Latest Space colonization Stories

Dwellings in colonies on the moon one day may be built with new, highly durable bricks developed by students from the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech.Initially designed to construct a dome, the building material is composed of a lunar rock-like material mixed with powdered aluminum that can be molded into any shape. The invention recently won the In-Situ Lunar Resource Utilization materials and construction category award from the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration...

A space elevator prototype, featuring a broomstick, has shaken up scientists' approach to the century-old idea.In December, Age-Raymond Riise of the European Space Agency demonstrated the device for the space elevator project which could see a nearly 63,000 mile tether anchored to Earth as an "elevator" into space.The idea, which was demonstrated at a recent space elevator conference, could solve many complicated hurdles, but still leaves much to be answered.The space elevator concept was...

HOUSTON, Dec. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- The Coalition for Space Exploration, the leading collaboration of space industry businesses and advocacy groups, announced today the release of a statement by James Lovell, who served as part of the crew of Apollo 8 - the first human voyage to a celestial body in December 1968. Apollo 8's successful mission to orbit the Moon paved the way for Apollo 11 to realize U.S. President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the close of the...

Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va., and SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., have been tapped to resupply the International Space Station when the space shuttle retires.The two relatively small companies beat out industry giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin to win the $3.5 billion contract Tuesday, NASA said.Orbital and SpaceX are to share unmanned cargo duties from 2010, when the shuttle fleet retires, until a new U.S. spacecraft is built, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.Russian rockets will ferry...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA has awarded two contracts -- one to Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., and one to Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif. -- for commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. At the time of award, NASA has ordered eight flights valued at about $1.9 billion from Orbital and 12 flights valued at about $1.6 billion from SpaceX. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)...

HOUSTON, Dec. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The Coalition for Space Exploration's (http://www.spacecoalition.com) Public Affairs Team today officially announced its leadership for 2009. Dean Acosta of The Boeing Company and Joan Underwood of Lockheed Martin Corp. have been named the organization's new chairman and deputy chairperson, respectively. Both will serve a one-year term, effective January through December 2009. The Coalition for Space Exploration is a group of space industry...

HOUSTON, Dec. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The Coalition for Space Exploration (http://www.spacecoalition.com), the leading collaboration of space industry businesses and advocacy groups, announced today the release of a statement by board member Bob Crippen, a former astronaut who served as pilot of first space shuttle mission, commander of three other space shuttle missions, and former director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In recent editorials to newspapers, Crippen implored...

Scientists are expanding the search for extraterrestrial life -- and they've set their sights on some very unearthly planets.Cold "Super-Earths" -- giant, "snowball" planets that astronomers have spied on the outskirts of faraway solar systems -- could potentially support some kind of life, they have found.Such planets are plentiful; experts estimate that one-third of all solar systems contain super-Earths. "We know there are a lot of super-Earths out there, and the...

NASA has concluded nearly two weeks of testing equipment and lunar rover concepts on Hawaii's volcanic soil. The agency's In Situ Resource Utilization Project, which studies ways astronauts can use resources found at landing sites, demonstrated how people might prospect for resources on the moon and make their own oxygen from lunar rocks and soil.The tests helped NASA gain valuable information about systems that could enable a sustainable and affordable lunar outpost by minimizing the amount...

The cool, rocky slopes of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano that is Hawaii's highest mountain, will serve as a stand-in for the moon as researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, NASA and other organizations test a robot designed for lunar prospecting.During the field experiment, Nov. 1-13, the robot called Scarab will simulate a lunar mission to extract water, hydrogen, oxygen and other compounds that could potentially be mined for use by future lunar explorers. The...