Dateline May 12, 2006: Space News from the Internet

NASA News

• NASA Director, Mike Griffin, disagrees with the National Academy of Sciences on the value of astrobiology.
• ISS status
• Sunita Williams will join Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian Mikhail Tyurin for a six-month mission starting in September.
• Director Griffin's speech at the ISRO-NASA MOU signing yesterday.
• NASA's Ames Research Center is testing the heat shields for the CEV.
• Florida Today has unveiled a spaceport website with a virtual VAB and center news.
• Discovery is going to try to move to the VAB again today at 10am EDT. The move was planned for yesterday, but an equipment glitch caused the delay.
• Tiffany Jenkins says in the British Herald, we must send mankind back to the moon.
• Charlie Duke talks about riding on the Saturn V.

New Space

• New Scientist has an article on the COTS Cuts reported here Tuesday.
• Bart Leahy discusses the debate between private investment and public funding. As Mark Whittington says, we need both. I don't think the question is "which on?", but "which one when and how?"
• Wisconsin continues with the Sheboygan spaceport.

International Space

• The May edition of France in Space is available at SpaceRef.com.
• ESA technology is helping Europe fight the bird-flu.
• ESA awarded the Gaia contract to EADS Astrium. Gaia's mission is to make the most precise map of our galaxy to date.
• Venus Express slipped into it's final orbit Sunday.
• Lockheed is building Vietnam's first satellite.

Politics

• House Democrats want more money for NASA's science programs.

Science

• Apparently if light travels backwards, it can break it's own speed limit. What does backward mean? Wish I had that physics degree I am always talking about...
• Genetic algorithms telling us how to design a nuclear spacecraft. I have written genetic algorithms and that is a scary thought.

CEV Head Shield Material Testing at the ARC