Nebulae Photo Gallery

Helix Nebula

Photograph courtesy NASA/ESA/C. R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University)

The familiar eyeball shape of the Helix Nebula shows only two dimensions of this complex celestial body. But new observations suggest it may actually be composed of two gaseous disks nearly perpendicular to each other.

Henize 206 Nebula

Photograph courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

This false-color infrared image captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Henize 206 Nebula, a massive cloud of gas and dust in which hundreds and possibly thousands of new stars have formed over the last ten million years. The nebula, located just outside the Milky Way in a galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, offers astrophysicists a celestial ringside seat on the death and rebirth of stars.


 

Eskimo Nebula

Photograph courtesy NASA/Andrew Fruchter (STScI)

The Eskimo Nebula got its name because the astronomer who discovered it in 1787 thought it looked like a person's head surrounded by a parka hood. This highly detailed image taken in 2000 by the Hubble Space Telescope, however, reveals a much more complex structure, one which astrophysicists are still trying to explain.

 

Rosette Nebula

Photograph courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

An infrared image of the Rosette Nebula shows super-hot O stars (blue dots inside spheres) amid a torrent of gas and dust (green and red). This star-forming nebula, which lies 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros, is named for its rosebud-like shape when seen using only optical light.

 

Orion Nebula

Photograph courtesy NASA/C. R. O'Dell (Rice University)

This true-color mosaic captured by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a small portion of the Orion Nebula. The image provides unprecedented detail of the nebula, revealing elongated objects oriented on the region's brightest stars, rapidly expanding plumes of material around young stars, and protoplanetary disks.

Eagle Nebula Gas Pillars

Photograph courtesy NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)

This dark column of cool molecular hydrogen gas and dust is part of the Eagle Nebula, a star-forming region 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Serpens. In this image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, new stars can been seen inside fingerlike protrusions extending from the top of the nebula. Each "fingertip" is slightly larger than our entire solar system.

Cat's Eye Nebula

Photograph courtesy J.P. Harrington and K.J. Borkowski (University of Maryland) and NASA

The Cat's Eye Nebula contains some of the most complex gas formations astronomers have ever seen, including concentric shells, high-speed jets, and unusual shock-induced knots. Some scientists think the nebula's intricate structures suggest it is a double-star system.

Iran Launches Another Satellite

On Friday, Iran launched an observation satellite into Earth orbit -- its third since 2009 -- the official IRNA news agency reported.

"The Navid satellite was launched successfully.... It will be placed into an orbit (at an altitude) between 250 and 370 kilometres," IRNA quoted the head of Iran's Space Organisation, Hamid Fazeli, as saying.

The launch comes as Iran is marking the anniversary of its 1979 Islamic revolution -- and as tensions are heating up over Iran's nuclear program.

NEWS: Iran Space Monkey Launch Attempt Fails

The 50-kilogram (110-pound) satellite is meant to stay in orbit for 18 months, sending back images to Iran as it completes a revolution of Earth every 90 minutes. It was unveiled two years ago and its launch had long been expected.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led the launch ceremony, media said.

"It's the beginning of an immense labor... which holds the promise of friendship for all mankind," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

Iran's defense minister, Ahmad Vahidi, said the Navid satellite would beam its images to several ground stations across the country, according to media.

NEWS: Software Smart Bomb Aimed at Iran

"The telemetric and command stations give and receive data and control the satellite," Vahidi said.

Iran's space program deeply unsettles Western nations, which fear it could be used to develop ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads they suspect are being developed in secret.It was the third domestically made satellite Iran has put above the planet using its Safir rockets. The other two observation platforms, launched in February 2009 and July 2011, stayed in orbit for two to three months.

There is increasing speculation that Israel is considering air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities -- an action that could possibly spark a broader conflict drawing in the United States.

ANALYSIS: Iran's Military Hacks U.S. Stealth Drone

Tehran, which insists its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful, says its space ambitions include launching seven other satellites in coming years -- and putting an Iranian astronaut into orbit by 2020.

An attempt to put a monkey into a 20-minute orbital flight mid-2011 ended in failure.

Tags: Fear, Islam, Military, Nuclear Science, Rockets

Space Station Astronaut to Observe Earth Hour

Space station flight engineer Andre Kuipers will be in a unique position to observe Earth Hour, a public awareness project that asks people to turn off their lights for one hour at an appointed day and time.

Kuipers, a European Space Agency astronaut currently serving aboard the orbiting outpost, will share photos and live commentary about Earth Hour from his vantage point 240 miles above the planet.

The goal of the project is to raise awareness of the need for people to be conscious of and to mitigate their impacts on the environment.

Earth Hour, which grew out of a 2007 event in Sydney, Australia, last year had participants from 135 countries. This year the designated hour is 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. -- whatever time zone you're in -- on March 31.

For more information, visit earthhour.org

North Korea Prepares Rocket for Satellite Launch

North Korea is counting down to the 100th anniversary of its founder's birth, with top-level meetings and a controversial rocket launch scheduled in coming days to bolster his grandson's credentials.

The secretive state, in an unprecedented move, on Sunday invited foreign journalists to its rocket launch site to try to persuade the world of its peaceful intentions.

The United States and other nations said the satellite launch will be a pretext for a ballistic missile test, in defiance of United Nations resolutions and a US-North Korean deal.

ANALYSIS: How North Korea Got the Bomb

A South Korean official said the North appeared to be preparing to follow up the launch, which is scheduled for sometime between April 12 and 16, with a third nuclear weapons test.

But Jang Myong-Jin, head of North Korea's Tongchang-ri space center in the far northwest, said it was "really nonsense" to call the upcoming launch a disguised missile test.

