The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Manufacturing subpanel will continue its series of hearings on consumer privacy on Thursday morning. Chairman Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) recently met with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley leaders and has yet to tip her hand as to whether she thinks new laws are necessary to protect consumers’ privacy online. (more)
When the towers of the World Trade Center fell on September 11, 2001, one American was not on the planet. (more)
Russia’s space agency announced Wednesday that the International Space Station — a space base the world’s scientists and billions of U.S. tax dollars helped build and maintain some 200 miles above the surface of the Earth — will be de-orbited and allowed to sink into the Pacific Ocean in 2020, just like its Russian predecessor, Mir. (more)
Nasa is considering using lasers to deflect space junk around Earth and stop it colliding with satellites. (more)
Space spending has long been the multibillion-dollar government project that is rarely discussed and even more infrequently brought up as a primary focus by fiscal conservatives. (more)
Before the year is out, SpaceX will likely have conducted the first orbital demonstration of the Dragon capsule, which is intended to transport cargo, and ultimately humans, to the International Space Station (ISS). Next year, Orbital Sciences is expected to launch its cargo vessel, Cygnus. By 2014, two more spacecraft, the Dream Chaser and CST-100 are on track to have maiden voyages, launched by the Sierra Nevada Corporation and Boeing, respectively. And even more spacecraft are being developed by companies such as Blue Origin and PlanetSpace, as well as suborbital vehicles being built by Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and others. (more)
Call it “American Idol” in space: NASA has launched a new contest that allows the public to pick – or even create – wake-up songs for astronauts flying on the agency’s two final space shuttle missions. (more)
Astronauts who spend months in space become as physically weak as 80-year-olds, a study has found. (more)
Spokesmen from NASA and the White House both issued statements in response to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recent comments that President Obama had told him that it was his “foremost” mission to make the Muslim world “feel good about their historic contribution to science…and math and engineering.” (more)
The federal employees at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing know darn well why they go to work in the morning. (more)
A cargo vessel which failed to dock with the International Space Station is under control, a Russian space agency official has said. (more)
In February, the Obama administration announced its fiscal year budget, which proposed to eliminate the NASA human space flight program, called Constellation, and instead rely on the commercial space industry and other countries to ferry future astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). (more)
AFP – There is no room for romance on board the cozy confines of the International Space Station, a NASA space shuttle commander said Monday when asked what would happen if astronauts had sex in space. (more)
Sometimes you’re just at the right place at the right time. Astronauts aboard the ISS experienced just such a moment when they captured this captivating image of a rare aurora australis over the Southern Indian Ocean likely caused by a coronal mass ejection from the sun late last month. (more)
When Discovery’s six astronauts take the final space shuttle ride to orbit in September, there’ll be one more rider sitting in the back of the bus: Robonaut 2, the semi-humanoid robot created by NASA and GM. (more)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – President Barack Obama travels to Florida on Thursday to sell his vision of a reoriented U.S. space exploration program that could spell job losses in this state as well as Texas and Alabama. (more)
When America’s space shuttle program ends in September, the U.S. will be completely dependent on Russian rockets for launching men and women into space — and bringing them back. But what will happen to America’s astronauts if relations between the U.S. and Russia sour? (more)
Astronauts moved a cargo module the size of a mini bus the short distance from space shuttle Discovery’s payload bay to the International Space Station’s (ISS) Harmony node Thursday morning, setting the stage for a carefully choreographed ballet to begin transferring tons of supplies and equipment to and from and the orbiting laboratory (more)
The space shuttle Discovery is on its way to the International Space Station following a successful liftoff early Monday from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. (more)
