NASA

Tracy Caldwell , a Cal State Fullerton graduate and former UC Irvine researcher, will leave Earth for six months of service aboard the International Space Station on April 2, says NASA, which has formally made her part of “Expedition 23″ to ISS. Caldwell, 40, will serve as a flight engineer, doing everything from helping to maintain the orbiting outpost to helping conduct science experiments. She’ll travel to ISS aboard a Soyuz TMA-18 rocket with cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko. The crew is scheduled to dock with space station on April 4, and Caldwell will remain at the outpost until September 2010, NASA says. ... Read Full Story

Man has made it to the moon, hurled equipment to the edges of the solar system, even examined the very beginning of time, but our true achievements are even more important (if less awe-inspiring): we've raised litter above and beyond the surface of the Earth! So much so that with some 300,000 objects orbiting our little blue dot, we need a new detection grid if we're ever to get off-planet without having our heads bashed in by a ball of old trash. There's an entire ring of old, broken, or blasted to pieces bits and bobs in near Earth orbit, each with enough energy ... Read Full Story

A team of California rocketeers has won a $1 million prize in a simulated lunar landing contest backed by NASA. The X Prize Foundation said Monday that Mojave, Calif.-based Masten Space Systems had a better landing accuracy than was achieved by Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas, which got $500,000 for second place. The teams flew robotic rockets that had to rise more than 160 feet, stay aloft for at least 180 seconds while traveling to a rocky landing pad, and then fly back to the starting point. The flight profile simulates what would be required to descend from lunar orbit, land on the moon ... Read Full Story

A team of California rocketeers has won a $1 million prize in a simulated lunar landing contest backed by NASA. The X Prize Foundation said Monday that Mojave, Calif.-based Masten Space Systems had a better landing accuracy than was achieved by Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas, which got $500,000 for second place. The teams flew robotic rockets that had to rise more than 160 feet, stay aloft for at least 180 seconds while traveling to a rocky landing pad, and then fly back to the starting point. NASA put up $2 million in prizes for the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge as an incentive ... Read Full Story

A California-based firm was named winner of a one-million-dollar prize backed by US space agency NASA to design a craft capable of a lunar landing, a statement said Tuesday. Masten Space Systems were declared winners of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X-Prize Challenge following a competition in the Mojave Desert last week involving several teams of space entrepreneurs. Under the terms of the competition, teams had to launch a rocket and then simulate a lunar landing before refueling and returning to lunar orbit. Entries were required to ascend to a height of 50 meters, before landing safely on a replica lunar surface after a ... Read Full Story