"This launch was planned long ago, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of (founding) president Kim Il-Sung. We are not doing it for provocative purposes," he told journalists Sunday.

The rocket, painted white with sky-blue lettering, is 30 meters (99 feet) high with a diameter of 2.5 meters.

Reporters also saw close-up what officials said was the satellite: a 100-kilogram (220 pound) box with five antennae, covered by solar panels to supply it with electricity.

The Kwangmyongsong-3 (Shining Star) satellite will collect data on forests and natural resources in impoverished but nuclear-armed North Korea, officials said.

A successful mission would burnish the credentials of the young and untested Kim Jong-Un as a strong leader.

NEWS: What It Takes to Make a Nuclear Bomb

In the country's second dynastic succession, Jong-Un took over from his father and longtime ruler Kim Jong-Il, who died last December. He has so far formally taken over just one of his father's posts, head of the 1.2 million-strong military.

The ruling party will Wednesday hold a rare special meeting expected to appoint Jong-Un as party general secretary in place of his late father.

On Friday the legislature will convene. It could appoint Jong-Un chairman of the all-powerful National Defence Commission or bestow some new title.

On Sunday's centenary of the birth of Kim Il-Sung -- who died in 1994 and bequeathed power to his son Kim Jong-Il -- hundreds of thousands are expected to take to the streets of the showpiece capital Pyongyang.

Thousands have been rehearsing for the celebrations or visiting the founding president's birthplace in the village of Mangyongdae just outside the capital.

BLOG: Korean DMZ Teems with Wildlife

"We are very happy to have Comrade Kim Jong-Un as the new supreme leader of our people and country," Mangyongdae visitor Ryu Jin, 48, told AFP.

"We will advance united around Comrade Kim Jong-Un, as we have always done."

The rocket launch has, however, sparked regional alarm including from China, North Korea's diplomatic and economic patron. On Saturday Japan deployed missile batteries in central Tokyo (pictured).

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has given the green light to shoot down the rocket if it threatens Japan's territory and South Korea promises similar action if necessary.

China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, in a meeting with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts on Sunday, said Beijing was "worried" by the rocket launch, according to a foreign ministry statement.

The North says it can destroy the rocket remotely if it veers off course.

It insists the launch will not breach a February deal, under which it agreed a partial nuclear freeze and a missile and nuclear test moratorium in return for 240,000 tonnes of US food aid.

The US has suspended its planned shipments to the North, where severe food shortages have persisted since a 1990s famine. A pro-Pyongyang newspaper last week hinted there could be another nuclear test in response.

The North, believed to have enough plutonium for six to eight bombs, tested atomic weapons in October 2006 and May 2009. Both were held one to three months after missile tests.

Preparations are under way in the northeastern town of Punggye-ri, where the two previous nuclear tests were carried out, a South Korean official in Seoul told AFP Sunday on condition of anonymity.

"Recent satellite images led us to conclude the North has been secretly digging a new underground tunnel in the nuclear test site... besides two others where the previous tests were conducted," said the source.

Tags: Bombs, Military, Nuclear Science, Nuclear Weapons, Rockets

Daredevil Makes Test Jump at 71,581 Feet

The plunge from 71,581 feet was a success. Next up: 120,000 feet.

Daredevil adventurer Felix Baumgartner's plans to plunge 23 miles from the edge of space back to Earth -- a Red Bull-sponsored stunt that would be the world's highest freefall -- and on Thursday, his team announced the completion of a key test flight over Roswell, N.M.

"The height of Felix's test flight was significant, as it was the first time he passed the Armstrong Line of approximately 63,000 feet, where the atmospheric pressure truly tests Felix's custom-made space suit," his team said in a news release.

NEWS: Space Skydiver Suit Revealed

It may not have reached the level of a space plunge, but what a fall it was. Baumgartner is said to have reached about 365 mph and fell for three minutes and 43 seconds before he opened his parachute at 7,890 feet.

Perviously, Baumgartner's highest freefall was from a paltry 30,000 feet.

The launch window for the 120,000 jump starts in July in New Mexico, Baumgartner told FoxNews.com last month. 

With air temperatures of -70 F degrees, his very blood would boil if exposed to the air. So what could compel a man to make such a dangerous attempt?

NEWS: Daredevil to Plunge From Extreme Altitude

"I like the challenge," Baumgartner said. "I have a passion for aviation, and I love working on things that start from scratch," he explained. 

To do it at all required a custom supersonic spacesuit, designed by the David Clark Company, which made the first such pressurized suits to protect World War II fighters during high-speed maneuvers.

In the process of his leap, Baumgartner hopes to become the first parachutist to break the sound barrier, plummeting toward the ground at 760 miles per hour.

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Ancient Egyptians Tracked Eclipsing Binary Star Algol

Turn your telescope to the constellation of Perseus and you might note an unusual star called Algol, dubbed the "Demon Star" or the "Raging One." You wouldn't notice anything much different at first, unless you happened to be looking during a window of a few hours -- every 2.867 days -- when Algol's brightness visibly dims.

This unusual feature was first noticed back in 1667 by an astronomer named Geminiano Montanari, and later confirmed -- with a proposed possible mechanism -- in 1783 by John Goodricke, who precisely measured the period of variability: it dims every 2.867 days.

But a new paper by researchers at the University of Helsinki, Finland, claims that the ancient Egyptians may have recorded Algol's periodic variability 3000 years ago, based on their statistical analysis of a bit of papyrus known as the Cairo Calendar.

