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You can’t cancel an enormous federal program without hitting pushback, and President Obama is hitting plenty of it over his proposal to end NASA’s Constellation program. In January his budget proposal put forth no funding for Constellation, the space shuttle successor program that included the Ares rockets, Orion crew capsule, and plans to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020. Instead, NASA would become more reliant on private companies to ferry its astronauts to the space station, and would explore new ideas for visiting Mars or nearby asteroids. But the proposal has already ruffled lots of feathers, prompting the President to say he will hold a conference to further outline his plan.

First, many high-profile space experts balked at the proposal. Former astronaut Tom Jones said Obama was surrendering human spaceflight, and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, one of the last men to walk on the moon, was equally displeased. “It’s bad for the country,” Schmitt said. “This administration really does not believe in American exceptionalism” [Washington Post]. Dissent wasn’t universal; DISCOVER blogger Phil Plait, for one, praised the possibilities for commercial space-faring.

But even getting the new plan in place will take plenty of political wrangling. Last week reports surfaced saying that NASA chief Charles Bolden and others inside the agency were quietly preparing a Plan B, with compromise options for the members of Congress who have objected to the President’s plan. When the news reports came out, however, Bolden flatly denied them. “The president’s budget for NASA is my budget,” General Bolden said. “I strongly support the priorities and the direction for NASA that he has put forward” [The New York Times].

One of the unhappy members of Congress is Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Hutchison, whose home state is one that stands to lose jobs when NASA’s space shuttle program ends, tried to thwart the Obama plan last week by introducing a bill to extend the shuttle for two more years (It’s currently due to retire this year). The bill, dubbed the Human Space Flight Capability Assurance and Enhancement Act, calls for spending an additional $3.4 billion between 2010 and 2012 to keep the space shuttle flying. It would require NASA to spread out its four remaining shuttle missions, now slated to wrap up by October, and potentially add additional flights [MSNBC]. Yesterday, shuttle program manager John Shannon said it could be done—if the country is willing to spend the money. It currently takes $200 million every month to maintain the shuttles.

Not everyone greeted the President’s proposal with sour grapes. Private space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for whom the move would mean more opportunities, are understandably excited. “It’s a huge move, and in the face of a lot of congressional opposition,” Musk said when DISCOVER spoke to him for a piece in the upcoming May magazine issue. Constellation, he argues, was never going to to reach it goals. It was already vastly underfunded, and would have required an infusion of cash that Americans would never give, especially in the current economic climate. “The people that are really hardcore against the cancellation of Constellation are people who, either from a political standpoint, have a ton of money being spent in their district and they don’t really care whether this succeeds or not,” he says.

Trying to get back on top in the public relations war, Obama announced this week that he would give a conference on April 15 in Florida to spell out more of his NASA vision. Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, said he hoped Mr. Obama would use the meeting to lay out a goal and a timetable for sending astronauts to Mars [The New York Times]. Nelson, who flew on a space shuttle mission in the 1980s, is a political ally of the President’s, but represents Florida, where so much of NASA’s human spaceflight program is based. The key to political victory for Obama, he says, may be overturning the idea that the end of Constellation equals the end of ambitious manned spaceflight.

Image: NASA

Source: Obama’s NASA Plan Draws Furious Fire; The Prez Promises to Defend His Vision

ogre7299 recommends an announcement out of Cal Tech on a milestone for HIFI, the Herschel Space Observatory’s Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared. “The Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. … This detailed-spectrum, obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) — one of Herschel’s three innovative instruments — demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space. The spectrum, one of the first to be obtained with HIFI since it returned to full health in January 2010 following technical difficulties, clearly demonstrates that the instrument is working well. … [The HIFI instrument had previously been offline since] August 2009 when HIFI experienced an unexpected voltage spike in the electronic system, probably caused by a high-energy cosmic particle, resulting in the instrument shutting down. On 14 January 2010, HIFI was successfully switched back on using its spare electronics, with science observations commencing on 28 February.”

Source: Herschel Space Observatory Finds Precursors of Life In Orion

FleaPlus writes “In light of Congressional resistance to the new plans for NASA (criticized as ‘radical’) proposed by NASA head Charles Bolden, Sen. Hutchinson (R-TX and ranking member of the Senate committee dealing with NASA) has proposed a compromise bill. Hutchinson’s bill calls for postponing the Space Shuttle’s retirement until 2015, and instead of wholly canceling Constellation/Ares, it would adapt the more effective portions to a ‘government-operated space transportation system,’ largely inspired by the DIRECT proposal. NASA would also pursue commercial crew and cargo launches to orbit, although the bill leaves out Charles Bolden’s proposal for R&D of ‘game-changing’ technologies for sustainable and cost-effective space exploration.”

