"Today science is ripe for using the moon. I think that by 2020 a man will land on the moon," Popovkin said.

He also said Russia's previously announced cosmonaut recruitment drive will focus on preparing crews for a moon mission. The competition will be open for every Russian citizen with technical or medical education.

"I can say that this group will most likely be trained for a lunar mission," he said.

On January 19, Popovkin voiced plans to set up manned moon research bases with European and U.S. partners, saying that there were plans to either set up a moon base or to launch an orbital station. To that end, Russia is currently developing a "prospective manned transportation system" to be sent to the moon, he added.

Russia is also planning to send two unmanned moon missions by 2020, Luna-Glob (Lunar Sphere) and Luna-Resurs in 2015. The launch timeframe, however, may be reviewed because the two spacecraft are being built with the same technologies as Russia's failed mission to Phobos and are therefore vulnerable to cosmic radiation.

The moon base project has similarities Cold War-era plans to create a permanent outpost on the moon, which has been envisioned by some Soviet and U.S. scientists since the late 1950s.

A week after Popovkin's announcement of a moon base construction project, U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich promised to build a moon base by 2020 if he becomes the next U.S. president in November.

"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," he said, adding the base would have capacity that "the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching."

]]> Wed, 08 FEB 2012 08:50:39 AEST Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 02, 2012 - A camera aboard one of NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the moon. MoonKAM, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, will be used by students nationwide to select lunar images for study.

GRAIL consists of two identical spacecraft, recently named Ebb and Flow, each of which is equipped with a MoonKAM. The images were taken as part of a test of Ebb's MoonKAM on Jan. 19. The GRAIL project plans to test the MoonKAM aboard Flow at a later date.

In the video, the north pole of the moon is visible at the top of the screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of the moon is the Mare Orientale, a 560-mile-wide (900 kilometer) impact basin that straddles both the moon's near and far side.

The clip ends with rugged terrain just short of the lunar south pole. To the left of center, near the bottom of the screen, is the 93-mile-wide (149 kilometer) Drygalski crater with a distinctive star- shaped formation in the middle. The formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.

"The quality of the video is excellent and should energize our MoonKAM students as they prepare to explore the moon," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The twin spacecraft successfully achieved lunar orbit this past New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Previously named GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, the washing machine-sized spacecraft received their new names from fourth graders at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., following a nationwide student naming contest.

Thousands of fourth- to eighth-grade students will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego.

Photos of the target areas will be sent back by the satellites for students to study. The MoonKAM program is led by Sally Ride, America's first woman in space.

Her team at Sally Ride Science and undergraduate students at the University of California in San Diego will engage middle schools across the country in the GRAIL mission and lunar exploration. GRAIL is NASA's first planetary mission carrying instruments fully dedicated to education and public outreach.

"We have had great response from schools around the country; more than 2,500 signed up to participate so far," Ride said. "In mid-March, the first pictures of the moon will be taken by students using MoonKAM. I expect this will excite many students about possible careers in science and engineering."

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow periodically perform trajectory correction maneuvers that, over time, will lower their orbits to near-circular ones with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers).

During their science mission, the duo will answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

]]> Wed, 08 FEB 2012 08:50:39 AEST Bethesda MD (SPX) Jan 31, 2012 - Last Week, while addressing a Florida Space Coast audience, GOP candidate Newt Gingrich pledged to create a moon colony if elected president. This may at first seem far-fetched and an act of pandering to a pro-space crowd.

However you would like to slice and dice the concept, at least one candidate is talking positively about a specific future space program. The crowd was cheering, and so were all of us at Launchspace.

Although Newt's timetable of a lunar colony by 2020 is optimistic, the important thing is that he is addressing the lack of a vision for the U.S. space program.

The other GOP candidates have not been positive about where we go with the space program. They have all reacted negatively to the big lunar colony idea, but have not articulated any specifics about their ideas.

We at Launchspace are apolitical, but highly pro-space.

So, when a leading politician proposes a new space initiative, we listen. Realistically, a permanent lunar colony by 2020 is probably not going to happen. However, Gingrich did articulate a new way for NASA to do business that has some merit.

