Blackhacker

Lockheed Martin to build future moonship - Human Spaceflight - MSNBC.com
Lockheed Martin on Thursday won NASA’s multibillion-dollar nod to build the Orion crew exploration vehicle, a spaceship with a look and a mission that echoes the space agency’s giant leap to the moon in the 1960s.

The announcement kicks off an effort to produce spacecraft that would replace NASA’s fleet of space shuttles, due for retirement in 2010. NASA’s timetable calls for the cone-shaped Orion ships to bring cargo or up to six crew members to the international space station by 2014, and carry up to four astronauts to the moon and back by 2020.

For 13 months, two high-profile aerospace teams — one led by Lockheed Martin, the other led by Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Co. — have worked on paper proposals to fit NASA’s specifications. Now it’s up to Lockheed Martin to turn the concept into a reality.

I just hope the Work they do for NASA is better than what they deliver for the Cost Guard.

SPACE.com — Pluto Demoted: No Longer a Planet in Highly Controversial Definition
Capping years of intense debate, astronomers resolved today to demote Pluto in a wholesale redefinition of planethood that is being billed as a victory of scientific reasoning over historic and cultural influences. But already the decision is being hotly debated.

Officially, Pluto is no longer a planet.

From space.com

DARMSTADT, Germany — The first pictures revealing the surface of Saturn’s moon, Titan, were shown from Europe’s Huygens probe showing what look like drainage channels on the surface of what until today has been a planet totally hidden from view.