[Thursday, July 1, 2010] In orbit for almost three months, the satellite is in excellent health with scientists very encouraged by the first ice-thickness data presented at the symposium.

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[Thursday, July 1, 2010] The Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine recently completed the fourth and final series of hot-fire tests on a 15,000-pound thrust class cryogenic technology demonstrator rocket engine, increasing the throttling capability by 35% over previous tests.

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[Thursday, July 1, 2010] The Commercial Spaceflight Federation welcomes President Obama's new National Space Policy, which underscores the importance of commercial spaceflight for American economic growth and leadership in space.

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[Thursday, July 1, 2010] Proba-2 is a small but innovative member of ESA's spacecraft fleet, crammed with experimental technologies. In its first eight months of life it has already returned more than 90 000 images of the Sun.

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[Thursday, July 1, 2010] Yesterday ESA's Redu centre in Belgium inaugurated its in-orbit testing facilities for Galileo. This is an important milestone for the in-orbit validation of the satellite navigation system, which is a joint project of the EU and ESA.

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[Thursday, July 1, 2010] The next trio of International Space Station residents will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. CDT on Tuesday, July 13, at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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[Thursday, July 1, 2010] The first global gravity model based on GOCE satellite data has been presented at ESA's Living Planet Symposium. ESA launched GOCE in March 2009 to map Earth's gravity with unprecedented accuracy and resolution.

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[Thursday, July 1, 2010] A planet only about eight times the mass of Jupiter has been confirmed orbiting a Sun-like star at over 300 times farther from the star than the Earth is from our Sun.

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[Thursday, July 1, 2010] On June 18, 2010, the Office of Inspector General released an Audit Report of NASA's Microgravity Flight Services as provided by Zero Gravity Corporation (ZERO-G).

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[Thursday, July 1, 2010] NASA Radar returns first high-resolution view of an unusual crater near Moon’s north pole Mini-RF, a synthetic aperture radar on board NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, recently imaged a potentially ice-rich crater near the north pole of the Moon.

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[Thursday, July 1, 2010] NASA is targeting approximately 4:33 p.m. EDT on Nov. 1 for the launch of space shuttle Discovery's STS-133 mission and 4:19 p.m. EST on Feb. 26, 2011, for the liftoff of shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 flight from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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[Friday, July 2, 2010] Docking for the ISS Progress 38 has been delayed due to a loss of telemetry. Flight controllers have reported the resupply craft flew past the ISS. Managers are working to determine the next course of action before resuming docking activities.

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[Friday, July 2, 2010] A short but important course-correction maneuver kept New Horizons on track to reach the "aim point" for its 2015 encounter with Pluto.

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[Friday, July 2, 2010] The shuttle program's final two missions have been delayed in part due to the late delivery of one of the crucial elements of STS-134, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) because of mechanical problems. (With video)

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[Sunday, July 4, 2010] At 12:17pm EDT, Progress M-06M(38P) docked successfully to the SM (Service Module) aft port under KURS autopilot control.

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[Tuesday, July 6, 2010] Two recent international studies are poised to change the way scientists view the crucial relationship between Earth's climate and the carbon cycle.

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[Tuesday, July 6, 2010] While much of the focus of ESA's Living Planet Symposium was on the recently launched Earth Explorers, the 19-year heritage of the ERS and Envisat missions served as the scientific backbone throughout the symposium.

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[Tuesday, July 6, 2010] The Rosetta orbiter, which carries the DLR lander Philae, has completed more than two thirds of its journey to the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

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[Tuesday, July 6, 2010] NASA's Curiosity rover, coming together for a late 2011 launch to Mars, has a newly installed component: a key onboard X-ray instrument for helping the mission achieve its goals.

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[Wednesday, July 7, 2010] QUESTION: Can you speak to why the NASA administrator was doing outreach to the Muslim community? There was an article over the weekend.

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[Wednesday, July 7, 2010] NASA has selected the winners in the 2010 Life and Work on the Moon Art and Design Contest from more than 200 international student entries.

