Lunar Enterprise Daily, Tomorrow's News Today

Year 6 Number 58

Friday / 24 March 2006

Highlights

SpaceX 1st launch delayed to today at 13:00 PST / Sat at 09:00 local time; Falcon 1 boosts Falconsat-2; Omelek Island, 9 degrees N latitude

SpaceDev 2005 financial results conference call on 29 Mar at 08:00 PST; listen in by dialing 877-407-9205

Andrews awarded US$70K contract from NASA Dryden to study Flexible Transpiration Cooled Thermal Protection Systems for Inflatable Atmospheric Capture & Entry Systems

Southwest Regional Spaceport in Upham NM and UP Aerospace prepare for port's 1st launch in a few months - suborbital SpaceLoft LV

Institute for Space Law & Policy Executive Director Berin Szoka on Space Show with David Livingston this Sun, 26 Mar; lunar property rights

Lunar land features similar to Mars' may disprove Mars H2O weathering theory, says University of AZ researcher Gwendolyn Bart

Global

ISS E12 crew readying station for E13 arrival on 31 Mar 23:19 EST; E12 leaves 8 Apr at 04:28 EDT, lands in Kazakhstan 19:46 (local time)

Korea begins search next month for its 1st astronaut; 2 finalists begin training in Jan 2007 thru Mar 2008 in Russia; one will fly to ISS later in year

SMART-1 status good with all functions working nominally; to conduct tone ranging test with China CLTC Kashi station and with ISRO

Purple Mtn Astronomical Obs (Chinese Academy of Sciences) to participate in orbit design for NASA / ESA LISA spacecraft mission

RAS 'Space Tourism: From Lofty Dreams to Commercial Reality' on 7 Jun in London, UK; Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures, ESA to present

Intl Lunar Conf 2006 / 8th ILEWG Intl Conf on Exploration & Utilization of Moon' on 23-27 Jul in Beijing; abstracts due 20 Apr, reg 15 Jun

Credit: NSS, PS

'25th Annual International Space Development Conference' On 4-7 May In Los Angeles CA Co-Hosted By National Space Society (NSS) & Planetary Society (PS); Exec Directors George Whitesides (R-NSS), Louis Friedman (L-PS)

Features

	NASA Fine-Tuning VSE Launch Vehicles. NASA's Constellation Systems Launch Vehicles Project Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville AL leads the Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) effort for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate . . .
Credit: NASA

	Gallium Electromagnetic Thruster Could Power Moonship. University of Illinois (UI) researchers Rod Burton (L) and Rob Thomas (R) won a NASA grant to design, build, and test a gallium electromagnetic thruster . . .
Credit: Daniel Williams

	IceCube South Pole Neutrino Telescope Sees Huge Expansion, But Pace Must Quicken for 2011 Deadline. The cubic-kilometer-sized observatory had 480 optical modules (one pictured) added over the recent Antarctic summer . . .
Credit: IceCube