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Blobrana


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RE: NASA Plans
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NASA is planning a major new mission to the outer solar system, along with three new robotic missions to the Moon, and two new Earth science missions, according to its 2009 budget request.
President George W Bush requested a total of $17.614 billion dollars for the agency in fiscal year 2009, up 2.9% over NASA's actual budget for 2008.

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Blobrana


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Nasa has released details of its strategy for sending a human crew to Mars within the next few decades.
The US space agency envisages despatching a "minimal" crew on a 30-month round trip to the Red Planet in a 400,000kg spacecraft.
Details of the concept were outlined at a meeting in Houston, Texas.

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Blobrana


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Don't Wreck the Mars Program
Devoting all the funding to just one mission would be a mistake.
In the mid-1990s the U.S. embarked on a new strategy for exploring the Red Planet. In response to the 1993 failure of the Mars Observer missiona billion-dollar, decade-in-the-making probe that mysteriously lost contact with ground controllers just before it was scheduled to go into orbit around the planetNASA administrator Daniel Goldin decided to shift to smaller, less expensive spacecraft and create a sustained exploration campaign by sending one or two probes to Mars at every launch opportunity. (These opportunities come every two years or so, when Earth and Mars are properly aligned.) The new strategy spread out the inherent risk of interplanetary travel and ensured that the engineering experience and scientific data acquired by one mission could be rapidly used by the next. The approach has proved a brilliant success, putting three NASA spacecraft into orbit around Mars and three rovers on the planets surface (Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity). The Phoenix Mars Lander, which left Earth in August, is expected to reach the Red Planet next May, and NASA plans to launch the Mars Science Lab in 2009.

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Blobrana


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The Soviets beat the United States at getting a satellite, and a man, into space. Now, the Chinese may get to the moon before the U.S. can make a return visit.
Fifty years after Sputnik became the world's first artificial satellite, a new race is under way with the finish line on the moon. NASA, the former lunar champion, already is predicting defeat.

"I personally believe that China will be back on the moon before we are" - NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in a low-key lecture in Washington two weeks ago, marking the space agency's 50th anniversary, still a year away.

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Blobrana


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If astronauts ever spend some time on the moon, they could be sheltered in surface structures being tested at NASA's Langley Research Centre.
The idea isn't too far from camping.
An early model of the inflatable planetary surface habitat is 20 feet high, 12 feet wide and covered in nylon webbing. It sits on legs. Later models could be used someday as living quarters, storage units and air locks for astronauts stationed on the moon.

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Blobrana


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NASA Global Exploration Strategy
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NASA on Monday unveiled the initial elements of the Global Exploration Strategy and a proposed U.S. lunar architecture, two critical tools for achieving the nation's vision of returning humans to the moon.
NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, who is guiding the long-term strategy development effort among 14 of the world's space agencies, said, "This strategy will enable interested nations to leverage their capabilities and financial and technical contributions, making optimum use of globally available knowledge and resources to help energize a coordinated effort that will propel us into this new age of discovery and exploration."

The Global Exploration Strategy focuses on two overarching issues: Why we are returning to the moon and what we plan to do when we get there. The strategy includes a comprehensive set of the reasons for embarking upon human and robotic exploration of the moon. NASA's proposed lunar architecture focuses on a third issue: How humans might accomplish the mission of exploring the moon.

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Blobrana


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RE: NASA Plans
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The US and European space agencies are to co-operate on two missions considered vital for efforts to create a new understanding of the Universe.
Agency chiefs signed official agreements outlining the partnership in a ceremony at the Paris Air Show.
They will collaborate on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), due to launch in 2013, and the Lisa Pathfinder.

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Blobrana


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NASA will likely shut down its Institute for Advanced Concepts, which funds research into futuristic – and often far-out – ideas in spaceflight and aeronautics, officials say. The controversial move highlights the budgetary pressures the agency is facing as it struggles to retire the space shuttles by 2010 and develop their replacement.

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Blobrana


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NASA is facing a four-year-long "launch desert" of no new astronomy missions because of skewed priorities, a new report by an expert panel says. The report echoes previous calls for the agency to put more money into small, rapidly deployable missions – even if it means taking money from bigger missions.
The review of NASA's progress in astrophysics, released on Wednesday, was prepared by the US National Research Council (NRC) in response to a 2005 directive from Congress.
It warns of a four-year gap between 2009, when the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission lifts off to study nearby stars and embryonic planetary systems, and 2013, when Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is due to launch.

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Blobrana


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Polar moon camp
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NASA announced Monday it will establish an international base camp on one of the moon's poles, permanently staffing it by 2024, four years after astronauts return to the moon.

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