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[Wednesday, July 7, 2010] The Orion crew exploration vehicle has successfully completed the Phase 1 Safety Review of NASA's Human Rating Requirements for space exploration in low Earth orbit and beyond.

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[Wednesday, July 7, 2010] For the third time since it left Earth in September 2007, the spacecraft has received an upgrade of the software that runs in its primary computer.

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[Wednesday, July 7, 2010] Amazing new data captured by ESA's Herschel Space Observatory have just been publicly released, allowing the world's astronomers to share in the Herschel SPIRE instrument's observations of distant galaxies

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[Wednesday, July 7, 2010] In a new analysis of a lunar sample collected by Apollo 17, researchers have detected and dated carbon on the moon in the form of graphite which survived from around 3.8 billion years ago, when the moon was heavily bombarded by meteorites.

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[Wednesday, July 7, 2010] The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has announced the exciting discovery of a few minute dust particles found inside the sample return canister from their Hayabusa Asteroid probe which landed on Asteroid Itokawa in 2005.

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[Wednesday, July 7, 2010] During the 2009, Dr. Ian Hawes and I made several night dives. You can see Ian exploring the microbialites, searching for grazers such as amphipods and snails that might have an impact upon the overall growth and morphology of the structures.

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[Thursday, July 8, 2010] NASA and its international partners, the Russia Federal Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), have assigned four new International Space Station crews.

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[Thursday, July 8, 2010] NASA and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company paid tribute to the workforce who built the external tanks for the space shuttle fleet on Thursday at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

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[Thursday, July 8, 2010] The Universities Space Research Association (USRA) recently took great pleasure in welcoming the first contingent of students from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to NASA's Education Associates Program (EAP).

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[Thursday, July 8, 2010] Three NASA aircraft will begin flights to study tropical cyclones on Aug. 15 during the agency's first major U.S.-based hurricane field campaign since 2001.

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[Thursday, July 8, 2010] NASA has established rigorous medical standards for the selection of new astronauts, space mission assignments, and medical and behavioral health to ensure that astronauts can adequately carry out missions in space.

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[Friday, July 9, 2010] NASA has given gamers a taste of lunar adventure with release of Moonbase Alpha, an exciting new, free online video game.

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[Friday, July 9, 2010] zero2infinity is developing bloon, a revolutionary near-space vehicle that will offer breathtaking views of our precious planet so far only available to a privileged few.

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[Friday, July 9, 2010] A team of astronomers from Germany, Bulgaria and Poland have used a completely new technique to find an exotic extrasolar planet.

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[Friday, July 9, 2010] Like a July 4 fireworks display, a young, glittering collection of stars looks like an aerial burst. The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust.

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[Friday, July 9, 2010] The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved a Launch Site Operator's License for Space Florida to facilitate commercial launches from Space Launch Complex 46 (SLC-46). The license went into affect July 1, 2010.

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[Saturday, July 10, 2010] At the end of June, ESA's six astronaut candidates were thrown out of a helicopter, left to drift at sea and abandoned under the hot Mediterranean sun - but luckily they were well-trained and under supervision.

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[Saturday, July 10, 2010] On 10 July 2010 at 17:45 CEST, the orbiter flew past asteroid Lutetia on its second and final pass of the asteroid belt at about 15 kilometres per second – 54,000 kilometres per hour – merely 3162 kilometres from the asteroid.

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[Monday, July 12, 2010] As a strong supporter of a robust NASA human spaceflight program, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation is releasing the following statement to address topics related to human spaceflight, including commercial human spaceflight.

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[Monday, July 12, 2010] As former board members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), we agree with your view that assuring crew safety is an essential element in the discussion of future U.S. crew transportation systems.

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[Monday, July 12, 2010] Charles Bolden, made a couple weeks back that drew some interest. Why is the NASA Administrator doing that?

