News From Space!

Moonlighting NASA Engineers Say They’ve Created a Rocket Better Than NASA’s:

By day, the engineers work on NASA’s new Ares moon rockets. By night, some go undercover to work on a competing design….JUPITER.

 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,382261,00.html

Nearly 40 years after the USA beat the Soviets to the moon Internet giant Google said Thursday it will give $20 million to the first private group to land a roving robot on the lunar surface — a prize likely to start a 21st-century space race. 

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2007-09-13-google-moon_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Skydiver plans head-first freefall from the edge of space in dizzying bid to break Mach 1 - but he must wear a special suit to ensure his body fluids don’t boil:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=474879&in_page_id=1811

(AP) MOJAVE, Calif. An explosion on Thursday killed two workers and critically injured four others at a Mojave Desert airport site used by the pioneering aerospace company that sent the first private manned rocket into space, authorities said.

http://cbs2.com/topstories/local_story_207193129.html

To achieve liftoff at this watershed moment when they could begin to usurp NASA’s stranglehold on space, billionaires rely on the propulsive power of profit in an industry based on competition and smarts.

The launch of two satellites aboard Europe’s heavy-lift launcher, the Ariane 5, is scheduled for tonight between 6:03PM and 6:58PM EDT on 11 March 2007. Yesterday’s launch attempt was scrubbed due to a fault in the water system at the pad.

Note that Arianespace’s website is stating the US Eastern time as if Daylight Saving Time has not started yet. There are new rules for DST in the U.S. and Canada, so instead of GMT-5, we on the East Coast are at GMT-4.

Live video here. More info and live coverage here. Play-by-play here.

The Ariane 5 rocket launch scheduled for today has been scrubbed due to an issue with the “deluge system” which floods the platform with water for cooling and vibration control.

Launch is rescheduled for tomorrow at approximately the same time.

Great Britain’s Ministry of Defence will be launching a new milsat tomorrow. The Skynet-5 bird will lift off aboard an Ariane-5 rocket from the Arianespace site at French Guiana. An Indian TV satellite will also be along for the ride.

Watch the launch live between 5:25PM and 5:58PM (EST) on Saturday, 11 March 2007.