So the ISS's value for science and even as a staging post for deep space travel is not clear-cut.
Other spacecraft have come close to asteroids but never nearly as close as Deep Space 1.
Commander Hadfield believes that the ISS provides the perfect test bed for developing deep space travel capabilities.
Europe is looking to play a significant role in America's plans for the manned exploration of deep space.
The launch of NASA's Deep Space 1 aboard Boeing Delta 7326 rocket is scheduled for Cape Canaveral, Florida.
They were then despatched towards deep space, in the general direction of the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy.
RPSs are ultra-long life batteries for use in the Esa's deep space programme.
He said he's hopeful that ventures such as Deep Space Industries can succeed as more companies venture into space, however.
This might be a little difficult for some to reconcile with my recent dismissal of a claim by Deep Space Industries.
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Curiosity has "ears" to hear commands relayed from NASA's Deep Space Network via the Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance spacecraft orbiting Mars.
One attraction is that it would almost certainly lead eventually to European astronauts being invited to take part in deep space missions.
If, as expected, Voyager I does cross the heliopause and passes into uncharted deep space, it may actually outlive its home planet.
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The three joined the ThinkQuest Website design contest with a web site entry entitled "Ocean AdVENTure: From Deep Sea to Deep Space".
The board was hooked up to a lighting fixture Holbert is working on as part of NASA's upcoming deep space habitat concept generator.
The Deep Space 1 spacecraft is scheduled at 12:46 a.m. to come within 15 kilometers (10 miles) of an asteroid called Braille.
"The radiation environment in deep space is several hundred times what it is on Earth, and that's even inside a shielded spacecraft, " Zeitlin said.
While in deep space Dish satellites continue to stay the course.
Last week US company Deep Space Industries (DSI) announced plans to use asteroid material for manufacture by harvesting them and using 3D printers sent into space.
"NASA has been making steady progress toward realizing the president's goal of deep space exploration, while doing so in a more affordable way, " NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said.
"Robotics is playing a key role aboard the International Space Station and will be critical in our future human exploration of deep space, " said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA's Space Technology Program.
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"We are very pleased that the engine started and continued to thrust, " said Marc Rayman, Deep Space 1's chief mission engineer and deputy mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
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It's an astonishingly difficult task to develop a ship capable of taking man into deep space and returning him safely, which is why so much effort is being put into Orion's planning and construction.
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The series' title--taken from a late-70's ABC series on which the new one was loosely based--as well as its apocalyptic plot line and deep space locale probably scared off as many viewers as it attracted.
Although spacecraft instruments are set to return photographs and compositional data, the encounter primarily is a test of Deep Space 1's autonomous navigation system, the last of 12 technologies the mission was designed to pioneer.
Chimera architecture removes those boundaries by providing the power to conduct nearly 100 billion mathematical operations per second to perform image processing, using computational techniques used in X-ray CT scanners, deep space telescopes and spy satellites.
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Deep Space Industries said it can build its first class of probes largely with off-the-shelf parts and book them on other launch vehicles, such as the French-built Ariane rockets or the Falcon boosters developed by SpaceX.
Now, at the 2005 Joint Assembly meeting organised by the American Geophysical Union, space scientists say they are confident - and agreed - that Voyager has gone beyond the termination shock and is flirting with deep space.
Deep space exploration is where NASA belongs.
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