New Mars Forums

Very good link GCNRevenger and info but...

GCNRevenger and others, could you all please use the URL tags when providing links that are very long,
or with a big Url address in the link

The old forums used to auto re-size the links

but here Large address links cause the page to get messed up and then you have to scroll left and right

what you do here is
1 start the [ url = ]
2 add the address
inside [ url = http:// www. yahoo.com/ news /shuttlestory ]
3 name the link
[ url = http:// yahoo.com / news /shuttlestory ] SHUTTLE LINK
4 close the url tag
[ url = http://  yahoo.com/ news /shuttlestory ] SHUTTLE LINK

The link should come out like this
http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com … --]shuttle  PHOTO link

Thank you

We have a few topics on NASA, ISS and Shuttle going and I didn't have time to look at them all
So sorry if these news story have been posted already
Here is a small addressed  link
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8720825/
NASA grounds shuttle
and another story - NASA grounded the space shuttle program while engineers determine the effects of debris falling
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/07/2 … x.html]CNN space story

Has the Cassini-Huygens mission found life on Titan ? ?
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn7716
Huygens capable of detecting life on the Moon Titan ?

McKay and Smith calculate that if methanogens are thriving on Titan, their breathing would deplete hydrogen levels near the surface to one-thousandth that of the rest of the atmosphere. Detecting this difference would be striking evidence for life, because no known non-biological process on Titan could affect hydrogen concentrations as much.
One hope for testing their idea rests with the data from an instrument on Huygens called the GCMS, which recorded Titan's chemical make-up as the probe descended. It will take time to analyse the raw data, partly because hydrogen's signal will have to be separated from those of other molecules. "Eventually, I hope, we will have numbers for at least upper limits for hydrogen," says Hasso Niemann of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, principal investigator of the GCMS.

IF LIFE exists on Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, we could soon know about it - as long as it's the methane-spewing variety. The chemical signature of microbial life could be hidden in readings taken by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe when it landed on Titan in January.

Then you must not understand the politics at NASA, the reason people like O'Keefe and Griffin get the job is because the know the game, congress methods, the internal conflcits, the back stabbing, keeping the public happy and so forth.

Zubrin had some nice ideas, but he has no clue of the political game and some find parts his ideas to be very offensive by the way he explains them. Sadly in recent American polls Fifty-eight percent say they oppose setting aside the money for an attempted manned Mars landing, while 40 percent are in favor. American newspapers and TV stations have found most Americans say they have at least a "fair amount" of confidence in NASA to prevent another disaster akin to the Columbia disaster in February 2003 and that  three in four Americans favor a continuation of the space shuttle program while the majority believes that NASA is moving at an appropriate pace.

Blah Blah Tiawan.... bloody yap yap, Taipei natter natter... bla bla

I love how these posts get so far off topic that they end up looking nothing like the original thread
I saw one groups of posts on Europe's Aurora/Smart1 plans and Mars mission and it only turned into a rant about Spanish and Germanys culture, Jihad in Madrid, UK Euro welfare, Arabs entering Europe....
...only 10 % of the tread was about the ESA plans for Mars.

maybe all these treads should be moved to free-chat :?

So here's what I think of it, if there was anyone that wanted to attack Taiwan it would have been done under the kind of dicatorship that Mao had set, back then General Chiang kai shek was not a man Mao liked they were close mindest to do it. recent regime had a limiting factor on working rights and Chinese commercialism and consumerism which is advantageous for the USA in many ways so wouldn´t China invading Taiwan be like the US invading Hawaii, or Britain invading the Falklands, except China hasn't been a militray power flexing its might didn't invade Iraq or send people of to Camp X-ray ?
The whole Taiwan card is totally over-played it is just hot-air form old school Chinese Mao loving freaks, American Neo-Cons and Taiwanese right wingers that had Taipei oppressed under martial law Asian conflict could come from anywhere but most likely where one least expects it, Taiwan versus the Japanese over terrorial dispute and fishermen only a few weeks ago they were sending warships to greet each other thorugh the barrel of a gun, India versus Pakistan can occur they have fought three major wars in the past, conflict in Burma/Myanmar spreading, or Japan versus Russia over history and island disputes, trouble from Religious nuts in Indonesia,  former Soviet areas can be trouble, Sri Lanka trouble going to other areas.
Powell's Comments in China had already Riled Taiwan , Colin Powell spoke of eventual " reunification " a word that sends rightwing supporters of Taiwan's independence up the wall and Bush had called the Taiwanese separitist ' insects ' try to fight an elephant,  Armitage had said the "peaceful rising of China" will most likely be the most important event  and the US is not required to defend Taiwan. The mainland Chinese rants and Taiwan rubbish will continue
this rhetoric isn't new, just sabre-rattling.

