Astronaut Scott Kelly, 143 days into a planned 341-day stay aboard the International Space Station, urged lawmakers Monday to restore full funding to NASA’s commercial crew program to avoid expected launch delays and continued sole reliance on Russia for transportation to and from the International Space Station.
Mike Suffredini, manager of NASA’s International Space Station program, is stepping down after 10 years overseeing the lab’s final assembly and transition to post-shuttle operations, the agency said Wednesday. Kirk Shireman, deputy director of the Johnson Space Center, will take over as program manager.
Analysis of data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has revealed a near Earth-size world orbiting in the habitable zone of a sun-like star, scientists announced Thursday, the closest match yet in the ongoing hunt for planets similar in size to Earth where life, as humans understand it, might have a chance to evolve.
Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner is pledging $100 million to fund the most sophisticated search for extraterrestrials ever attempted, a 10-year campaign using radio and optical telescopes, ultra-sensitive detectors and state-of-the-art software to study nearby stars and galaxies for tell-tale signals of alien civilizations.
Three billion miles and nine-and-a-half years from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons probe is racing toward a historic July 14 flyby of Pluto, providing the first close-up views of the most famous denizen of the Kuiper Belt, a vast hinterland where uncounted remnants of the solar system’s birth orbit in frozen solitude.
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