PHOTOS: Hubble Logs Millionth Observation

This isn't the first time people have hypothesized that Algol's variable nature was known prior to its discovery in the 17th century. Certainly it was a familiar object, prominent in mythology and lore. In the second century, Ptolemy referred to Algol as the "Gorgon of Perseus," and associated it with death by decapitation. (In Greek mythology, the hero Perseus slays the snake-headed Gorgon, Medusa, by chopping off her head.)

Other cultures also associated the star with violence and bad fortune. It's no coincidence that H.P. Lovecraft marked the onset of his final battle in the 1919 short story, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep," with the appearance of a nova near Algol.

But the Helsinki researchers go beyond mythology and conjecture and provide a solid statistical analysis, based on historical documentation.

Goodricke proposed that Algol's periodic variability was due to an eclipsing factor: namely, an orbiting dark body occasionally passed in front of the star, dimming its brightness temporarily.

Alternatively, he suggested that Algol itself had a darker side that turned toward the Earth every 2.687 days.

ANALYSIS: New Class of Variable Star Discovered

His hypothesis wouldn't be confirmed until 1881, when Edward Charles Pickering discovered that Algol is actually a binary star system: there were two stars circling together, Algol A and Algol B.

Even more intriguing: it was an "eclipsing binary," i.e., one in which the dimmer star in the system occasionally passes in front of its brighter sibling, dimming the latter according to predictable periods. Goodricke's hypothesis was correct.

Actually, astronomers now know that Algol is atriple-star system, with a third star, Algol C, located a bit further out from the main pair, with a larger orbit.

All of this is necessary background for understanding the conclusions of the Helsinki scientists. The whole point of tracking the heavens so meticulously, for the Egyptians, was to make predictions about the future, dividing the calendar into "lucky" and "unlucky" days. The Cairo Calendar, while badly damaged, nonetheless contains a complete list of such days over a full year, circa 1200 B.C.

How did the Egyptians decide how to rate specific days? That's a mystery. But the Finnish team took the raw data and reassembled it into a tie series, then used statistical techniques to determine the cycles within it. There were two significant periodic cycles. One was 29.6 days, very close to current estimates of a lunar month (29.53059 days).

ANALYSIS: 18th-Century Astronomer Herschel's Papers Now Public

The second periodic cycle was 2.85 days. Lead author Lauri Jetsu and her colleagues argue that this corresponds to Argol's variable period. It's suspiciously close to the 2.867 period Goodricke measured back in 1783.

Close, yes, but it's not a precise match, which is problematic. The Egyptians weren't known to be sloppy in their astronomical calculations. They should have been able to pinpoint a value much closer to Goodricke's -- unless, say, Algol's period changes over time.

There is some evidence that this might be the case, possibly due to the presence of the third star in the Algol system. Calculating the behavior of a two-body system is one thing; grappling with the dreaded "three-body problem" is quite another, particularly since astronomers are only working with roughly 300 years of data. Algol looks like it's living up to its "Demon Star" moniker.

That's where Jetsu et al's paper might prove to be more than just an intriguing historical oddity. It provides some missing data from 3000 years ago, which could help astronomers further constrain their models for Algol's variable behavior.

Images: (top) Canes Venatici constellation from Urnahographia by Johannes Hevelius. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. (bottom) Figure from paper by L. Jetsu et al.

Tags: Astronomy, History, Stars

Black Holes are Bad for Star Formation

Black holes, regions of space so dense that even light can't escape, lie at the center of virtually every galaxy including our own Milky Way. New research suggests that black holes are at least partially responsible for the size of their host galaxy as well; it seems galaxies with more active black holes produce fewer stars.

It's the first piece of concrete evidence astronomers have about the relationship between a black hole and its host galaxy.

ANALYSIS: Black Hole Behemoth Found Guilty of Star's Murder

Young galaxies are without concrete shape, made of the raw material that eventually becomes stars, planets, and everything else that will reside inside them. At this early stage, black holes are called galactic nuclei and they are giant, luminous, and much more energetic than their adult versions.

Similarly, star formation is much livelier in galactic youth. As a galaxy matures, two things happen: the young central black hole consumes more material and more stars form. The processes run side-by-side, at least for a little while.

Astronomers think inflows of gas fuel new stars and supermassive black holes. Any gas that falls onto the black holes is heated and accelerated around it, releasing energy. If a black hole takes in too much material, it will start spewing radiation into the galaxy. This heats up and disperses the reservoirs of cool gases necessary for star formation.

ANALYSIS: Our Galaxy's Black Hole Has the 'Munchies'

One of the big questions in galactic evolution is how much the black hole’s process of heating gases has slowed star formation, particularly in large elliptical galaxies that typically have little cold gas and few young stars. Previous studies have only provided "snapshots" of this process that hint at the relationship between active galactic nuclei and star formation. The relationship over cosmic history has never been clear.

Now, new data from the Herschel Observatory -- a European Space Agency cornerstone mission with important participation by NASA -- is shedding some light on the mystery.

"To understand how active galactic nuclei affect star formation over the history of the universe, we investigated a time when star formation was most vigorous, between eight and 12 billion years ago," said James Bock, senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-coordinator of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES). "At that epoch, galaxies were forming stars 10 times more rapidly than they are today on average. Many of these galaxies are incredibly luminous, more than 1,000 times brighter than our Milky Way."

ANALYSIS: Hunting Black Holes Through a Gravitational Lens

The team of researchers used Herschel data that probed 65 galaxies in the far-infrared spectrum. These wavelengths reveal the rate of star formation; the energy released by developing stars heats the surrounding dust that then re-radiates starlight in far-infrared wavelengths. They compared these readings with X-rays streaming from the galaxies’ active central black holes as measured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

They found that the galaxies with the most powerful black holes at their cores, those that heat the raw material and spew more radiation, produce fewer stars than galaxies with less active black holes. It’s the first evidence that black holes began suppressing galactic star formation early, when the universe was less than half its current age. It’s an interesting relationship, and it’s certain to bring up more questions about the intertwined lives of galaxies and black holes.

