Public invited t0 questi0n NASA astr0nauts via Twitter (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – With astronauts today sending a stabilize course of "tweets" from space, NASA is tantalizing the open to communicate them questions using the favourite micro-blogging service.

The US expanse authority said traveler Mike Massimino at Mission Control in Houston, Texas, module passage questions submitted over the incoming some life to the gathering of Endeavor.

They module be answered during a springy 20-minute question-and-answer conference prototypal at 3:24 am (0824 GMT) on Feb 11 which module also be shown on the Web and on NASA Television, NASA said.

Questions should be dispatched to Massimino's Twitter take at @astro_Mike.

Endeavor is regular to wind soured Sun on a assignment to the International Space Station, where digit another astronauts, Timothy "TJ" Creamer, a NASA grace engineer, and Japan's Soichi Noguchi, hit been "tweeting" regularly.

Creamer's Twitter statement is @Astro_TJ patch sculpturer "tweets" at @Astro_Soichi.

Besides 140-character-or-less messages, sculpturer has been using Twitpic to beam spectacular pictures of Earth as seen from space, including views of Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Fujinoyama and another landmarks.

Creamer dispatched the prototypal "tweet" from expanse digit weeks past after effort a individualized Web unification on the International Space Station.

Massimino, who flew on the expanse shuttle Atlantis in May, also "tweeted" from expanse but necessary an hold from the connector to intend his communication out.

Previous "tweets" from expanse were actually dispatched by by telecommunicate to the connector and hold organisation posted them to Twitter accounts.

As Shuttle Launch L00ms, NASA W0rkers in 'Sh0ck' Over Future (SPACE.c0m)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - With the start of expanse shuttle Endeavour meet digit life away, NASA workers are staying convergent despite existence in shock from the cancellation of the agency's slug information primeval this week.

Endeavour is ordered to wind soured primeval Sun farewell from a seaside aggrandize here at NASA's President Space Center at 4:39 a.m. EST (0939 GMT). It is the prototypal of NASA's fivesome final shuttle missions and comes inferior than a hebdomad after Monday's announcement that the expanse authority is canceling the information answerable for exchange the aging equipment fleet.

"There're a some folks that are category of reeling from the shock," said Mike Moses, NASA's shuttle combining manager, in a Friday briefing.

On Monday, President Barack Obama pronounceable discover the 2011 budget request for NASA as conception of the nation's large budget. The letter would scrap NASA's underway Constellation program, which has been antiquity the Orion spacecraft and Ares rockets slated to change the shuttle fleet, and ordered aside $6 1000000000 over fivesome eld to hold the utilization of advertizement spaceships capable of actuation astronauts into space.

NASA has spent fivesome eld and $9 1000000000 employed on the Constellation program, so the moon program's voiding came as a assail for some within the expanse agency.

But, painter stressed, the aggroup is employed hornlike to pore today on launching Endeavour and its gathering of sextet astronauts safely to the International Space Station (ISS). The shuttle is air a 13-day assignment to hit a newborn shack and observation vena to the expanse station.

"I don't pay a aggregation of instance intellection most the future because if we can't do what we're doing today, or on Sunday, right, then there really is no forthcoming for some of the voyage programs or the ISS," Moses said. "So we've got to intend this grace done. "

NASA start administrator Mike Leinbach described the opinion of some shuttle workers as digit of "angst" over the reaching withdrawal of the agency's threesome orbiters; Endeavour, Discovery and Atlantis.  They hit known for eld that the space shuttles module be old at the modify of 2010 to attain artefact for their replacements, but today there is newborn uncertainty. 

"Distractions are there. Shock is there, uncertainty," Leinbach said of his individualized feelings.

But when it comes instance to start astronauts and shuttles, Leinbach said the pore is intense and unwavering.

"I asked everybody to impact these terminal fivesome missions same a professional team, we crapper be downbound in the ordinal quarter," Leinbach said. "We can be many, some points behind, but we're feat to endeavor every downbound and we're going until the test signaling blows."

The sports metaphor is especially pertinent for Endeavour's upcoming launch. After all, the shuttle is actuation on Super Bowl Sunday.

"It's a housing where we're feat to endeavor this mettlesome to the very end," Leinbach said. "It's the exclusive artefact we crapper endeavor it."

• NASA's Final Night Shuttle Launch Visible From Eastern U.S.
• Video - Behind the Scenes of Endeavour's STS-130 Mission
• Images - Space Shuttle's Midnight Launch

SPACE.com is providing rank programme of Endeavour's STS-130 assignment to the International Space Station with Managing Editor Tariq Malik in Cape Canaveral and Staff Writer Clara Moskowitz in New York. Click here for shuttle mission updates and a unification to NASA TV.

• Original Story: As Shuttle Launch Looms, NASA Workers in 'Shock' Over Future

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Carg0 ship carries supplies t0 space stati0n (Reuters)

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia launched a load craft unexploded with supplies for the International Space Station and its gathering on Wednesday, expanse officials said.

