Government/Military

Kazakhstan will send a cosmonaut to the International Space Station a year or so from now, the Kazakh National Space Agency announced. But funding arrangements for the flight haven’t yet been concluded, according to the RIA Novosti news service in Moscow. The astronaut selected for the mission will take the place of a would-be space...

The Czech Republic joined the European Space Agency, ESA announced. That makes 18 nations holding membership in the agency. An agreement for the Czech accession to the ESA convention was signed last July, then the Czech Senate and Parliament ratified it, and on Friday the Czech flag for the first time was raised at ESA...

Flag Of India Is Planted On Moon The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) unmanned spaceship Chandrayaan-1 entered lunar orbit successfully, ISRO announced. Then the spaceship ejected a lunar craft called the Moon Impact Probe that struck the surface of the moon to kick up dust that could be analyzed. As well, the probe took pictures...

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said he would be "happy" to remain in his post if President-elect Obama asked, but Griffin doesn’t expect that request from the newly-elected leader, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Griffin made his remarks in speaking to Kennedy Space Center workers. Still, Obama has changed his views on the space agency, during his...

General Warns That Delaying Missile Defense Such As In Europe Would ‘Severely Hurt’ Ability To Defend United States, Allies Against Enemies U.S.-European Missile Defense Scheduled To Be Operational By 2013, Just Before Iran To Have Ability To Strike U.S. Cities By 2015 The departing leader of U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) programs said he is...

The Hubble Space Telescope for the first time snapped a visible-light picture of a planet circling another star, NASA announced. The planet is called Formalhut b. While the Hubble and other observers have detected exoplanets circling other stars previously, they often have done so through indirection, such as noting a slight wobble in a star...

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is awaiting two studies probing how to shrink the yawning half-decade gap when NASA won’t be able to take even one astronaut to low Earth orbit. That gap, as matters now stand, is to run from the 2010 retirement of the space shuttle fleet ordered by President Bush, to the first...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, coming to the United States for a Group of 20 Nations summit confronting economic issues, backed off from their prior harsh comments about the planned European Missile Defense (EMD) system, according to new reports. The United States would have The Boeing Co. [BA] lead an effort...

A senior Chinese military officer said if China acquires an aircraft carrier or two, it will merely be to protect the Chinese homeland, not to project power across the globe, according to news reports. U.S. Department of Defense leaders already are demanding to know why China is acquiring strategic, long-range military hardware, and China isn’t...

A major piece of hardware for the Ares 1-X rocket arrived at Kennedy Space Center last week. Ares, the rocket that someday will power Orion space capsule flights, is being developed by several contractors. Ares 1-X will launch in a test set for July. As for that hardware, it is called the forward skirt. It...