Image: Artist's impression of jets generated by a supermassive black hole (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Tags: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Black Hole, Cosmology, ESA

Monster Telescope Combo Spics Feeding Black Hole

Astronomers are finally getting a look at the extreme processes inside and around black holes. By combining the light from three powerful infrared telescopes, an international team has observed the active gas and dust accretion around a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy tens of millions of light-years away.

Resolving these features isn't just confirmation of how mass accretes onto black holes in centers of galaxies, it's how the image was taken is a major step in our Earth-bound exploration of the cosmos.

The team, led by Gerd Weigelt, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, resolved the inner ring of debris in the inner region of the active galaxy NGC 3783.ANALYSIS: Fattest Black Holes Feasted On Two Buffets

They used the AMBER interferometry instrument of the ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile to combine the infrared light from three telescopes. Sebastian Hoenig, a postdoctoral researcher at the UC Santa Barbara Department of Physics, called the method "a major milestone toward directly imaging the growth phase of supermassive black holes."

Interferometry is an imaging method that uses two or more -- in this case, three -- separate points on a telescope array to observe an object. The light from the individual telescopes in combined or "interfered" to create a complete picture.

ANALYSIS: Black Holes are Bad for Star Formation

Since each individual image contains high-resolution information, the combined image can give astronomers stunning detail. With separate vantage points, the clarity of the final image is similar to the clarity of a telescope if its diameter were the same as the distance between the two points. In other words, this technique gives astronomers a spectacular view without the impossibly large hardware.

This method was necessary to see such a small object -- the ring-shaped distribution of hot dust called a torus in the inner region of the active galaxy NGC 3783. The dust torus has an angular radius of only 0.7 milliarcseconds in the sky. That's 5 million times smaller than one degree. To resolve something this small, astronomers would need a telescope with a mirror at least 100 meters in diameter. As we don't have the technology to build such a large telescope, interferometry was the best bet.

This method was able to achieve an angular resolution equivalent to the resolution of a telescope with a diameter of 130 meters, 15 times higher than one of the VLTI telescopes alone. Each telescope has a mirror 8 meters (26 ft) in diameter.

ANALYSIS: Our Galaxy's Black Hole Has the 'Munchies'

The torus marks the transition from a more-distant mixture of gas and dust in a toroidal or doughnut-shaped structure to the gaseous disk closer to the black hole. It's easy to observe because it dominates the infrared emission of active galactic nuclei. Astronomers suspect that this dust torus is the central black hole's fuel.

Black holes often have millions of times the mass of our sun and are surrounded by hot and bright gaseous disks called accretion disks that spew out radiation as material falls into them. The dust tori surrounding the accretion disks are most likely the reservoir of the material that flows through the accretion disks and finally feeds the growing black holes.

Up next for the research team, which also includes astrophysicists from the universities of Florence, Grenoble, and Nice, will be the continued accumulation of information about and a highly detailed image of the active galactic nucleus at galaxy NGC 3783.

"Our main interest is to learn how supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies are fueled, so that they grow to the enormous million to billion solar mass objects we see today," said Hoenig. And since there's a supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy, anything astronomers learn about black holes in distant galaxies will help them explain our own.

Image: Artist's impression of the dusty torus surrounding a black hole. Credit: ESO

Tags: Astronomy, Black Hole, Galaxies, Telescopes

DRAGON CAPSULE BERTHED AT SPACE STATION

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station tucked the newly arrived Dragon cargo capsule into a berthing port on the Harmony connecting node just after noon on Friday, capping a key test flight for NASA’s new commercial space initiative.

The capsule, owned by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is the first privately owned vessel to reach the orbital outpost, which flies about 240 miles above Earth.

ANALYSIS: Station Crew Catches A Dragon by the Tail

Getting to the station was a big reach for SpaceX, which had just one previous flight of Dragon under its belt. The company is one of two hired by NASA to fly cargo to the station following the retirement of the space shuttles last year.

"It looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail," NASA astronaut Don Pettit radioed to Mission Control in Houston as he grappled the capsule with the station’s 58-foot-long robot arm.

Dragon took its time positioning itself within reach of the crane, proceeding at a snail's pace at times while ground controllers stopped, started and occasionally reversed its course to make sure it could be controlled.

BIG PIC: Space Station Spies a Dragon Flying Below

At one point, SpaceX ground operations team in Hawthorne, Calif., halted Dragon to adjust the capsule's laser imaging system, which it uses to see the station. Sensors were picking up stray reflections from the station's Japanese module.

"Congratulations on a wonderful capture," astronaut Megan Behnken radioed to the station crew from Mission Control. "You’ve made a lot of folks happy down here, over in Hawthorne and right here in Houston. Great job, guys."

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said he got a congratulatory call from President Barack Obama after Dragon reached orbit.

"Caller ID was blocked, so at first I thought it was a telemarketer," Musk quipped in a Twitter message.

ANALYSIS: SpaceX Dragon Aces Orbital Driving Test

Dragon, which is loaded with about 1,200 pounds of cargo for the crew, is expected to remain attached to the station until May 31. Before it is removed from its berthing slip, it will be loaded with about 1,300 pounds of equipment and science gear that needs a ride home -- the first big return load since the final shuttle flight last summer.

Dragon is due to parachute down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California later that day.