NASA officials think they have found the source of the problem that delayed the launch of space shuttle Discovery, and if they can fix the glitch in time, they could launch on Tuesday, 26 July. Engineers are wrapping up a troubleshooting plan to address a fuel sensor system issue and there are at least four opportunities for Discovery to launch during the current launch window to the stations orbits, which extends until 31 July but if they don't launch July they'll have to wait until September for a window. Shuttle delay worries ISS partners Japan, one of 16 nations involved, has spent more than $3-billion on space station vehicles and modules including a laboratory named Kibo - Japanese for "hope" and Kibo now sits - along with Europe's Columbus module, a connecting node, station trusses, solar arrays, and a sparkling seven-sided cupola window . The Russians are making it very clear that they do not want to keep providing Soyuz taxi services to and from the ISS for NASA astronauts unless the US pays up. On its face, this is not unreasonable. The Russian space establishment has taken to capitalism like a duck to water. In many ways their single-minded pursuit of profit is an admirable case of an organization doing what it has to do to survive and thrive under very difficult circumstances. There is a chance NASA can't launch before July 31, the next possibilities are in September. Will NASA have to ask for a lift from Soyuz, or get Europe to launch the ESA ATV or get more Russian Progress launches to the station. The Shuttle was a wonderful craft, and some of the missions were great it carried specialised scientists, commercial researchers and oceanographers. However many feel the Shuttle has seen its best days gone. Since the disaster NASA has not been able to put people in Space for almost 2 and 1/2 years. 15 billion on the Shuttle since the last successful launch and ZERO results since. What is astronomical about the STS Shuttle is the cost and the price of launching on it, weigh that with the risks. Compare the NASA budget with Russia, the ESA or China, how did this craft start costing so much ?

http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3679

The USA Mars Telecommunication Orbiter cancelled ?

First there was trouble with Hubble, Constellation, and JIMO and there seems to be a trimmed its request for future work on Project Constellation, which is intended to develop a Crew Exploration Vehicle - a CEV to the Moon and there was no funding for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission for the budget effectively killing the program ?

Then we saw that they will try and Kill one of the most fantastic missions, the Voyager 1&2 program may be canceled. With Voyager we have possibly the only exploration of the outer heliosphere in our lifetimes then NASA officials told seven mission managers (Voyager, Ulysses, Polar, Wind, Geotail, FAST (Fast Auroral SnapshoT) and TRACE (Transition Region and Coronal Explorer) that there is now no money to keep their projects operating

