A Pentagon office is taking advantage of the collaborative nature of the Internet as it studies potential applications for space-based solar power, according to one of the officials leading the effort.
Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, according to one researcher.
A French space-surveillance radar has detected 20-30 satellites in low Earth orbit that do not figure in the U.S. Defense Department's published catalogue, a discovery that French officials say they will use to pressure U.S. authorities to stop publishing the whereabouts of French reconnaissance and military communications satellites.
The Pentagon's National Security Space Office (NSSO) may begin a study in the near future on the possibility of using satellites to collect solar energy for use on Earth, according to Defense Department officials. The officials said the study does not mean that the military plans to demonstrate or deploy a space-based solar power constellation. However, as the Pentagon looks at a variety of alternative energy sources, this could be one possible method of supplying energy to troops in bases or on the battlefield, they said.
The House and Senate Armed Services committees will get classified briefings Friday about the destruction of a Chinese weather satellite by a Chinese-launched ballistic missile, an incident that is being widely interpreted as the test of an anti-satellite weapon.
With U.S. military officials frustrated at the expense and time needed to build satellites, the Pentagon is fielding small satellites called TacSats that can be built faster and cheaper based on already mature technology.
A new report from the Pentagon finds that China's escalating expertise in space is also enhancing its competence as a global military force. Along with lofting future radar, ocean surveillance, and high -resolution photoreconnaissance satellites, China's rise as a space power also includes pursuit of an offensive anti-satellite system.
Space advocates discuss how the development of outer space can help address some of the intractable problems on Earth such as the energy crisis and nuclear weapons.
An unprecedented salvo of international probes will soon shoot for the Moon, all equipped to signal that a new era of lunar exploration has begun. If schedules hold, spacecraft from India, China and Japan will be moonbound before NASA's own Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter swings into action in 2008. Already on duty, the European Space Agency's SMART-1 is wrapping up its survey work.
China is celebrating its 50th anniversary of space progress this year, but also laying out a sweeping plan for lofting Earth orbiting satellites for a multitude of duties, expanding its human spaceflight abilities, and carrying out a multi-step program of lunar exploration.