DailyDirt: One Of These Days, Alice... Boom! POW! Straight To Mars!

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Apr 10th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Depending on how you look at it, the current state of space exploration can be seen as dismally underfunded -- or as the most amazingly productive in history. Unmanned probes are checking out all sorts of interesting destinations in our solar system, but manned missions have lately been limited to orbiting the Earth. The unmanned space race is generating plenty of fascinating science, nonetheless. Here are just a few interesting developments in the field of space exploration.

Following the Chandrayaan mission to moon, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to launch a Mars mission in the next few years. If everything comes together just right, India's Mars Orbiter might even launch in 2013. [url]
NASA's planetary science program is unfortunately taking a 20% cut, so NASA will still fly the Mars MAVEN atmospheric mission, but it won't be part of two other joint missions with the European Space Agency. On the other hand, the manned commercial space industry in the US will be getting more funding now that the space shuttle has retired. [url]
Ambitiously, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) is planning a manned moon base and unmanned base stations on Mars by 2030. Prime Minister Vladmir Putin has stated, "Russia should not limit itself to the role of an international space ferryman."[url]
To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Filed Under: chandrayaan, mars, moon, nasa, putin, science, space

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Anonymous Coward, 10 Apr 2012 @ 5:33pm

NASA's former glory...
It's such a shame that Congress and the last few Presidents have played political football with NASA's funding. There's been no consistent directive for NASA, so we're left with some strange goal to encourage private commercial rockets & some telescopes... tsk tsk.
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- Anonymous Coward, 10 Apr 2012 @ 8:29pm
  
  Re: NASA's former glory...
  Political football with NASA funding has been the norm from day one.
  
  X spacecraft part is built in Y State so Congress critter Z can say he "brought home the bacon" when trying to get re-elected.
  
  Repeat for every other congress critter and you end up with a bloated wasteful NASA that can not get jack done without wasting lots of money.
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- Torg (profile), 10 Apr 2012 @ 11:13pm
  
  Re: NASA's former glory...
  Private commercial rockets and telescopes need encouraging, and as this article clearly shows, it's not the end of martian and lunar missions. There are other space agencies handling those.
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  - Michael Ho (profile), 11 Apr 2012 @ 2:28am
    
    Re: Re: NASA's former glory...
    I think NASA is actually making a wise business move by promoting competition in the satellite-launching market. There are a few private companies that have mature rocket platforms that might be adapted to NASA missions, but the prices for launching custom rockets are pretty expensive. Funding a few low-cost carriers seems like a good idea to try to keep space monopolies from forming.
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Pixelation, 10 Apr 2012 @ 10:17pm

"Russia should not limit itself to the role of an international space ferryman."

"Welcome Citizen, we have job for you. Make big moon rock into small moon rock."
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