In order to pay for his big space programs, he would set aside 10 percent of NASA's budget for prizes to be awarded for innovations that might lead to exploration of the Moon and Mars while keeping NASA's spending in line with balancing the national budget.

We already know from the X-Prize and other similar incentive programs that this works.

More important than going to the moon is the fact that such technological challenges motivate and attract young people to science, engineering and mathematics, and lures them away from careers that are unproductive and weaken our country.

]]> Wed, 08 FEB 2012 08:50:39 AEST Washington DC (RIA Novosti) Jan 30, 2012 - US Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has promised to build a moon base by 2020 if he becomes the next U.S. President in November, the Former Speaker of the House of Representatives said in an address to a crowd of over 700 people on Florida's "Space Coast" on Wednesday.

"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," Gingrich promised to an applauding crowd, as well as saying that he would push to develop "the first continuous propulsion system in space" that would enable humans to travel to Mars, Politico.com reported.

The topic of Gingrich's latest campaign struck a particular chord with the residents of Florida's "Space Coast" who are still struggling economically after recent US federal cuts to the space program.

"We will have commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism and manufacturing, and are designed to create a robust industry precisely on the model of the development of the airlines of the 1930s", CBC News quotes Gingrich, "the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching."

Gingrich's rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, mocked the idea of a lunar settlement, but Gingrich simply commented that "here's the difference between romantics and so-called practical people". He referred to John. F. Kennedy, who first spoke of a national mission of landing a man on the Moon in a Joint Session of Congress on May 25, 1961.

"John F. Kennedy was grandiose," Gingrich spoke on Wednesday, "I accept the charge that I am grandiose and that Americans are instinctively grandiose"

Both Gingrich and Romney are campaigning to secure Florida's primary vote next Tuesday.

Source: RIA Novosti

]]> Wed, 08 FEB 2012 08:50:39 AEST Jacksonville, Florida (AFP) Jan 26, 2012 - Republican White House hopefuls set their sights high Thursday with some vowing they would shoot for the moon and restore American supremacy in space if elected.

"I do not want to be the country that having gotten to the moon first, turned around, said, it doesn't really matter, let the Chinese dominate space, what do we care?" former House speaker Newt Gingrich said.

"I think that is a path of national decline and I am for America being a great country, not a country in decline," he added to cheers at the final Republican debate before Florida's key presidential primary next week.

But his main rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, shot down his proposals for a moon colony, accusing Gingrich of pandering to voters in Florida, where many jobs have been lost as the US space program has declined.

"That's an enormous expense and right now I want to be spending money here," Romney said. "I'm not looking for a colony on the moon. I think the cost of that would be in the hundreds of billions if not trillions. I would rather rebuild housing here in the US.

"I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me, said they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say 'you're fired.'"

The issue is high on the agenda here after President Barack Obama, seeking re-election in the November elections, shuttered NASA's space shuttle program and is relying now on private firms to develop rockets to fly American astronauts back into space.

Gingrich argued that setting up a system of prizes and offering incentives would help private enterprise focus on developing spacecraft to propel Americans back into space.

"There are many things you can do to leverage accelerating the development of space. Lindbergh flew to Paris for a $25,000 prize," he argued, referring to Charles Lindbergh who was the first to complete a non-stop solo flight from the US to Paris in 1927.

But libertarian congressman Ron Paul hit back that he had no desire to send people back to the moon, even though as a young man he had dreamed of becoming the first doctor on the Earth's only satellite.

"I don't think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up there sometimes," he quipped.

The fourth contender, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, agreed with Gingrich, saying: "I believe America's a frontier nation. And obviously the frontier that we're talking about is the next one, which is space."

]]> Wed, 08 FEB 2012 08:50:39 AEST Washington (AFP) Jan 26, 2012 - Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has stirred strong passions by claiming he will establish a permanent moon base by 2020 if elected, but experts say he is living on another planet.

The basic idea is not actually as far-fetched as it sounds. NASA in 2006 announced plans to set up a colony on the south pole of the moon, in around 2020, as a base for further manned exploration of the solar system.

"I do not want to be the country that having gotten to the moon first, turned around, said it doesn't really matter, let the Chinese dominate space, what do we care?" Gingrich said Thursday as he defended his plans in a key Republican debate.