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[Monday, July 12, 2010] The first results of the asteroseismic analysis are orders of magnitude better than seen before, and this bodes well for how the future analysis of Kepler data for many types of stars will impact our general understanding of stellar structure and evolutio

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[Monday, July 12, 2010] When a star explodes as a supernova, it shines so brightly that it can be seen from millions of light-years away. One particular supernova variety - Type Ia - brightens and dims so predictably that astronomers use them to measure the universe's expansion.

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[Monday, July 12, 2010] India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C15), today (on July 12, 2010) successfully launched CARTOSAT - 2B from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. The launch of PSLV - C15 was the sixteenth consecutive successful flight of PSLV.

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[Monday, July 12, 2010] NASA-funded researchers monitoring Greenland's Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier report that a 7 square kilometer (2.7 square mile) section of the glacier broke up on July 6 and 7.

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[Tuesday, July 13, 2010] NASA announced three new Centennial Challenges Tuesday, with an overall prize purse of $5 million. NASA's Centennial Challenges are prize competitions for technological achievements by independent teams who work without government funding.

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[Tuesday, July 13, 2010] NASA Inspector General Paul K. Martin today released the results of a review examining NASA's May 2010 removal of Jeffrey Hanley from his position as Manager of the Constellation Program.

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[Tuesday, July 13, 2010] NASA and Microsoft Research are bringing Mars to life with new features in the WorldWide Telescope software that provides viewers with a high-resolution 3-D map of the Red Planet.

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[Tuesday, July 13, 2010] Astronomers gathered among the stone-carved heads of Easter Island on Sunday to witness a total eclipse of the Sun. Meanwhile, 720 km away in space, ESA's Proba-2 was focused on the same target.

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[Tuesday, July 13, 2010] Physicists have long known that neutrinos are among the lightest and most evasive fundamental particles. Now a survey of the galaxies is helping to narrow down the neutrino mass even further.

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[Tuesday, July 13, 2010] NASA has selected nine experiments, designed by students at seven schools, for astronauts to perform on the International Space Station this summer. NASA selected the proposals from among 132 received for the new Kids in Micro-g! Program.

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[Tuesday, July 13, 2010] NASA should develop a broad, integrated strategy to contain costs and maintain schedules as earth and space science missions are planned and designed, says a new report by the National Research Council.

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[Wednesday, July 14, 2010] Let us be clear: we believe that that the private sector, working in partnership with NASA, can safely develop and operate crewed space vehicles to low Earth orbit. We have reached this conclusion for a number of reasons.

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[Wednesday, July 14, 2010] A blast of the brightest X-rays ever detected from beyond our Milky Way galaxy's neighborhood temporarily blinded the X-ray eye on NASA's Swift space observatory earlier this summer, astronomers now report.

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[Wednesday, July 14, 2010] "Our observations show a disc surrounding an embryonic young, massive star, which is now fully formed," says Stefan Kraus, who led the study. "One can say that the baby is about to hatch!"

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[Wednesday, July 14, 2010] Serving as a contracting agent for the Department of Defense's Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office, NASA has selected Millennium Engineering and Integration Co., of Arlington, Va., to receive a contract for Rapid Response Space Works (RRSW).

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[Thursday, July 15, 2010] Astronomers using Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the existence of a baked object that could be called a "cometary planet." The planet, named HD 209458b, is orbiting so close to its star that its heated atmosphere is escaping into space.

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[Thursday, July 15, 2010] Following today's executive session of the Senate Commerce Committee, the President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, Bretton Alexander, stated, "Thanks to Senators Warner, Boxer, Udall, and Brownback, American industry won a victory today.

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[Thursday, July 15, 2010] The first spacecraft designed by NASA to orbit Mercury is giving scientists a new perspective on the planet's atmosphere and evolution.

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[Friday, July 16, 2010] Building on the success of their first static-fire, Alliant Techsystems (ATK) and NASA are preparing for the second Ares I first stage five-segment Development Motor (DM-2) test.