Now the Red Planet is getting chopped down the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter could be axed and there have been reports on the newmars forum that it is cancelled. Placed at a much higher orbit than a satellite designed primarily for science and remote sensing is good, a dedicated relay satellite would be eclipsed for only a very small percentage of its orbit by Mars itself. This craft would be able to 'see' both the Sun and the Earth for effectively twice as long as a satellite in a low Mars orbit and it would double the time it can send data home to Earth and doubles the time its solar panels can soak up solar energy, giving it twice as much power to play with SMART-1 did carry out some trials in laser communications, demonstrating that a laser could track a spacecraft at lunar distances and communicate with it uses its Tereriffe laser facility to communicate with satellites in GEO and Europe is in a leading position in the domain of optical communications..
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object … longid=862
Griffin begins to cut core missions of the Mars Program and reportedly wants to delay the Mars Science Laboratory (big nuclear powered rover) by two to four years. With No MSL and no MTO in 2009 that leaves the window completely empty for a NASA spacecraft. At a much higher  would also mean that any surface science packages or future-Rover on Mars would be able to see the orbiter for about half of its orbit, allowing potential data relay for about 50% of each day as opposed to 8 minutes for an orbiter in a MO type orbit or for even shorter in the planned lower MRO orbit. NASA cancels Mars telecom orbiter mission the Mars Telecommunication Orbiter is cancelled  all the money spent to date on the MTO is 100% wasted now . So NASA has cancelled plans to build a communications satellite that would orbit Mars and serve as a relay for future missions, a Denver newspaper reported that NASA scrubs Red Planet craft to save green.

I've tried to check up on everything happening in this area for the next few years on each nation or agency