The test flight clears SpaceX to begin working off its 12-flight, $1.6 billion NASA contract to fly cargo to the station. A second company's freighter is expected to debut later this year.

Image: The Dragon capsule berthed with the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV

Ras Al Khaimah Spaceport

The Ras Al Khaimah spaceport will be located in the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates. It is a joint venture between Prodea and Space Adventures, and will be used to launch suborbital tourist flights in the Space Adventures Explorer spaceplane.

Spaceport Singapore

Space Adventures has proposed a USD $115 million spaceport to be located in Singapore, near Singapore Changi Airport. This spaceport will service the Space Adventures Explorer suborbital tourist rocketplane. It will also provide astronaut training facilities and a public education and interactive visitor center. The spaceport is licensed by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS). The estimated completion date of the spaceport in 2009.
Sites in Australia, the Bahamas, Florida, Japan, Malaysia, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Singapore and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates were considered. After a year-long selection process, the sites in Singapore and Dubai were chosen. One key difference between the two proposed spaceports is that while the Dubai spaceport will be mainly a launchpad for sub-orbital space flights, the Singapore spaceport will have much more facilities.
The planned attractions in the Singapore Spaceport are:

• Sub-orbital Space Flights that will blast passengers to an altitude of 100 km so they can enjoy about five minutes of weightlessness. An entire flight will take about 90 minutes. There will be a four-day training programme before the flight. The entire experience is estimated to cost US$102,000.
• Parabolic Flights. These flights at an estimated US$10,000 produce the experience of weightlessness in an aircraft without going into space.
• Flights in the Aero L-39 Albatros, a high-performance jet trainer aircraft.
• A four-day space camp for children.
• For adults, a full-day astronaut experience that will include a spin in a centrifuge to simulate a high-gravity environment, astronaut meals and a stint in a hypobaric (low-pressure) chamber to simulate performing repairs on damaged spacecraft in orbit.
• An authentic VIP astronaut training facility for the public that will provide many of the training elements used by professional astronauts. These include simulated spacewalks in neutral buoyancy tanks on the ground. Courses will be taught by actual astronauts and other space, flight, and training experts.
• An Interactive Visitor Centre, where the public can enjoy flight simulators and interactive exhibit experiences, or learn about the history and technology of space travel.

The entire complex will be spread over 17,000 square meters of floor area on a 1.8 ha site. It is expected to generate about $3 billion in economic benefits over 10 years. It hopes to attract more than half-a-million visitors a year from the region within two-and-a-half years of opening.
The estimated minimum cost of US$115 million will be partially funded by the private sector, undisclosed Singapore sources, as well Space Adventures' global spaceport development partner, His Highness Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Crown Prince of Ras Al-Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates.
The consortium supporting Spaceport Singapore includes Octtane Pte, Batey Pte Ltd., Lyon Capital Inc., DP Architects, ST Medical and KPMG Corporate Finance.

Mojave Airport & Spaceport

The Mojave Airport & Spaceport (also known as the Civilian Aerospace Test Center), is located in Mojave, California, at an elevation of 2,791 feet. It was the first facility to be licensed in the United States for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft, being certified as a spaceport by the Federal Aviation Administration on June 17, 2004. It is the only spaceport from which there have been privately-funded human spaceflights.
Besides being a general-use public airport, The Mojave Airport & Spaceport has three main areas of activity: flight testing, space industry development, and aircraft heavy maintenance and storage.

Flight testing

Flight testing activities have been centered at Mojave since the early 1970s because of the lack of populated areas surrounding the airport. It is also favored for this purpose due to its proximity to the Edwards Air Force Base, where the airspace is restricted from ground level to an unlimited height, and where there is a supersonic corridor. Mojave is also the home of the National Test Pilot School.

Space Industry Development

Beginning with the Rotary Rocket program, Mojave became a focus for small companies seeking a place to develop space access technologies. Mojave Spaceport has been a test site for several teams in the Ansari X Prize, most notably SpaceShipOne, which conducted the first privately funded human sub-orbital flight on June 21, 2004. Other groups based at the Mojave Spaceport include XCOR Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and Interorbital Systems.
On December 6, 2007, the Antelope Valley Press reported that Mojave Spaceport was in danger of losing the "spaceport" designation by the end of 2007. The Federal Aviation Administration v gave notice to spaceport officials of its intention to suspend or revoke the space launch site operator's license on December 31. The FAA's actions are a result of concerns of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation regarding the storage and handling the related chemicals and explosives at the airport.

Aircraft heavy maintenance and storage

The Mojave airport is also known as a storage location for commercial airliners. Numerous large Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed, and Airbus aircraft owned by major airlines are stored at Mojave. Some aircraft reach the end of their useful lifetime and are scrapped at Mojave, while others are refurbished and returned to active service.
The Mojave Airport was first opened in 1935 as a small, rural airfield serving the local gold and silver mining industry. In July, 1942, the U.S. Marine Corps took over the field and vastly expanded it as the Marine Corps Auxiliary Air Station (MCAAS) Mojave. Many of the Corps' WWII aces received their gunnery training at Mojave. With the end of WWII, MCAAS was disestablished in 1946, and became instead a U.S. Navy airfield. At the end of 1953, the USMC reopened MCAAS Mojave as an auxiliary field to MCAS El Toro. In 1961, after the USMC transferred operations to MCAS El Centro, Kern County obtained title to the airport. In February, 1972, the East Kern Airport District was formed to administer the airport; EKAD maintains the airport to this day.

