCOW – “Russia’s space agency chief said Wednesday a spacecraft may be dispatched to knock a large asteroid off course and reduce the chances of earth impact, even though U.S. scientists say such a scenario is unlikely,” reports Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press Writer.

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Lunar Hole on the Moon

(CNN) — Building a home near a moon crater or a lunar sea may sound nice, but moon colonists might have a much better chance of survival if they just lived in a hole.

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Mojave, California (CNN) — Billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson on Monday unveiled the winged rocket his company developed to give paying customers a brief taste of space.

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(CNN) — NASA said Friday it had discovered water on the moon, opening “a new chapter” that could allow for the development of a lunar space station. View full article »