The seven members of the crew of the shuttle Endeavor will put their feet on
the ground March 26, after 15 days in the International Space Station (ISS). A
400 km from the earth, they have installed two new modules on the station: the
Japanese laboratory "Kibo" (Hope) and the Canadian robot "Dextre" (photo)
One arm larger than life
Dextre, for "Special purpose dexterious manipulator, a robot is located
outside the station. With an articulated body, two mechanical arms, several
"eyes" (cameras) and a "head" (electromagnetic terminal), the manipulator agile
should allow maintenance of the station, while limiting the number of output of
the ISS astronauts
A base of

Beauty Space. Astronaut Tim Kopra e worked hard to secure the Japanese laboratory Kibo to the International Space Station.

This photo shows the ring of Saturn and its atmosphere, which changes the color of the planet

This image created from data collected by Chandra shows a portion of the circular supernova known as RCW 86.
San Andreas Fault:
NASA revealed by this image in 3D the famous San Andreas fault in California. Here, the photograph shows the section near the city of San Francisco.
Galactic Trio
Leonard David has an article on the progress of SpaceShipTwo. Here are some things to note:
Whitehorn said more than 100 test flights are scheduled to give spaceliner operations a good shakeout. He estimated the first commercial flights will occur by the end of 2009 and possibly sooner if the planned trial [...]
Michael Belfiore has a video of the unveiling of SpaceShipTwo last month. He also live blogged the event if you haven’t seen it yet.
Sir Richard Branson, CEO of the Virgin Group, and founder of Virgin Galactic, has his sights on Australia. While speaking to a ground of university students yesterday, Branson said that Australia “was on his radar” for building a launch site for his private space flights. The flights are expected to cost $200,000 and the ships [...]
XCOR Aerospace announced today the development of a suborbital vehicle called the Lynx. It is a two seat craft that will blast off from a runway to 61km where passengers will experience 4.5 minutes of weightlessness and land on a runway. XCOR expects the craft to take off in 2010.
[update] The Wall Street Journal is [...]
Pete Wooden, director of the NASA Ames Research station in California, while speaking in London yesterday said NASA should get people back to the Moon by 2020. But he also said “I think (private interests ) are going to beat us to the lunar surface.” Adding to that he said, “It’s NASA’s unstated policy that [...]
Virginia based Space Adventures has purchased, for an undisclosed price, Zero-G. Space Adventures is famous for sending tourists to the ISS on Russian rockets. Zero-G is the commercial equivalent of NASA’s “vomit comet” that allows people to experience simulated weightlessness aboard a parabolic jet. Dr. Peter Diamandis will remain as CEO of Zero-G and become [...]
Orion Propulsion, Inc. of Madison, AL, is pleased to announce our selection by Bigelow Aerospace to provide the forward attitude control system (ACS) for the Sundancer, the world’s first commercial human space habitat.
March 11, 2008 — In today’s world of constant media frenzy, it’s often difficult to separate credibility from clutter. To remedy the problem, Broadway Media has launched SpaceCruiseNews.com, a new Space news
Brent Rose thinks Virgin Galactic will finally make space a “primary conduit to human evolution” by taking anyone willing to pay.
Virgin Galactic group director, Alex Tai, says he expects the company to be profitable by 2010. Virgin plans to buy five SpaceShipTwo suborbital spacecraft with an option for seven. The company says 800,000 people have expressed interest and they have $31 million in ticket sales. A single suborbital ticket costs $200,000.
According to Flight Global, Bigelow Aerospace and Lockheed Martin are hammering out the final agreements in a deal that would include 50 Atlas V launches by 2015. The launches would carry cargo and crews to Bigelow’s much talked about inflatable space station. Currently, a two scale models of the station, Genesis 1 & 2, are [...]
Everyone seems to be talking about what the deal between Bigelow Aerospace and Lockheed Martin to us an Atlas V to take people to the inflatable space station says about what Bigelow is doing. I, however, see it a different way. What does it say about Lockheed?
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Feb. 7, 2008) - The Honorable Wayne Allard, U.S. Senate and Ms. Anousheh Ansari, co-founder and chairman, Prodea Systems, have confirmed their participation as featured speakers at the Space Foundation’s 24th National Space Symposium. Gen. C. Robert Kehler,