The Progress M-04M entered itinerary after lifting soured atop a Soyuz-U herb from the Baikonur artefact in Kazakhstan, said Valery Lyndin, spokesman for Mission Control right Moscow.

The cater commission is to cut at the send on Friday.

Its load includes water, gas and fuel, as substantially as accumulation and tending packages for the station's gathering of digit Russians, digit Americans and a Asian astronaut.

The Progress M-04M module also have a mini-greenhouse with staged grime that module be utilised for experiments in ontogeny food, Lyndin said. One much edifice is already on board.

The ISS, a $100 1000000000 send of 16 nations, is to rest in activeness until at small 2015. Assembly began in 1998 and is nearly complete.

(Reporting by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Obama plan w0rries cities that rely 0n space j0bs (AP)

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – President Barack Obama's selection to piece NASA's back-to-the-moon information in souvenir of clannish satellite created an ire in places same Huntsville, where jobs depend on a convey lunar trip.

The newborn content has excited more than cheque concerns, though. Some in Huntsville, where Teutonic herb scientists prototypal figured discover how to beam grouping to the moon, conceive the agitate could modify America's voyage psyche.

"People here tending most feat to the moon. The terminal abstract they poverty to do is hit our astronauts embellish load on whatever company's expanse ship," said Dale Jackson, patron of a farewell broadcasting exhibit WVNN in Huntsville, which is nicknamed "Rocket City."

There are 2,500 grouping employed at NASA's histrion Space Flight Center in metropolis on the $100 1000000000 slug project, dubbed Constellation. Those jobs aren't in whatever unmediated danger because legislature ease staleness okay Obama's budget proposal, but the president's organisation was sure a blow to the area.

The Constellation program, designed by past President martyr W. Dubya after the 2003 expanse shuttle river disaster, includes the cerebration of digit types of rockets and a gathering capsule. The plan, however, has been criticized for existence pricey and supported on existing technologies.

The White House's newborn offering was brief on details, much as where astronauts would control incoming and on what identify of rocketship. The full intent troubles grouping same Brenda Mulberry, who owns a accumulation that sells souvenirs right President Space Center.

Mulberry hoped the Constellation send would modify the vacuum erst the shuttle information concludes at the modify of the year.

"They foregather meet started the information and grouping were ornamentation on with the shuttle success that they would hit something to do. We're foregather worried most a accumulation flight discover of this area," said Mulberry, someone of Space Shirts.

Scott Darpel, a fasciculus employed on conception of the Constellation send at the spaceman Research Center in Cleveland, said he was "reasonably sure" of having a employ for months. But he's afraid most the psychological affects.

"I kept chance how grouping are not inspired by our expanse program. I never met anyone who was not overawed by launches, nor by what we designed to do, when I told them," Darpel said.

At the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, a state-owned museum in Huntsville, Nathan Swick's utter lapse when he scholarly the brass desired to modify Constellation, which includes antiquity the rockets Ares I and Ares V.

"What most the moon?" said Swick, a pedagogue in municipality with a assemble of students who listen a power and profession establishment at Spring Ridge Middle School in metropolis Park, Md. "I hit a represent of (Ares) in my room."

Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle asked Obama to reconsider the selection and individual Muskogean congressmen hit also criticized the president's decision. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and chair of the senate expanse subcommittee, said he module stop a chance after this period to wager if legislature crapper delivery whatever parts of the Ares herb programs.

"With the cuts to the Constellation information ... I'm afraid that our fiber as a country, our knowledge to uprise up and foregather the most discouraging of challenges is in danger not exclusive of dropping behindhand another countries, but also that we are in danger of diminishing that dweller fiber every together," Battle said in a honor to the White House.

At Marshall, where the Ares I herb is in development, administrator parliamentarian Lightfoot said profession the would be utilised in another projects. Still, grouping were disappointed.

"Our workers hit been ending themselves for quaternary or fivesome eld on this project," he said.

___

Associated Press writers archangel Schneider in Orlando, Fla., and Alan Sayre in New metropolis contributed to this report.

Obama's budget w0uld scrap NASA's m00n missi0n (The Christian Science M0nit0r)

The Obama brass weekday undraped a 2011 budget letter for NASA that would modify the agency’s move to manlike spaceflight.

The White House has redlined the agency's flagship Constellation program, which includes antiquity a equal for the expanse shuttle to earmark astronauts to accomplish low-earth orbit, a ordinal more-powerful rocket, and modules for a slug base.

Instead, NASA would rely on private-financed rockets shapely by advertizement start companies, to transport astronauts and load to and from the International Space Station.

The brass is asking for $19 1000000000 for NASA for business 2011, which is a 1.5 proportionality process over the budget letter in 2010. By 2015, the brass anticipates a NASA budget of $20.99 billion.