Here are some of the significant things in the area of un-manned missions and date for things happening in the space in the near future.
NASA have launched the Mercury Messenger probe, it was sent up in 2004 and will orbit the planet Mercury in 2011. Europe's Cern and FermiLab designs are also expanding and will perhaps open new forms of energy such as anti-matter propulsion. There were also plans for the MTO mission but it looks like this project has been axed. USA have an Asteroid mission called DAWN, will fly past a few small asteroids before changing speed to orbit one of the largest asteroids – Vesta. There, it will change speeds several times to vary the orbit for different science observations. Cameras and sensors will map the surface and gather clues to its mineral composition. After a year’s exploration, Dawn will change speed once more to leave Vesta and fly by another small asteroid, or possibly orbit the largest asteroid – Ceres. Dawn is a mission to explore the structure and composition of Ceres and Vesta, two large asteroids that have remained relatively unchanged since their formation at the dawn of our solar system. The mission is expected to launch in 2006. The USA will send up Phoenix in 2007 to Mars there were also calls for JIMO to Jupiter's Moons and the Neptune Orbiter with Probes part of NASA's "Vision Missions" would be a nuclear-fission powered exploration craft to Neptune  Here is the newmars thread on the Mercury probe.
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … 16&start=0
Europe has already their own moon project with the craft Smart-1 which is going strong and sending back photos it will start mapping the Lunar Surface and uses the experimental ion-drive technology. SMART-1 will look for signs of water in the form of ice on the Moon, that ice is thought to be tucked away within permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles. Europe have built the Columbus module for the ISS, they have also plans for the design for the jules-verne ATV, and with the Aurora to Mars Europe will be doing more robotic missions to Mars. Rosetta is a project by the Europeans and will be the first mission ever to land on a comet, the craft will rely solely on solar cells and two harpoons will anchor the probe to the surface, the self-adjusting landing gear will ensure that it stays upright, it will using fly-bys of the Earth and Mars to help it to get to its final destination it will also fly past Asteroid Steins.  Corot will be the first mission capable of detecting rocky planets and astronomers from ESA's Member States are taking part in a French led mission to be the first to search for rocky planets around other stars. Corot will be placed on a circular orbit allowing continuous observation for more than 150 days of two regions in the sky. Corot will also be used to detect 'starquakes' that sends ripples across a star's surface. This will be a French mission in partnership with the ESA and will launch in 2006 from a Soyuz-Fregat launcher at Baikonur. Watch out for Don Quixote where ESA do a similar mission to NASA's Deep impact by this time doing a missile type strike on an Asteroid. Here is a thread on ESA's Asteroid mission
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … highlight=
The Russian government has approved a space programme for the next 10 years. The programme provides money for the development of a reusable spacecraft to replace the ageing Soyuz manned launch vehicle. Russia also wants to start experiments to test whether it is possible for humans to make the flight to Mars. Under the plans, six volunteers will spend 500 days in a mock space module in Moscow. Over 20 volunteers have already applied to take part. Russia is to build a space launch pad in South Korea by 2007, Itar-Tass news agency reported, Russian space agency Roskosmos and Khrunichev said that a contract covering "construction of a rocket launch pad for civilian use and space exploration" was signed by both countries. South Korea's Ministry of Science and Technology said that South Korea intends to spend 13 million dollars on dispatching its first spaceman to the ISS on board the Russian space ship Soyuz. Russia has laos plans for Venus, the Moon and Mars. Russian mission Phobos-Grunt has been given high priority, the Phobos-Grunt is a planned Russian sample return mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. Russia is touting the Klipper spacecraft as a replacement for their workhorse spacecraft, the Soyuz and in 2007 a Soyuz launcher will take off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. On the Soyuz fly me to the Moon the idea is to sell one of three Soyuz seats to a space tourist for an initial week-long stay at the International Space Station (ISS). The space sightseer and fellow crew members would then add to their travelogue by sojourning onward for a week-long lunar stint. The Russians have already been pushing Space Tourism and other scinece missions like the Ptaneta-A program and Aster projects are under consideration and Roscosmos have Venus lander designs called Venera-D. Here is the newmars thread on Russia's Mars mission
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1521
Chardrayaan-1 will be the first Indian Mission to the Moon and devoted to high-resolution remote sensing of the lunar surface features, Europe seems to be helping India on their Lunar mission. It is likely that Japan will be also looking at the Moon, however Japan's struggling lunar programme is plagued by money shortages and technical hitches. Ten years of an economic slow down with the Japanese economy and the failures of the JAXA Mars mission are not helping the space projects. JAXA with the Japanese Hayabusa it is due to rendevous with the asteroid Itokawa (1998SF36) NASDA or JAXA have other plans Japanese H-2 Transfer Vehicle or HTV seems to be on track. Japan plans to start building a manned base on the moon and a space shuttle within the next 20 years newspaper reports have said. Solar-B, is a follow-on to the highly successful Japan/US/UK Yohkoh or Solar-A. It is also likely that Japan will take part in the mission for Europe's twin BepiColumbo orbiters at Mercury. The Japanese have also recently launched the JapanAstro-E2 Satellite, Suzuka, is a replacement for the Astro-E satellite, which was destroyed because of a launch failure in 2000, innovative instrumentation on board the satellite will explore the Universe in energetic x-rays. Japan plans to start building a manned base on the moon and a space shuttle within the next 20 years newspaper reports have said. Here is the news mars topic on Hayabusa the Japanese asteroid mission rendezvous
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1594