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[Saturday, July 17, 2010] NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, will complete its first survey of the entire sky on July 17, 2010. The mission has generated more than one million images so far, of everything from asteroids to distant galaxies.

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[Saturday, July 17, 2010] This week, Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a special feature devoted to the first science results obtained with Herschel.

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[Saturday, July 17, 2010] ESA's pioneering Cluster mission is celebrating its 10th anniversary. During the past decade, Cluster's four satellites have provided extraordinary insights into the largely invisible interaction between the Sun and Earth.

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[Saturday, July 17, 2010] Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have discovered the first known case of a distant galaxy being magnified by a quasar acting as a gravitational lens.

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[Sunday, July 18, 2010] Last week, the Senate Commerce, Science and Space Committee marked up a draft of a proposed FY2011 Authorization bill for NASA.

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[Monday, July 19, 2010] The core technology developed for NASA's Nebula cloud computing platform has been selected as a contributor for OpenStack, a newly-launched open source cloud computing initiative.

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[Monday, July 19, 2010] Yvonne Pendleton has been named director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) headquartered at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

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[Monday, July 19, 2010] The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to announce that Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne has joined the Federation as an Associate Member.

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[Monday, July 19, 2010] NASA is and should remain a multimission agency with a balanced and robust set of core missions in science, aeronautics, and human space flight and explorati

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[Tuesday, July 20, 2010] A better understanding of how Earth's ice fields are changing has come another step closer as the first data from ESA's ice mission are released to selected scientists around the world for fine-tuning.

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[Tuesday, July 20, 2010] While orbiting Saturn for the last six years, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has kept a close eye on the collisions and disturbances in the gas giant's rings.

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[Tuesday, July 20, 2010] Nearly a half century ago, President Kennedy explained, "The exploration of space ... is one of the great adventures of all time.

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[Wednesday, July 21, 2010] For 50 years, humans have scanned the skies with radio telescopes for distant electronic signals indicating the existence of intelligent alien life.

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[Wednesday, July 21, 2010] Scientists have produced a first-of-its kind map of the height of the world's forests by combining data from three NASA satellites

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[Wednesday, July 21, 2010] Using a combination of instruments on ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date.

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[Wednesday, July 21, 2010] Florida and Texas are trying to make an end run around NASA's competitive process to decide where to give the retired space shuttles by getting Congress to weigh the decision in their favor.

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[Wednesday, July 21, 2010] Don Edward Wilhelms received the Shoemaker Distinguished Lunar Scientist Award last night during a ceremony of the Lunar Science Forum at NASA's Ames Research Center.

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[Wednesday, July 21, 2010] NASA has announced three new Centennial Challenges with an overall prize purse of $5 million. NASA's Centennial Challenges are prize competitions for technological achievements by independent teams who work without government funding.

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[Wednesday, July 21, 2010] Scientists have found evidence that a giant black hole has been jerked around twice, causing its spin axis to point in a different direction from before.

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[Wednesday, July 21, 2010] That dry, dusty Moon overhead? Seems it isn't quite as dry as it's long been thought to be.

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[Thursday, July 22, 2010] We write today to express our strong support for key portions of the President's 2011 proposal for NASA's budget.

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[Thursday, July 22, 2010] oday, Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24), during a meeting of the House Science & Technology Committee, successfully amended the House NASA Reauthorization Bill to add an additional Shuttle mission to the current manifest.

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[Thursday, July 22, 2010] We know 'icy' Neptune is partially comprised of water molecules but until now we have had little means to test how water behaves in the extreme conditions that Neptune presents.

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[Thursday, July 22, 2010] The hunt is on for Earth-like planets outside of our solar system. Since the 1990s, astronomers have detected more than 450 extrasolar planets -- mostly large Jupiter-sized bodies -- around nearby stars

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[Thursday, July 22, 2010] A hundred million years ago, a triple-star system was traveling through the bustling center of our Milky Way galaxy when it made a life-changing misstep.