Source: Shuttle Extension & Heavy Launcher Bill Proposed

China will soon have an outpost in space. The government has announced that its first unmanned space module, the Tiangong-1 (or “The Heavenly Palace”), will be launched next year.

The module will serve as a docking station for other aircraft before being transformed into a permanent taikonaut residence and space lab within two years of the launch [Nature blog]. It was originally due to launch this year, but now will see flight only late in 2011, due to technical reasons, Chinese officials said. The Tiangong-1 is expected to be 30 feet long and capable of housing three taikonauts; future missions will add other modules to construct a larger Chinese space station.

The Tiangong-1 design, unveiled in a nationally televised broadcast on last year’s Chinese New Year, includes a large module with docking system making up the forward half of the vehicle and a service module section with solar arrays and propellant tanks making up the aft [SPACE.com]. The Tiangong-1 is expected to dock the unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft first to test the robotic docking systems before hosting the manned Shenzhou 9 and 10 spacecraft, which are both expected to carry two or three taikonauts into space.

China’s other space plans include launching a second lunar probe in October in preparation for an unmanned moon landing by the end of 2012. A possible manned lunar mission has also been proposed — with a target date of 2017 — putting China in the forefront of a tightening Asian space race involving India, Japan and South Korea [Associated Press].

China has insisted that its space programs are for peaceful purposes only. However, the head of the Chinese Air Force, Gen. Xu Qiliang, appeared to have gone off-message when he said in November that international “military competition has shifted towards space” [The New York Times].

Image: CNSA

Source: China’s “Heavenly Palace” Space Station Module Due to Launch in 2011

eldavojohn writes “New observations from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveal that our assumptions about the ‘fog’ of gamma rays in our universe are not entirely explained by black hole-powered jets emanating from active galaxies — as we previously hypothesized. For now, the researchers are representing the source of unaccounted gamma rays with a dragon (as in ‘here be’) symbol. A researcher explained that they are certain about this, given Fermi’s observations: ‘Active galaxies can explain less than 30 percent of the extragalactic gamma-ray background Fermi sees. That leaves a lot of room for scientific discovery as we puzzle out what else may be responsible.’ And so we reopen the chapter on background gamma-rays in the science textbooks and hope this eventually sheds even more light on other mysteries of space — like star formation and dark matter.”

Source: Gamma Ray Mystery Reestablished By Fermi Telescope

An anonymous reader writes “Professor Andy Miah notes there’s already international government policies taking hold on outer space — and a need for new ethical guidelines. ‘For instance, what obligations do we owe to the various life forms we send there, or those we might discover? Can we develop a more considerate approach to colonizing outer space than we were able to achieve for various sectors of Earth?’ And what rights do astronauts have? ‘Could our inevitable public surveillance of their behavior become too much of an infringement on their personal privacy?’ But more importantly, professor Miah notes that ‘the goods of space exploration far exceed the symbolic value,’ pointing out that ‘A vast amount of research and development derives from space exploration… For example, the United Kingdom’s 2007 Space Policy inquiry indicated that the creation of space products contributes two to three times their value in GDP.’”

Source: Space Exploration Needs Extraterrestrial Ethics

When it comes to recycling gadgets, being environmentally responsible isn’t so easy. Use our handy guide ensure your old cellphone doesn’t end up taking up space in a drawer or leaching toxins into a landfill.

Source: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Your Old Gadgets

HockeyPuck writes “According to Space.com the amount of space junk is getting worse. ‘A head-on collision was averted between a spent upper stage from a Chinese rocket and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) huge Envisat Earth remote-sensing spacecraft. [...] But what if the two objects had tangled? Such a space collision would have caused mayhem in the heavens, adding clutter to an orbit altitude where there are big problems already, said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office in Darmstadt, Germany.”

Source: Space Junk Getting Worse

goG writes “After over 200 orbits around the Earth, space shuttle Endeavour landed safely in Florida on Sunday, ending a 14-day mission to the International Space Station. NASA pressed ahead with the Sunday night landing even though poor weather on both coasts threatened any touchdown attempt. Unusually, rain clouds were expected at both Edwards Air Force base in California and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The return marked just the 23rd time the space shuttle has landed at night, out of 130 flights.”

Source: Shuttle Makes Rare Night Landing

The Olympics has been held in some beautiful locations that even look scenic from space. Take a look at these shots from above, including closeups of this year’s mountain venues.

Source: Gallery: Olympic Venues 1900-2016, Seen From Space