From SPACE.COM today:

A go-ahead was given last week by the U.S. Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) that clears the way for exchanges of technical information between Scaled Composites of Mojave, California and Virgin Galactic of the United Kingdom to build passenger-carrying suborbital spaceliners.

The “going rate” for seats onboard Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceships are price tagged at $200,000 each.

“We have a significant level of deposits now…nearly $10 million worth,” Whitehorn said. Some people are paying the full price to be founders and some are putting down deposits to fly in the future, he said.

“We’ll be in the position by the time we actually launch this business…I’m sure we would have sold out at least the first couple of years by the time we start flying,” Whitehorn speculated.

A full-scale mock-up of SpaceShipTwo is to be unveiled in the near future, but not this year, Whitehorn said: “We’ll be keeping our light under a bushel [basket] for competitive reasons for some time.”

Wendy, Danny and I just watched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter take off over a live web cast. That was pretty cool; what a way to start your day!

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will study the history of water on Mars

After a seven-month cruise to Mars and six months of aerobraking to reach its science orbit, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will seek to find out about the history of water on Mars with its science instruments. They will zoom in for extreme close-up photography of the martian surface, analyze minerals, look for subsurface water, trace how much dust and water are distributed in the atmosphere, and monitor daily global weather.

These studies will help determine if there are deposits of minerals that form in water over long periods of time, detect any shorelines of ancient seas and lakes, and analyze deposits placed in layers over time by flowing water. It will also be able to tell if the underground martian ice discovered by the Mars Odyssey orbiter is the top layer of a deep ice deposit or whether it is a shallow layer in equilibrium with the current atmosphere and its seasonal cycle of water vapor.

It seems that we are making more and more progress on trying to identify Near Earth Objects before they become potential threats. We'll probably hear more about these things now that we are actively looking for them, registering them in our warning system.

2029, April 13 an Asteroid named 2004 MN4 of around 400 meters is predicted to pass near Earth, according to a recent discovery. The Asteroid orbits the sun once every 324 days. If an impact occurs, 2004 MN4 will yield approx. 1600 megatons of energy.

NASA’s Near Earth Object Program (NEOP) is unable to verify the flyby distance and say that there is a possibility of the Asteroid colliding with Earth. According the NASA, the probability of impact is 1:60 (one in sixty). Further more the impact predictability could reduce or even get eliminated, as and when new data are received.

With a discovery of a new asteroid or comet, predictions for where the object will be in a month or decade are unknown. For the majority of objects, the initial calculations are sufficient to show that they will not make any close passes by the Earth within the next century. However, for some objects, close approaches and possible collisions with the Earth cannot be completely ruled out.

The Torino Scale utilizes numbers that range from 0 to 10, where 0 indicates an object has a zero or negligibly small chance of collision with the Earth. (Zero is also used to categorize any object that is too small to penetrate the Earth's atmosphere intact, in the event that a collision does occur.) Where as Level 10 indicates that a collision is almost certain, and the impacting object is so large that it is capable of causing a global climatic disaster.

The Asteroid named 2004 MN4 has been assigned level 4 [A close encounter, with 1% or greater chance of a collision capable of causing regional devastation.], the first Asteroid to get this level rating. Roy Tucker, David Tholen and Fabrizio Bernardi of NASA discovered the 2004 MN4 Asteroid in June 19, 2004, from Kitt Peak – Arizona.

NASA would be monitoring the Asteroid and new telescopic observations may lead to reassignment to Level 0 where the likelihood of a collision is zero.

The Cassini probe made its first flyby of Titan this morning at 11:30am EST. The data feed should arrive here on Earth at about 9:30pm EST. NASA TV will carry the pictures live. They will post the raw pictures live to the website and then later assemble the press photos.

Hat Tip to Slashdot

Outstanding!

Brazil just entered the space race with a successful lanuch of their test rocket. Brazil hopes to sell a number of the final products to the European Space Agency. They also hope to capitalize on their equatorial launch pad, which because of its proximity to the equator makes it an ideal location to launch spacecraft most efficiently.

Read about it here, here, here and even here.

Welcome to the club, Brazil!

Hat tip to InstaPundit

Did you know that three hours ago scientists found a star with planets that might be earth-sized?

