Glad to see that the crowd-sourcing campaign to support the recovery of images of the Moon on magnetic tape date from unmanned lunar probe missions in the 1960s has succeeded in raising substantial funding: Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project – RocketHub.
They didn’t reach their goal of $75k but $62,560 is a lot more than the $10k or so they had just a couple of weeks ago. Help from Boing Boing and others made a big difference in the final push.
Jeff Foust reports on the House hearing on Tuesday about the threat of asteroid impacts on earth: NASA to Congress: don’t “pour money” into NEO programs – Space Politics.
And here are a couple of items about a Senate hearing on Wednesday about the same issue:
Update: Stephen C. Smith (Space KSC blog) has posted videos of both hearings:
* March 20, 2013 – the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space held a hearing titled, “Assessing the Risks, Impacts, and Solutions for Space Threats.” The invited witnesses were:
* March 19, 2013, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing titled, “Threats from Space: A Review of U.S. Government Efforts to Track and Mitigate Asteroids and Meteors, Part 1.”
Invited witnesses were:
Bob Zimmerman reports on the latest space news during regular weekly slots (usually Tuesday and Thursdays) on the John Batchelor radio program. See the iTunes free Podcast for links to the latest shows.
Here is the list of topics discussed on this week’s Tuesday show:
Segment 1: science and space:
1. Curiosity has experienced another computer glitch, this time to its BACKUP computer.
2. The collision of space junk to a Russian satellite never happened.
3. A Chinese scientist who worked for NASA has been arrested trying to flee the country.
4. After losing its federal earmark, Pan-STARRS gets private funding to survive and upgrade.
5. The Antares launch date has been set.
Segment 2: climate:
1. More fraud in climate science.
2. The person who published the climategate emails releases some more emails, and emails the world his reasons for doing so.
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On the Space Show on Tuesday, John Strickland talked about the National Space Society, the ISDC 2013 conference, space settlement, space based solar power, launcher reusability and more: John Strickland, Tuesday, 3-19-13 – Thespaceshow’s Blog
On Monday, Dr. Claude Piantodosi talked on the show about his book, Mankind Beyond Earth, human spaceflight, Mars missions, radiation, and microgravity: Dr. Claude Piantadosi, Monday, 3-18-13 | Thespaceshow’s Blog.
Copenhagen Suborbitals reports on low cost wind tunnel testing of their capsule design: DIY Space Capsule Wind Tunnel Testing – One More Time Please – Wired Science/Wired.com.
A Congressional hearing on the threat of asteroid impacts was held on Tuesday. Alan Boyle reports:
Congress got the word from NASA on Tuesday about its options for dealing with the threats posed by asteroids and comets: Lawmakers can either provide adequate funding for detecting and characterizing near-Earth objects, and diverting them if necessary — or they can pray.
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John S Lewis writes about comets and about their possible impact threat to earth: The Year of the Comets .