Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) executives Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmdit offered $33 million to refurbish NASA’s Hangar One. As a result, the three executives would essentially be leasing the space from NASA to park eight of their private jets in there. Page, Brin, and Schmidt made the offer through their H211 airplane operations company this past September. NASA has not accepted the offer as of yet.
The United States, Russia, and their partners have decided that they will allow the International Space Station (ISS) to sink into the Pacific ocean at the end of it’s life cycle after 2020 since it would be considered junk at that point.
The Space Shuttle is a launch system and orbital spacecraft that is operated by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) over the last thirty years (1981-2011). The Space Shuttle completed 135 missions. The Space Shuttle Atlantis performed the 135th launch. The Space Shuttle fleet delivered the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station, and many satellites. Two of the shuttles were lost as part of the program, the Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. Nature.com put together a re-cap of all 135 missions in the video above.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has invested $75 million into Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). SpaceX is led by CEO Elon Musk. NASA is investing in SpaceX as part of the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev2) effort. NASA’s CCDev2 effort is to accelerate the availability of space transportation to their crew as they get prepare to retire the Space Shuttle. [socaltech]
In the timelapse video above, you will see NASA Kennedy Space Center employees assembling an aerial photo outside of the Vehicle Assembly Building. The event was organized in honor of the Space Shuttle Program’s 30 year celeration. This video was uploaded 5 days ago and has surpassed over 120,000 views, making it viral.
Last week the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a nine-story rocket named Glory. Glory was carrying a satellite, which had a purpose of observing how aerosol affects the Earth’s climate. Glory did not reach orbit and fell back to Earth instead.
Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) signed a contract with NASA that is valued at $2.5 billion. The $2.5 billion contract is good for the next 10 years. “It’s basically everything that’s plugged into the wall that’s IT,” stated NASA spokesman Michael Sweigart. “This contract combines some services on a number of different contracts across the agency.”
This year NASA had achieved many milestones. Some of these milestones include the 10th anniversary of the International Space Station, the participation in SpaceX’s first commercial spacecraft, aiding the Chilean miners, discovering the first known microorganism on Earth that can thrive and reproduce using toxic chemical arsenic and helping with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Below is a press release that NASA sent out about their year in review and above is a video I grabbed from YouTube.