The problem for Gingrich, a space junkie with ideas dating back decades for zero-gravity honeymoons and lunar greenhouses, is that the 2008 financial crisis came along and turned feasible projects into pipe dreams.

"A lunar base by 2020 is a total fantasy," John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told AFP bluntly.

"We got to the moon in the 1960s by spending over four percent of the federal budget on Apollo. NASA's now at one-tenth of that level."

During boom-time, president George W. Bush called for a return to the moon, followed by Mars expeditions, and NASA drew up plans called Constellation to meet the lofty goals and replace the shuttle fleet when it retired.

President Barack Obama scrapped Constellation in 2010, saying the proposals were "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation," and the once-proud shuttle fleet lies mothballed.

American astronauts now have to rely on Russian spacecraft to get to the International Space Station and on Florida's "Space Coast," home to NASA's Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral, there is a mood of despondency.

Against this depressed backdrop, Gingrich has left himself open to the charge that his grandiose vision for human spaceflight is an attempt to pander to vulnerable voters.

"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American," he said Wednesday at a Florida rally.

Never one to shy away from bold statements, Gingrich compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and the Wright Brothers, boasting: "I accept the charge that I am an American and Americans are instinctively grandiose."

At a time of austerity when many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, even space enthusiasts poured scorn on his quest.

His main rival in the race for the Republican party nomination, Mitt Romney, shot back Thursday: "I'm not looking for a colony on the moon. I think the cost of that would be in the hundreds of billions if not trillions. I would rather rebuild housing here in the US."

Gingrich has suggested setting aside 10 percent of NASA's budget for prize incentives aimed at boosting the commercial space sector.

NASA's initial plans envisaged a solar-powered base on the moon's south pole that could serve as a forward base for manned missions to Mars, sending man back to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

After the permanent facilities were established, the program aimed to set up six-month moon visits, during which trips to the Red Planet could be planned.

NASA has since scaled back drastically and its goal now is to develop commercial initiatives in the hope that a substitute spacecraft will be ready to fly people to the space station by 2015.

Gingrich's opponents have accused him of pandering, but his is a mixed message for Florida's "Space Coast" dwellers as it also calls for a leaner NASA with private companies doing most of the exploring.

The former House speaker's belief that his dreams can be achieved while reducing NASA's budget is "detached from reality," Logsdon said, describing Gingrich's language as "almost irresponsible."

"He has a whole history of unrealistic ideas with respect to the space program that don't correspond either to technical feasibility or political feasibility," Logsdon, a member of NASA's Advisory Council, told AFP.

A commercial space program would need to spring up almost overnight on the back of a fledgling space tourism industry that is already encountering extreme technical challenges.

"Money, technical reality and lack of public support," Logsdon said, explaining the barriers.

"Commercial people invest money to make a profit. Where is the profit in this? You're not going to raise multiple billions of dollars to do this without a very clear return on that investment."

]]> Wed, 08 FEB 2012 08:50:39 AEST Moscow (RIA Novosti) Jan 20, 2012 - Russian Space Agency Roscosmos is in talks with its European and U.S. partners on the creation of manned research bases on the Moon, the agencies chief, Vladimir Popovkin, said on Thursday.

"We don't want the man to just step on the Moon," Popovkin said in an interview with Vesti FM radio station.

"Today, we know enough about it, we know that there is water in its polar areas," he said, adding "we are now discussing how to begin [the Moon's] exploration with NASA and the European Space Agency ."

There are two options, he said: "either to set up a base on the Moon or to launch a station to orbit around it."

The project of a "prospective manned transportation system" to be sent to the Moon is currently being developed, the Roscosmos chief said.

The Moon base project seems to revive Cold War-era plans to create a permanent outpost on the Moon, which was talked about by some Soviet and U.S. scientists since the late 1950s.

Russia is also planning to send two unmanned missions to the Moon by 2020, the Luna Glob and the Luna Resource, Popovkin added.

Source: RIA Novosti

]]> Wed, 08 FEB 2012 08:50:39 AEST Moscow (UPI) Jan 19, 2012 - Russia's space agency Roscosmos says it is in talks with European and U.S. partners about creating permanent manned research bases on the moon.

"We don't want the man to just step on the moon," Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin said in a radio interview Thursday.

