Science
Showdown over space policy
NASA / SpaceX
At left, the Ares 1-X rocket stands on its Kennedy Space Center launch pad in advance of its test flight last October. At right, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket stands ready in advance of its test flight in June. The Ares 1-X is 327 feet long from top to bottom, while the Falcon 9's length is only 177 feet.
Rocketeers ranging from SpaceX's millionaire founder to the maverick engineers behind the DIRECT heavy-lift design effort are sounding the charge over Friday's consideration of a space spending bill by the full House of Representatives. Their bottom line: Support the Senate version of the bill instead.
Blowing in the Wind: Cassini Helps with Dune Whodunit
The answer to the mystery of dune patterns on Saturn's moon Titan did turn out to be blowing in the wind.
$1.4 million for oil cleanup ideas
Mario Tama / Getty Images file
Workers use absorbent boom to clean oil from a marsh on July 15 near Cocodrie, La. Oil cleanup technologies have lagged behind oil exploration technologies, but the $1.4 million Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge could help change that.
Kevin Costner, here's your chance. Sparked by the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a well-connected environmental activist is offering $1.4 million for new methods to clean up oil spills.
The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge is being funded by, you guessed it, Wendy Schmidt. She's president of The Schmidt Family Foundation and helped get the foundation's 11th Hour Project and Climate Central going. She's also co-founder of the Schmidt Marine Science Research Institute - along with her husband, Eric Schmidt, Google's billionaire CEO.
Is NASA being set up for the failure option?
"No bucks, no Buck Rogers": That phrase, attributed to Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom, perfectly encapsulates the problem that NASA has faced for decades. Without the requisite money, there's no way America's space effort can do great things. The Augustine panel put its finger on the problem last year, but Rand Simberg writes in Popular Mechanics that the same thing is happening again. Congress is trying to low-ball the high frontier.
Tales for summer science odysseys
L.K. Townsend / Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site
A painting by L.K. Townsend shows what central Cahokia might have looked like during its heyday, 800 years ago in what is now southwest Illinois. The pre-Columbian city-state is the subject of a book by archaeologist Timothy Pauketat, titled "Cahokia."
Summer's the season for kicking back, taking time off and heading out on flights of fancy ... preferably with a good book (or e-reader) in your backpack. It's great if the book is associated with far-off times and places. And if the book sparks your brain's science-loving region, so much the better.
Martian Dust Devil Whirls Into Opportunity's View
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has photographed its first dust devil, a challenging feat in the area where in which Opportunity is working.
GRAIL Spacecraft Takes Shape
Engineers have conducted a fuel tank check of one of NASA's GRAIL mission spacecraft, scheduled for launch in 2011.
It's OK for planets to be peculiar
Here's one more reason why leaving Pluto off the planetary list just doesn't make sense. Caltech astronomer John Johnson and his colleagues say they've found two planetary systems where pairs of Jupiter-scale planets are so close together that their orbits almost certainly cross. So much for "clearing the neighborhood of their orbits." The reason why they haven't smashed together is probably because they're locked in resonant orbits (2-to-1 and 4-to-3) that keep them out of each other's way. Other exoplanets do a similar kind of orbital dance. And so do Pluto and Neptune.
Pictures: New Flying-Car Design Revealed
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