SpacePorts America

Spaceport America (formerly named Southwest Regional Spaceport) is a commercial spaceport currently being developed on a 27 square-mile tract of state-owned desert near Upham, New Mexico. The spaceport is about 45 miles north of Las Cruces, and 30 miles east of Truth or Consequences. It lies near the perimeter of the White Sands Missile Range. Currently, there is only a 100 by 25 foot concrete launching pad.
Spaceport America was founded in 1990 by Dr. Burton Lee and Bernie McCune. Lee proposed the original spaceport concept, authored the initial business and strategic plans, and secured seed funding for $1.4 million through a congressional earmark with the assistance of Sen. Pete Domenici. In 1992, Dr. Ave Tombes created the Southwest Regional Spaceport Taskforce in response to Lee's success in obtaining congressional support for the initiative. Other individuals who have played a key role in the development of the spaceport include Lonnie Sumpter (Executive Director, New Mexico Spaceport Authority), Dr. Bill Gutman (NMSU/PSL), Hanson Scott, Lou Gomez, Len Sugerman and Margaret Gallaher Lee.
Spaceport America will be the first built-from-scratch commercial spaceport in the United States of America. The $225 million venture was announced in December 2005 in Santa Fe. Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic plans to launch its first flight from the spaceport in 2009. Once completed, Spaceport America is expected to be the venue for the annual X Prize Cup suborbital spaceflight competitions.

Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic is a company within Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group, which plans to offer sub-orbital spaceflights, and later orbital spaceflights to the paying public.
Virgin Galactic's mission is to fly passengers who are not professional astronauts to an altitude slightly over 100 kilometers (62 mi) and allow them to experience weightlessness for up to 6 minutes. Each seat will be sold for US$200,000. According to Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn, the company had sold nearly 200 seats as of November 2007. The first flight is planned for 2009.
Virgin Galactic is aiming to be the first space tourism company specializing in the provision of sub-orbital flights to the public. This is a new area. While orbital flights can be made by budding space tourists through the Russian Space Agency, there are presently no operational craft capable of sub-orbital flight aside from SpaceShipOne. However, EADS are currently working on a competing sub-orbital craft. Given that SpaceShipOne was designed for a very specific task, Virgin Galactic have commissioned Burt Rutan to design a newer, bigger and better version of his suborbital craft, called SpaceShipTwo. It is this eight seater craft, seating 2 pilots and 6 passengers, which will be used by Virgin Galactic passengers.
After talks throughout 2004, on September 24, 2004 Virgin Galactic signed a deal worth up to $21 million with Mojave Aerospace Ventures to license the patents behind the Tier One project for purposes of space tourism. The deal was announced by Branson and Burt Rutan on September 27, 2004 at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London. The initial plan is for Rutan to design and build five suborbital tourist craft based on a scaled-up version of SpaceShipOne. Construction began in 2005, with twelve to eighteen months of intensive testing (comprising at least 50-100 test flights) planned. Actual spaceflights for ordinary citizens are expected to begin on the SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise in Upham, New Mexico soon after. It is unknown whether a recent explosion which took place at Scaled Composites will affect the date of the maiden flight.
It is planned that the spacecraft are to be robust and affordable enough to take paying passengers. The craft is projected to be a six passenger, two pilot craft. It is planned to make suborbital flights, with a short period of weightlessness. The time from liftoff of the White Knight II booster carrying SpaceShipTwo until the touchdown of SpaceShipTwo after the suborbital flight will be about 2.5 hours. The suborbital flight itself will only be a small fraction of that time. The weightlessness will last approximately 6 minutes. Passengers will be able to release themselves from their seats during these 6 minutes and float around the cabin.
SpaceShipTwo will fly a little higher than SpaceShipOne, to a height of 110 km in order to go beyond the defined boundary of space (100 km) and lengthen the experience of weightlessness. The spacecraft will reach around Mach 3 (1000 m/s), which is slightly more than current fighter jets are capable of obtaining, however the spacecraft will not be able to sustain that speed for long periods of time. The craft thus has a very limited cross-range capability and therefore has to land in the area where it started.
There are numerous other companies actively working on commercial passenger suborbital spaceflight. Virgin Galactic's most likely competitors include EADS Astrium, Rocketplane Kistler, Space Adventures, and Benson Space Company.
In addition, an international architectural competition was held for the design of the Virgin Galactic Spaceport in New Mexico. The contract was awarded to foster and partners architects.