"Today, we know enough about it, we know that there is water in its polar areas," he said, and "we are now discussing how to begin [the moon's] exploration with NASA and the European Space Agency."

Talk of a base harkens back to Cold War-era plans to create a permanent outpost on the moon, a subject of interest to Soviet and U.S. scientists since the late 1950s, RIA Novosti reported.

Popovkin mentioned two options, to "either to set up a base on the moon or to launch a station to orbit around it."

Russia is proceeding with plans to send two unmanned missions to the moon by 2020, the Luna Glob and the Luna Resource, Popovkin said.

]]> Wed, 08 FEB 2012 08:50:39 AEST Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 18, 2012 - Twin NASA spacecraft that achieved orbit around the moon New Year's Eve and New Year's Day have new names, thanks to elementary students in Bozeman, Mont. Their winning entry, "Ebb and Flow," was selected as part of a nationwide school contest that began in October 2011.

The names were submitted by fourth graders from the Emily Dickinson Elementary School. Nearly 900 classrooms with more than 11,000 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia participated in the contest.

Previously named Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL-A and -B, the washing machine-sized spacecraft begin science operations in March, after a launch in September 2011.

"The 28 students of Nina DiMauro's class at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School have really hit the nail on the head," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

"We were really impressed that the students drew their inspiration by researching GRAIL and its goal of measuring gravity. Ebb and Flow truly capture the spirit and excitement of our mission."

Zuber and Sally Ride, America's first woman in space and CEO of Sally Ride Science in San Diego, selected the names following the contest, which attracted 890 proposals via the Internet.

The contest invited ideas from students ages 5 to 18 enrolled in U.S. schools. Although everything from spelling and grammar to creativity was considered, Zuber and Ride primarily took into account the quality of submitted essays.

"With submissions from all over the United States and even some from abroad, there were a lot of great entries to review," Ride said. "This contest generated a great deal of excitement in classrooms across America, and along with it an opportunity to use that excitement to teach science."

GRAIL is NASA's first planetary mission carrying instruments fully dedicated to education and public outreach. Each spacecraft carries a small camera called GRAIL MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students).

Thousands of students in grades five through eight will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests for study to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego.

The winning prize for the Dickinson students is to choose the first camera images. Dickinson is one of nearly 2,000 schools registered for the MoonKAM program, which is led by Ride and her team at Sally Ride Science in collaboration with undergraduate students at the University of California in San Diego.

"These spacecraft represent not only great science, but great inspiration for our future," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington.

"As they study our lunar neighbor, Ebb and Flow will undergo nearly the same motion as the tides we feel here on Earth."

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow will be placed in a near-polar, near-circular orbit with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers). During their science mission, the duo will answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

]]> Wed, 08 FEB 2012 08:50:39 AEST Washington (AFP) Jan 17, 2012 - A pair of unmanned NASA spacecraft that are orbiting the Moon were renamed Ebb and Flow on Tuesday by a middle school class in Montana, the US space agency announced.

The original names for the twin probes Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) -- A and B -- were not very inspired, admitted principal investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"We were so busy in the design and getting these two spacecraft launched on time that when we gave them names, we gave them names of A and B, and that isn't too creative. So we asked the youth of America to assist us," she said.

More than 11,000 students took part in the contest to rename the twin craft which aim to map the Moon's surface, determine its gravity field and reveal the contents of its inner core.

The winners were a fourth grade classroom of nine- and 10-year-olds at Emily Dickinson School in Bozeman, Montana.

"They noted the fact that GRAIL is going to be studying gravity on the Moon, and that the effect of gravity on the Earth is seen every day in terms of tides," said Zuber.

"So they chose Ebb and Flow because it was the daily example of how the Moon's gravity is working on the Earth," she added, describing the idea as "very simple" but also "sophisticated."

Other such contests have been held in the past to name NASA spacecraft, such as the Mars rover Curiosity, coined in 2009 by a 12-year-old essay winner in Kansas named Clara Ma.

The two GRAIL spacecraft, a $500-million pair of washing machine-sized satellites, launched in September and reached lunar orbit at the turn of the New Year. Their work mapping the Moon is set to begin in March.

]]> Wed, 08 FEB 2012 08:50:39 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D