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is to launch August 2005. The USA will see the launch of STEREO in 2006 making a 3D map of the structure of the Sun. Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) mission will address the origin, evolution and interplanetary consequences of one the most massive disturbances in our solar system called the coronal mass ejection (CME). The United States will launch Mars Sample Return Orbiter in 2015, the most difficult step in the robotic exploration of Mars is the Mars Sample Return Mission. NASA plans to send a major mission to return samples of Martian rock and soil to Earth. Current plans call for such a large-scale sample return mission to be launched in 2014, and a second in 2016.The USA will see New-Horizons go on a 15 year trek to study Pluto and Kuiper Belt objects, and additional elements of the spacecraft and instrument payload were installed on the New Horizons spacecraft. These included an array of heaters, inertial measurement units, a repaired flight computer, and the Ralph remote sensing instrument package. New Horizons will fly over Mysterious Pluto, Congress gave NASA money for a mission to Pluto over the space agency's objection. The bill, signed by President George W. Bush, placed $110 million in NASA's 2003 budget for the New Horizons project. The money allowed the spacecraft design team to start on the final design of the interplanetary probe. Called the next Hubble scope the USA also have plans for the JWST, this could be a great mission.
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2191
Chinese plans for lunar landing and Moon exploration. Chinese exploration of the solar system have also featured in media reports. China is also scheduled to launch its first space telescope,  into orbit in the near future. With a 100-cm optical lens and a group of X-ray equipped telescopes on it, the 2-ton-weight telescope, called "Space Solar Telescope", is designed with a service term of three to five years. With the cost of over RMB 2 billion yuan, the Space Solar Telescope is China's most expensive space explorer by far. Differing from Hubble, China's Space Solar Telescope will focus on diversification of solar magnetic field, as well as solar activities and the space climate. Luna-Glob will be a Russia China operation, a Joint project with Russian and Chinese Space Agencies to do a project with high speed penetrators and sample return from the Moon. China's second manned space flight will carry two astronauts into space and will orbit the Earth for five days. The country's space authorities made the announcement about the mission. China Daily reports : "For the first time, astronauts will enter and live in the orbital module of the spacecraft to do scientific experiments," the China Aerospace Science and Technology (CAST) group's official statement said, the Chinese are also said to be looking at a heavy launcher
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2565
Venus Express is a European craft and will be the first spacecraft to perform a global investigation of the Venusian atmosphere. ESA objectives are to study the Venusian atmosphere, the plasma environment, and the surface of Venus in great detailand they have begun to reuse much of the design of the Mars Express spacecraft for Venus.
Hyper is a mission that will investigate two of the fundamental forces of nature: gravity and electromagnetism. For its investigation into gravity, Hyper will precisely map the fabric of space around the Earth, strictly testing Albert Einstein's theory of gravity: General Relativity. Europeans are also working on the idea of their own Super-Scope called the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope with designs by the ESO. The OWL will be able to beat possible distorting effects by using 'adaptive optics' and it will be a ground based scope about 100M or 109Yards across. ESA's Vega has been designed as a single body launcher with three solid propulsion stages and an additional liquid propulsion upper module used for attitude and orbit control, and satellite release. Unlike most small launchers, Vega will be able to place multiple payloads into orbit. Development of the Vega launcher started in 1998. The first launch is planned for 2007 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana where the Ariane-1 launch facilities are being adapted for its use. The Europeans are also working on the Solar Orbiter and this craft will study the dynamo deep inside the Sun that is the probable source of the magnetic activity, the Solar Orbiter is managed by ESA, but has strong international collaboration and NASA is likely to become involved as a partner. MICROSCOPE will be a joint CNES-ESA-ONERA mission will test Equivalence Principle, one of the foundations of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The Herschel Space will be an Observatory for  Infrared at the 2nd Lagrange point. XEUS will be a permanent space-borne X-ray observatory that the ESA are currently working on. Planck is a European mission with international support from the US scientific tems, it will look back at the dawn of time. And finally Gaia will be one of the most fantastic missions of the future, it be so powerful that it will perhaps find 10,000 to 50,000 extra solar planets, the Gaia will conduct a census of one thousand million stars. Gaia will be placed in an orbit around the Sun, at a distance of 1.5 million kilometres further out than Earth, a special location, known as L2 and here is the thread on this Gaia mission
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1443

seems there is a lot going on in the near future

I saw a few website with some great pics of it

its over now 

fantastic links Cindy 

Mars missions - since Wernher von Braun's plans in 1946, some fo the lander and base designs looked good like the Combo Lander Mission and Marpost
http://astronautix.com/craftfam/martions.htm

Mars Society
http://astronautix.com/craft/marssion.htm
launch date July 1, 2011

We could go to Titan and will perhaps land people there, Titan would be a fantastic place to study and certainly not as regular as our Moon. This Titan journey would be great, it would be a fantastic mission it could happen some day but not today.
The guys at NASA / ESA did a fantastic job, but there was still an element of luck with the Cassini-Huygens mission. Even down to the last day at the arrival at Saturn they were still correcting minor bugs and technical flaws in the mission. Europe have done Mars Express but have no experience with Mars missions, NASA have done wonderful unmanned Mars missions but also seen a lot of their craft getting smashed on Mars, Russia landed Veneras on Venus and had a Mars probe that survived for a few mins but they have no real know-how of long term manned space slights beyond the orbits of stations like MIR.

Listen to Martian Republic and GCNRevenger there are serious problems with such a mission.