Space Adventures

Eric C. Anderson is the president and CEO of Space Adventures. He co-founded Space Adventures in 1997 with several other entrepreneurs from the aerospace, adventure travel and entertainment industries and has managed the company over the past several years, selling more than $120M in space tourist flights. He has developed and financed over $500 million (USD) in new projects for Space Adventures, including two global spaceports and the first private voyage to the moon, set to launch in 2009.
The company sells a variety of flights such as Zero-Gravity flights, cosmonaut training and actual spaceflights. In May 2001, it sent American businessman Dennis Tito to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Soyuz spacecraft for a reported $20 million payment, making him the first space tourist in history. South African businessman Mark Shuttleworth did the same in April 2002 becoming the 'First African in Space'. Gregory Olsen became the third private citizen to travel to the ISS in October 2005, followed by the first female space tourist, Anousheh Ansari, who completed her 10-day orbital mission in September 2006. Microsoft co-founder and creator of Word and Excel, Charles Simonyi, became the world's fifth space tourist in April 2007.
In 2008, two people are expected to travel to the ISS: Russian parliament member Vladimir Gruzdev, and Richard Garriott, the son of scientist and astronaut Owen K. Garriott. Originally scheduled first, Garriott's trip is expected to be postponed to give priority to Gruzdev's flight.
On August 10, 2005, the company announced a project named Deep Space Expeditions Alpha(DSE-Alpha), the first planned commercial spaceflight to the far side of the Moon. Travelers will be able to experience weightlessness, view the Earth from 250,000 miles away and travel in the footsteps of space explorers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when they experience a close-up view of the Moon. Two commercial seats are available for the mission priced at $100 million (USD) each.
The company, along with Prodea and FSA, is currently developing a suborbital space transportation system, called Explorer. The vehicle has been designed by Myasishchev Design Bureau, a Russian aerospace organization which has developed a wide-array of aircraft and space systems.
The Explorer aerospace system consists of a flight-operational carrier aircraft, the M-55X, and a rocket spacecraft. It will have the capacity to transport up to five people to space.
In February 2006, the company announced it was developing commercial spaceports in the United Arab Emirates and Singapore with plans to expand globally. The UAE spaceport is to be located in Ras al-Khaimah, located less than an hour drive from Dubai. In addition to suborbital spaceflights, Spaceport Singapore will operate astronaut training facilities and a public education and interactive visitor center. Spaceport Singapore visitors will be able to experience Zero-Gravity flights, G-force training in a centrifuge, and simulated space walks in a neutral buoyancy tank.
On July 21, 2006 the company announced that they would begin offering a spacewalk option to their clients traveling to the ISS. The addition of the spacewalk, which would allow participants to spend up to 1.5 hours outside of the space station, would cost about $15 million and would lengthen the orbital mission approximately six to eight days. The spacewalk would be completed in the Russian designed Orlan space suit. The training for the spacewalk would require an extra month of training on top of the six months already required.

Space Tourism Companies

Several Space Travel and Tourism Companies are in various stages of development around the world. Currently, Space Adventures is the only company that offers Space Flights to the general public. Perhaps the company that is poised to be the pioneer and trend-setter in this exciting new industry is Virgin Galactic.
Their flights have an initial cost of $200,000 - much less than the $20 Million it costs to fly to the International Space Station with Space Adventures. Virgin Galactic's flights are expected to begin in the next 12-18 months, and several other companies are ready to start flying between then and 2012. There should be a variety of companies and trips to choose from in the coming years!

European Space Agency

The European Space Agency (ESA), an intergovernmental organization that has 18 member states, manages the space exploration and research of European countries. The members of ESA are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, while the headquarter is located in Paris. Some other countries in and around Europe have also taken part, cooperated, and signed a contract with ESA, they are Canada, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Estonia, and Slovenia.
A "greater number of members" has given an advantage to this agency in terms of financing and human resources, despite the fact that the citizens pay four times lesser for space activities and programs than what is paid by US citizens. The annual budget of European space agency stood at €3.6 billion for the year 2009, which was contributed by each member state in accordance with the amount of gross national product (GNP). Each member stands the same voice on the Council. ESA also conducts investments in each member state through industrial contracts. The agency employs around 2,000 staff from all the member states in the big body. Most of their programs are focused more on the exploration of Earth and space, and the development of satellites and technology for the benefits of their industries. Besides a single headquarter, there are some sites with different responsibilities that are spread over various European countries. It also has some liaison offices. For example, there is ESRIN as the centre for earth observation programs and ESTEC as the centre for research and technology.
The primary rocket of ESA is the Ariane 5, but it has been replaced by Ariane 4 since the year 1997 due to ongoing maintenance procedures. There are Ariane 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. The last one was the heaviest in specification and has flown 15 times to the space since 2002. ESA also has Soyuz-2 which is usable through a joint venture costing €340 million with the Russian Federal Space Agency or Roskosmos. The parts of Soyuz-2 were manufactured and sent to ESA in early 2009 to be assembled later. The joint venture is beneficial for both parties for some reasons. First, ESA does not have to spend for the development cost if it would build its own spacecraft. Second, the Soyuz-2 is a powerful spacecraft with excellent record, so ESA already gets the best they can afford to complete the available spacecrafts. Third, Russia benefits from the economies of scale since they have produced many spacecrafts of similar parts and specification before. And the last one, Russia gains access to launch their spacecrafts at Kourou, which is close to the equator and will enable them to double the payload. For small payload launcher; ESA has 'Vega', a launcher that is modified directly from Ariane 5 EAP and plans the first launch in 2009. It is Italy that contributed the most for this project.
For the International Space Station (ISS), there are 10 out of the 18 members of ESA that participate. Since the establishment in 1975 till now, about forty projects have been launched by ESA so far and many are on target of next exploration.

Zond

Zond (meaning "probe") was the name given to two series of Soviet unmanned space missions from 1964 to 1970 to gather information about nearby planets and test spacecraft. The second series used a stripped-down variant of the manned Soyuz spacecraft, consisting of the service and descent modules, but lacking the orbital module.
The first three missions were based on the model 3MV planetary probe, intended to explore Venus and Mars. After two failures, Zond 3 was sent on a test mission, photographing the far side of the Moon (only the second spacecraft to do so) and continuing out to the orbit of Mars in order to test telemetry and spacecraft systems.
The missions 4 through 8 were test flights for manned circumlunar flight. The Soyuz 7K-L1 (also mentioned just as L1) spacecraft was used for the moon-aimed missions, stripped down to make it possible to launch around the moon from the Earth. They were launched on the Proton rocket which was just powerful enough to send the Zond on a free-return trajectory around the moon without going into lunar orbit (the same path that Apollo 13 flew in its emergency abort). It could have carried 1 or 2 cosmonauts.
There were serious reliability problems with both the new Proton rocket and the new Soyuz, but the test flights pressed ahead with some glitches. The unmanned circumlunar Zond 5 flight in September 1968 was part of the reason NASA flew Apollo 8 to the moon in December 1968 instead of the Earth orbital test which had been planned, because the CIA believed the Russians were planning a human flight next. Had Apollo 8 not flown when it did, it is possible the Russians would have been the first to fly around the moon in late 1968 or early 1969. However, four of these five Zond flights suffered malfunctions that would have injured or killed any crew.
Instrumentation flown on these missions gathered data on micrometeor flux, solar and cosmic rays, magnetic fields, radio emissions, and solar wind. Biological payloads were also flown and many photographs were taken.