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[Thursday, July 22, 2010] The last of five instruments slated to fly on the upcoming NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) climate and weather satellite have been successfully integrated, according to NASA officials. The polar-orbiting satellite is scheduled to launch in late 2011.

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[Friday, July 23, 2010] A camera aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has helped develop the most accurate global Martian map ever. Researchers and the public can access the map via several websites and explore and survey the entire surface of the Red Planet.

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[Sunday, July 25, 2010] The last couple of weeks have been very busy for me, so pardon my lack of blog posts. I have been on travel for several days and you should have a report on three trips.

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[Sunday, July 25, 2010] The number of languages used on the International Space Station has recently increased.

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[Sunday, July 25, 2010] Looks like Fox News, The Australian, and the Daily Mail have jumped the gun again. To read their headlines and their short stories, you'd think that a bunch of Earthlike planets have been confirmed circling other stars with "both land and water".

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[Monday, July 26, 2010] NASA's actions to date with regard to the Constellation program have not violated either the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 or the provision in the fiscal year 2010 Exploration appropriation.

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[Monday, July 26, 2010] As of this writing no dissent has been heard from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, so the cuts might stick. It might be useful to review what the Obama Administration originally asked for - and why.

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[Tuesday, July 27, 2010] The Conrad Foundation today announced ManSat Limited has joined with the Conrad Foundation to expand the 2010-2011 Spirit of Innovation Awards program on the international stage.

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[Tuesday, July 27, 2010] The UK Space Agency has announced a one year pilot programme to design and launch a CubeSat - a miniature, cube-shaped satellite that will allow the UK to test new space technologies and carry out new space research 'cheaply' and quickly.

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[Tuesday, July 27, 2010] Recently, six James Webb Space Telescope beryllium mirror segments completed a series of cryogenic tests at the X-ray & Cryogenic Facility at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

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[Tuesday, July 27, 2010] CSF is pleased to announce that Andrews Space, Inc., DCI Services and Consulting, MEI Technologies, Special Aerospace Services, and SRA International have joined the Federation as Associate Members

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[Tuesday, July 27, 2010] NASA is inviting the public to choose an area in northern Arizona where explorers will conduct part of the annual Desert Research and Technology Studies, known as Desert RATS.

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[Tuesday, July 27, 2010] In early 2007 New Horizons flew through the Jupiter system snapping stunning, close-up images of Jupiter and its largest moons. Fast forward to 2010 and New Horizons has given us another glimpse of old friend Jupiter.

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[Wednesday, July 28, 2010] Two weeks ago I gave a talk at TED Global 2010 which was very well received, but caused confusion. I referred to past results from the NASA Kepler mission.

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[Wednesday, July 28, 2010] NASA will conduct its annual Desert RATS activity in northern Arizona later this summer. Challenger Center will be participating once again as it did last year.

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[Wednesday, July 28, 2010] A spectacular new image from ESO's Wide Field Imager at the La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the brilliant and unusual star WR 22 and its colorful surroundings.

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[Wednesday, July 28, 2010] Talk about a growth-spurt. In one week, Curiosity grew by approximately 1 meter (3.5 feet) when spacecraft technicians and engineers attached the rover's neck and head (called the Remote Sensing Mast) to its body.

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[Thursday, July 29, 2010] Astronomers have imaged a very young brown dwarf, or failed star, in a tight orbit around a young nearby sun-like star.

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[Thursday, July 29, 2010] Engineers have conducted a fuel tank check of one of NASA's GRAIL mission spacecraft (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory), scheduled for launch in 2011.

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[Thursday, July 29, 2010] In its six-and-a-half years on Mars, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity had never seen a dust devil before this month, despite some systematic searches in past years and the fact that its twin rover, Spirit, has seen dozens of dust devils.

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[Thursday, July 29, 2010] Due to Odyssey's safing event none of the planned Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) downlink passes for this period occurred.

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[Thursday, July 29, 2010] If you care about the future of American space exploration, your urgent help is necessary. The only hope for the average citizen to one day travel to space is in danger due to the actions of certain members of Congress.

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