NASA said that it hopes to open up part of the International Space Station to other researchers, including private sector research. The space station should be completed by 2010. Once completed, the International Space Station should have about twice as much onboard research area as NASA intends to use. Allowing private companies and other government agencies to use space aboard the station isn't likely to reduce 1.5 billion dollar yearly upkeep costs of the station. However, it will spread the cost of flights to the station, because private companies will need to pay transportation costs for their equipment.

A budget cut for NASA will delay the Orion shuttle launch. Congress has appropriated $545 million dollars less to the NASA budget than President Bush requested for the agency. NASA administrators claim that this will delay the Orion shuttle launches for an additional 4 to 6 months. The Orion shuttle is scheduled to replace the current Discovery shuttle, which will be retired in 2010. The original schedule called for Orion to start flights in 2014.

Here's what MSNBC reported from NASA administrator Michael Griffin:

Griffin said the gap between the shuttle's retirement and Orion's debut raises practical and strategic concerns.

Virginia's Space Adventures has gained a new client. Software billionaire Charles Simonyi will be taking a 10 day ride aboard the international space station. The Russian Soyuz TMA-10 will be taking aboard as part of their crew. Fluffy MSNBC coverage and industry back patting is available here.

NASA's Atlantis shuttle is preparing to launch March 15th. The shuttle will be delivering a pair of solar arrays and a new segment to the international space station.

PlanetSpace, a company that is competing for NASA contracts to re-supply the International Space Station is looking to use is orbital craft for suborbital point to point travel. This means that a trip from New York to Paris could conceivably take 20 minutes. They claim that the silver dart will be able to achieve this by gliding over 25,000 miles at hypersonic speeds.

Quote from the AP - "A glitch in an electrical power switching unit at 1:03 a.m. EST Sunday shut down two communication systems, a gyroscope, some lights and heaters". Backup systems maintained essential functions and the gyroscope was turned back on in the morning.

Transformational Space Corp and PlanetSpace received a promise for continued consultations, advise, and feedback from NASA regarding their development of spacecraft capable of delivering cargo and crew to the International Space Station. The promise stems for the COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) competition previously sponsored by NASA. SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler were awarded $500 million from that competition in order to pursue their own designs for spacecraft. The COTS competition will be re-opened in 2010, which may give Transformational Space Corp (t/Space) and PlanetSpace a chance to get contracts for re-supplying the space station. It is estimated that those contracts will be lucrative to the tune of several billion dollars.

NASA will continue missions to the international space station through 2020 with the, as yet undeveloped and unbuilt, Orion space craft until 2020. The current plan for shuttle fleets from NASA is to run missions using the current fleet until 2010. Between 2010 and 2014, NASA will rely on international partners to resupply the space station. In 2014 the fleet will be replaced with the Orion shuttle. The Orion Shuttle will run missions to the space station and the moon between 2010 and 2020. NASA plans to run at least two missions per year to the space station using the Orion Shuttle as well as missions in support of the planned moon colony.

3 Space walks in 9 days. I sort of wonder how exerting these space walks really are.

Docking of the unmanned shuttle, Progress M-59, with the International Space Station was successful.

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 astronauts conducted a space walk on Dec 18, 2006 to fix a jammed solar wing on the space station. They were in space aboard the shuttle Discovery to complete a crew rotation.