"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.
Today's commercial rockets can lift only about 10 tons into space, far short of what is needed to enable deep-space exploration returning to the Moon, and later venturing on to Mars the things that are and should be NASA's core mission.
WSJ: NASA's SLS Is a Key to Deep Space �� Letters to the Editor
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.
So the ISS's value for science and even as a staging post for deep space travel is not clear-cut.
Deep space exploration is where NASA belongs.
WSJ: NASA's SLS Is a Key to Deep Space �� Letters to the Editor
Unlike a conventional spacecraft, which would be navigated on the basis of signals sent to and from ground controllers, Deep Space 1 is programmed to make its own left-right, up-down decisions on data from sensors that look at the stars to track position and guide course changes.
The Deep Space 1 spacecraft is scheduled at 12:46 a.m. to come within 15 kilometers (10 miles) of an asteroid called Braille.
With shrinking overall budgets and internal NASA divisions about how much financial support to allocate for commercial-space ventures, the agency is looking for ways to spark public excitement about deep-space travel.
With shrinking overall budgets and internal NASA divisions about how much financial support to allocate for commercial space ventures, the agency is looking for ways to spark public excitement about deep-space travel.
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.
The launch of NASA's Deep Space 1 aboard Boeing Delta 7326 rocket is scheduled for Cape Canaveral, Florida.
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.
ENGADGET: Lockheed Martin shows us how it's getting Orion ready to explore the cosmos
The board was hooked up to a lighting fixture Holbert is working on as part of NASA's upcoming deep space habitat concept generator.
One of the largest flooded cavities in the world (the lake at the bottom is estimated to be 70m deep), this cavernous subterranean space was only discovered by locals in 1924.
That plus the news of the vastly larger 1012 DA 14 which has just gone sailing past (in a near miss that in astonomical terms is hardly a miss at all) leads to the hope that Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources get going with their idea of mining asteroids pretty sharpish.
FORBES: Meteorites Are The Universe's Way Of Telling Us We Need More Than One Planet To Live On
Chirac, who is one of the most enthusiastic champions of this breathing space, did not explain what France is going to do to save a constitution which is in a deep coma...
By interplanetary space, we are talking about an environment in which space radiation is much more intense than it is in LEO, because above Earth orbit is the geomagnetosphere, the Van Allen belts, which trap charged particle radiation coming from deep space.
Eventually the company is hoping to use its research to create orbiting systems that can fling other satellites into deep space, but seeing how the last Dnepr rocket crashed and burned on liftoff in 2006, Team Tether is probably best off taking this endeavor one step at a time.
ENGADGET: Inspector Gadget tackles 'The Case of the Experimental Space Tether'
Europe is looking to play a significant role in America's plans for the manned exploration of deep space.
One attraction is that it would almost certainly lead eventually to European astronauts being invited to take part in deep space missions.
"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.
ENGADGET: NASA and IHMC building X1 exoskeleton to give us a lift, keep us fit in space and on Earth
The twisted metal part, jammed in a sliver of open space between the buildings, has cables and levers on it and is about 3 feet wide and 1.5 feet deep.
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