Sputnik

The Soviet space program Sputnik refers to a series of "unmanned" spacecraft that was launched between 1957 and 1961. Meaning "co-traveller", the primary goals of the Sputnik program were to study earth's upper atmosphere, test Soviet rocket technology, and study animal survival in space. By studying animal survival, the Soviets could test the feasibility of putting humans in space.
The launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957 started the "Space Race" with the United States. Under pressure, the launch prompted the USA to form NASA, their Space Exploration Agency.
The primary Sputnik mission made 10 launches and was the forerunner of the Soviet Vostok Program, which was the first space program to put a human in space.

Soyuz Program

Soyuz (pronounced [sa'jus] and means Union in English) is a series of spacecraft designed by Sergey Korolyov for the Soviet Union's space program. The Soyuz succeeded the Voskhod spacecraft design and were originally built as part of the Soviet Manned Lunar program. The first unmanned launch of the Soyuz was on November 28, 1966. The first manned launch of the Soyuz was on April 23, 1967. Currently, the Soyuz spacecraft family is still in service and has launched more manned space missions than any other platform. The Soyuz spacecraft is launched by the Soyuz launch vehicle, as part of the Soyuz program and in the later missions as part of the Zond program. They were later used to carry cosmonauts to and from the Salyut and Mir space stations and are now used for transport to and from the International Space Station.

Salyut Space Station

The Salyut (Salute) program was the first space station program undertaken by the Soviet Union, which consisted of a series of nine single-module space stations launched over a period of eleven years from 1971 to 1982. Intended as a project to carry out long-term research into the problems of living in space and a variety of astronomical, biological and Earth-resources experiments, the program allowed space station technology to evolve from the engineering development stage to long-term research outposts in space. Ultimately, experience gained from the Salyut stations went on to pave the way for multimodular space stations such as Mir and the International Space Station, with each of those stations possessing a Salyut-derived core module at its heart.
The program consisted of a series of six scientific research stations (DOS-type) and three military reconnaissance stations (OPS-type) launched as part of the highly secretive Almaz program, and during its development saw a number of spaceflight records broken, including several mission duration records, the first ever orbital handover of a space station from one crew to another, longest stay in space by a woman and various spacewalk records. By the time the program concluded in 1991, it had seen space station technology evolve from basic, single-docking port stations to complex, multi-ported orbital outposts with impressive scientific capabilities, whose technological legacy continues to the present day.

MIR

Mir (which can mean both peace and world) was a Soviet (and later Russian) orbital station. Mir was humanity's first consistently inhabited long-term research station in space, and the first 'third generation' type space station, constructed over a number of years with a modular design.
Mir currently holds the record for longest continuous human presence in space at eight days short of 10 years, and, through a number of collaborations, was made internationally accessible to cosmonauts and astronauts of many different countries. The most notable of these, the Shuttle-Mir Program, saw American Space Shuttles visiting the station eleven times, bringing supplies and providing crew rotation. Mir was assembled in orbit by successively connecting several modules, each launched separately from 1986 to 1996.
The station existed until 23 March 2001, at which point it was deliberately de-orbited, breaking apart during atmospheric re-entry over the South Pacific Ocean.

Russian Federal Space Agency

The history of the Russian Space Program dates back to the early 1900s. Most of the research was military based, so much of the inforamtion about the program was deemed classified. Early rockets were designed to be intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and could carry a payload of about 10,000 pounds. This capacity made a good rocket for the fledgling space program.
In 1956, initial plans were approved for space travel. Original plans called for gaining knowledge about space with the Sputnik Program, develop a spy satellite program, and then attempt to fly humans into space in 1964. The succesful launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957 created a large political success, and the manned spaceflight portion was accelerated.
On April 4, 1961, Yuri Gagarin was launched into space aboard Vostok 1, and became the first human in space. Several more Vostok Missions followed, all designed to beat the USA to any kind of firsts. During the Vostok Program, Russia also started to launch unmanned probes to Venus, Mars, Mercury, and the Moon.
In the mid 1960s, Russia focused on building a reliable rocket, and in 1967, the Soyuz rocket was unveiled. The Soyuz rocket is still used for launches in 2009. Other notable achievements of the Soviet Space program in the 1960 include first soft lunar landing in 1966 with the Luna 9 probe.
After the USA successfully landed humans on the moon in 1969, the space race cooled down somewhat, and focus shifted to scientific research. On April 19, 1971, the first Space Station, Salyut 1, was launched. Salyut 1 was in orbit until October 11, 1971 when it reentered the atmosphere.
In 1985, the Soviet Space Program launched MIR, the first permanently manned space station. The Soviet commitment to the International Space Station (ISS) meant that MIR could no longer be kept. After a failed attempt at a private sale, MIR was deliberately deorbited on March 23, 2001.
In 1992, the Soviet Space Program was officially renamed The Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA).
Looking for ways to offset costs, the RKA began searching for people who might be interested in flying to space as a tourist. On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito made history by becoming the first person to pay for a space flight to the ISS. Since then, in cooperation with Space Adventures, the RKA has launched several space tourists to the ISS for approximately $20 million each. The RKA can be thanked as the first agency to pioneer space travel and tourism.