Did you know that three hours ago scientists found a star with planets that might be earth-sized? They are larger than Pluto, but smaller than Jupiter. Earth-sized planets are a rare find. In my opinion this is a great discovery because thus far we haven't found many planets that could be earth sized. We always expected that earth sized planets exist. The planets that we just found may fit that category. Astronomers discovered these planets in the Au Microscopii dust ring. One other amazing thing is that we only found these planets by looking at clumps of dust that surround the planets. We might not have discovered them if those dust rings didn't exist. I think that it's amazing that we can see stars that are 33 light-years away, but I suspected that we should be able to see planets by something other than the dust around them.

I know that I should be more impressed with our telescopes, but humans have been studying the stars for thousands of years and I think we should be able to see the planets in the Au Microscopii system by now. I may just be impatient, however. Even though I think that we should have the technology to see the planets in Au Microscopii, I can’t deny that our technology is very advanced. I don't think that we're very far from developing more advanced technology.

To learn more about Au Microscopii click here

Did you know that we have already started working on a probe that will be able to find earth-sized planets? In 2006 the Kepler probe will be launched, and while orbiting the sun it will attempt find other "Earths". The Kepler probe utilizes technology that will be able to spot a "dip" in a star's light where a planet may be found.

Did you know that we have already started working on a probe that will be able to find earth-sized planets? In 2006 the Kepler probe will be launched, and while orbiting the sun it will attempt find other "Earths". The Kepler probe utilizes technology that will be able to spot a "dip" in a star's light where a planet may be found.

As you know, space exploration (using spacecraft) began mainly in the late fifties, and early sixties. Forty years later, and we're sending probes into space that find planets, wow! I can't believe the stuff we can create, if you consider how fast technology has advanced compared to 1700-1800's or even before that, it's like comparing a horse and buggy to a Ferrari. But even with our gadgets, we still have a long way to go before we can explore even a fraction of our galaxy.

Scientists working at NASA state that even with Kepler we may not find other earths, not because of limited technology, but because earthlike planets are rare. According to MSNBC the formation of gas giants is most common type of planet formation. Hopefully we will find another earthlike planet.

To find more click here

Did you know that today at 2:15 the space probe MESSENGER was sent to mercury?

I think that it's amazing that we can send a probe to a planet that's millions of miles away, and then have it endure the heat of the sun, which will be less than 30 million miles away. MESSENGER won't be the first probe to go to mercury, Mariner 10 is the only probe to successfully reach and study mercury. Thing about Mariner 10, to me it was an almost worthless venture because we (NASA, the general public) learned very little about mercury.

Mercury, even with the little information that we know about is very interesting to me. Mercury is very different than the other planets in our solar system, even though it's not my favorite planet, mercury does peak my interest because of its many mysteries. Mercury, small as it is has an iron core that takes up approximately 65% of the planets' mass, and also that Mercury's days are longer than its years'.

What I'm wondering now is how does NASA know that this mission will be a success?

Click here to learn more

I wonder if I will remember the moment SpaceShipOne lifted off the ground, strapped to the underbelly of her White Knight launch vehicle, as I have come to remember other important moments in history. My generation remembers other such events quite readily, the moment Reagan was shot, the instant the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded, the day that the Berlin Wall tumbled to the ground...

I can still see myself in my mind's eye, sitting in the living room in front of the television, giddy with excitement. Perhaps I was a little too exuberant as I tried to catch every aspect of the launch and successive landing on the TiVo so Danny could watch it when he came home from school.

... yes, I think I will remember it for a long time. The day that mankind left their governments, and our planet, behind them, as we reached out into space.

True, it was a business venture. It was personally funded by Paul Allen of Microsoft, and in the end it did not even cost that much compared to some of the other things we waste our money on. That does not diminish the flight for me one bit. (Actually, it makes me feel better about the money I spend on Microsoft products...) Perhaps it is my indefatigable inner romantic, but I like to think that we did this not to be profiteering, but for the spirit described by former President John F. Kennedy when he said:

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

--President John F. Kennedy

Minor Glitches in First Flight

It looks like SpaceShipOne had a few glitches in it's first 100km flight, resulting in a "Trajectory Excursion". According to Scaled Composites, the Burt Rutan company that built the SpaceShipOne, the primary pitch control gave out late in the boost phase. Luckily, Mike Melvill, Earth's latest astronaut, was able to bring a redundant system online to correct for the failure. The result was that the team fell short of their 110km mark, but still achieved the 100km necessary to be recognized as a true space flight.

Humanity Rocks.