Last year Dona Ana County in New Mexico voted for an increased tax to help build a new spaceport in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. Now it's time for Sierra County, including the town of Truth or Consequences, to take a vote. The county will vote on a 0.25% sales tax to help fund the construction of the spaceport. If the tax passes in Sierra County, then the government can legally begin collecting the spaceport tax. Apparently New Mexico tax districts are multi-county groupings. The new tax proposal has generated some news coverage by promoting contention between people who want the spaceport and people who don't want to pay the tax. A pretty common protagonist-antagonist match-up in the papers.

The five satellites that comprise the THEMIS project are set to launch today aboard a single rocket. The five rockets will study the magnetosphere of the earth for clues as to the nature of solar storms that damage satellites and electronic communications on earth. A short intro into the THEMIS project
A short intro into a similar European Space Agency Project

The Plank Mission is a satelitte based exploration craft that is slated to explore the galaxy for clues to the origin of the Universe. Working from the big bang theory, the Plank Mission satelitte will use large telescopes to measure small changes in temperature caused by fluctuations in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Scientists believe that the accuracy of the telescope used will provide a glimpse into the forces present when the Universe had just been created - as young as 300,000 years after the explosion that God sent from the heavens to unleash matter into the world. Or is that not an accurate picture of the Big Bang theory?

More about at home fabrication. I read about this story on Boing Boing, which was a blog post from this guy, who originally read about this machine on treehugger a few years ago. Wacky Internet.

COROT has finished it's testing phase with excellent results. With that completed, the satelitte launched by the European Space Agency has begun it mission. COROT has begun looking for new planets around other stars. In order to accomplish this, COROT will be monitoring the amount of light emitted from distant stars. It is thought that when the light received from a star decreases in intensity, the satellite will have detected a planet passing in front of the star. This method of planet detection is thought to improve our chances of detecting smaller planets closer to a star, planets more like Earth, than previously possible.

The New Horizons space probe is approaching Jupiter and will reach it's closest point to the planet on Feb 28th, 2007. The probe will be considered to be 'passing' Jupiter between Jan, 2007 and June, 2007, during which time New Horizons will be making observations of the planet. The main goal in approaching Jupiter is to use the large planet's gravity to accelerate the probe up to 52,000 mph - 9,000 miles per hour faster than it is currently traveling. The probe will then continue on to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons is expected to reach Pluto in July, 2015.

While the New Horizons probe passes Jupiter it will be capturing some images of the planet, especially an are known as the 'little red spot', a small storm located south of Jupiter's 'Great Red Spot'.

There isn't much happening in the world of space travel today. Most of the news is just re-hashing old stories. None-the-less here's a quick run down of the more interesting stories of the day.

There is more blow back from the Chinese Anti-Satellite (ASAT) test from mid-January. MSNBC once again refers to the satellite as having been blown up by a ballistics missile. Early reports indicated a laser weapon. I would really like to know which is true.

People have high expectations of the building capabilities of the private space tourism industry. This article just runs down some of the more interesting players in the game and how the organizations are bureaucratizing themselves for the launch of private space travel. The Personal Spaceflight Federation, an industry association of companies involved in private space travel, is setting up to work with the FAA to develop manageable policies for people in space.

MSNBC published a neat article outlining what is being done to design habitats for the moon colony. NASA's Constellation Program Office seems to be coordinating the effort.

The main thrust of the lunar habitat projects are inflatable dwellings. The reason for this is that the planned payload of the Orion ships are only 13,000 pounds. Space Station modules, which are apparently the only other option for lunar habitats, weigh up to 30,000 pounds.

Beyond talks with Lockheed and Boeing, NASA is talking with several other private contractors to help design and possibly build these inflatable habitats. One company is Bigelow Aerospace, who has already launched one of their inflatable habitat designs into orbit, and has a second test launch planned for April, 2007. The second company is ILC Dover. They have built a prototype for a NASA funded test in Antarctica.

NASA is working to protect us from a giant asteroid collision. I like the simplicity of the current popular plan: just push the thing enough, while it is very far away. The current plan calls for building a satelitte that will orbit the asteroid and change its course ever so slightly by exerting a small gravitational pull on the asteroid. The plan even has a catchy pop name -- asteroid tractor. One draw back has got to be that starting early is a huge priority.

The Space Station is set to receive some new supplies after the unmanned Progress M-59 took into orbit. The ship carried 2 1/2 tons of fuel (among other things). I was personally unaware that the ISS did not use solar power for all its power needs.

NASA will be launching five satellites to study geomagnetic substorms. The project is title THEMIS or 'Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms'. Sometimes acronyms are very useful. The project will investigate how solar winds interact with the magnetosphere. It sounds very similar to the previous European project reported on earlier at Aceize.

Rocket Recovery Test by the Indian Space Research Organization. The capsule to be recovered is called the SRE-1. This is the 11th launch by the Indians. The rocket carries the first Indonesian made satellite.

Google, the University of Washington, and Arizona University will work together on the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) project that will produce a huge database of points in the solar system. The telescope is planned to begin operation in 2013. The project is dubbed as a 'movie of the universe'. It seems as though the plan is to put together all the 30,000 gigs of daily images into a consistent moving picture.

More Information about LSST

New software uploaded to mars. Really, I just think this is spiffy. The Mars Rovers had a software push to improve their ability to navigate terrain on their own.

Lunar ambitions for China, Japan, others

China will launch the Chang’e I, a lunar orbiter, in 2007. During its 1 year mission they will engage in imaging and studies of the moon's surface. They will also be looking at the distribution of 14 usable elements on the moon's surface.

Japan's JAXA will also launch a lunar orbiter in 2007. The mission is more extensive than China's mission, however they will be studying very much the same things as the Chinese (surface and subsurface architecture, mineral deposits).

The European Space Agency's SMART-1 recently completed a lunar orbiter mission.