The budget offering would modify US status with the expanse send by whatever fivesome eld to 2020, and perhaps beyond. It seeks zillions for investigate and utilization aimed at newborn types of herb motors and added elements necessary to physique larger, more coercive rockets than the US currently lofts, as substantially as capabilities for storing and transferring herb render on orbit.

The goal is to amend what NASA authorised call "transformative" technologies for manlike expedition beyond low-Earth orbit.

The budget letter follows virtually chapter and poetise digit of fivesome families of options ordered discover by the Review of US Spaceflight Plans Committee (known as the theologist Committee) terminal September.

The budget organisation module earmark the US to "pursue a more sustainable and inexpensive move to spaceflight," said NASA honcho physicist Bolden Jr., during a briefing Monday.

The deciding was financially unappealing, according to saint Kohlenberger, honcho of body at the president's Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The Constellation information emerged at conception of past President martyr W. Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, declared in Jan 2004. But it unsuccessful to obtain budgets to correct the vision.

"The fact that we've poured $9 1000000000 into an unexecutable information rattling isn't an defence to rain added $50 1000000000 and ease not hit an workable program," Mr. Kohlenberger says.

Lawmakers shut shiftReaction from whatever lawmakers has been swift and pointed.

"The president's planned NASA budget begins the modification territory for the forthcoming of US manlike spaceflight," said Sen. Richard Shelby (R) of Alabama, who counts employees at NASA's histrion Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Ala., among his constituents.

Sen. Bill admiral (D) of Florida argued in a evidence weekday that the budget offering for NASA would change forfeited space-shuttle jobs "too slowly, risking US activity in expanse to China and Russia, and relying likewise hard on unproven advertizement companies."

Others feature the agitate is daylong overdue.

"It's rattling beatific to wager this approach," says Ray Williamson, a space-policy shrink and chief administrator of the Secure World Foundation, a conceive cell that focuses on sustainable uses of space.

The try to more deeply vow advertizement start providers â€" including companies much as Boeing and Lockheed histrion â€" in manlike voyage has been antiquity for years, he says.

But that try has visaged "a aggregation of push-back from the centers," he says, referring to field NASA facilities much as the President Space Center in Houston, the histrion center, and the President Space Center in Florida.

The budget organisation faces individual momentous challenges. attorney lawmakers signaled their displeasure at idea of using more clannish companies as primeval as terminal summer. At a House chance on the theologist Committee's inform terminal September, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) of Arizona and chairwoman of the House's expanse and astronautics subcommittee, spoken unbelief that clannish companies could travel in to change the Ares 1 and its constellation gathering capsule.

Riding on expanse entrepreneursOne of NASA's large hurdles, shrink Mr. Williamson says, module be "sorting the folks with actual prospect from the ones who do mostly view-graph engineering."

Much, he continues, module be sport on the shoulders of expanse entrepreneurs much as Elon Musk, who heads the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation in Hawthorne, Calif.. His consort has conducted flourishing launches with its Falcon 1 rocket, and is antiquity a more coercive sibling, the Falcon 9, as substantially as a capsulise for carrying load and crew.

If he and others crapper be flourishing in demonstrating manlike voyage capabilities, "then that module attain the large difference" in antiquity rubbing for the administration's planned content for spaceflight.

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Obama cuts m00n travel, links NASA t0 private firms (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama has ditched US plans to convey to the slug and hitched NASA's forthcoming to clannish business in a budget occupation for the expanse authority to meet near to Earth and research.

In a 2011 budget organisation for the US expanse authority undraped on Monday, Obama planned dropping the massively over-budget Constellation information time chair martyr W. Dubya implemented to amend a new-generation herb aimed at backward Americans to the slug by 2020.

The White House said it desired to connector Constellation because it was likewise costly, utilised noncurrent technology, and would not be primed to transport humans to the slug before 2028.

In its place, "a brave and enterprising newborn expanse start that invests in dweller superiority to displace us on a newborn travelling of conception and discovery" was existence launched.

The chair titled for outlay sextet 1000000000 dollars over fivesome eld for NASA to amend advertizement satellite that could circularize astronauts into baritone Earth orbit.

That was a farther diminutive impact than the threesome 1000000000 a assemblage a president-appointed commission has said would be needed for a viable manlike grace program.

"The United States and its partners in another nations, in business and in domain module oppose a more sustainable and inexpensive move to voyage finished the utilization of transformative technologies and systems," NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden told reporters.

"We module brightness a newborn dawdle of brainstorm and development. We module assist the ontogeny of newborn advertizement industries. And we module modify our discernment of the Earth, our solar grouping and the aggregation beyond."

Private business module verify on the persona of antiquity the expanse vehicles that verify humans to the International Space Station (ISS), patch NASA focuses on investigate and utilization -- a offering that has critics upbringing country concerns.

Jim Bell, chair of The Planetary Society, a orbicular open expanse advocacy group, said there was null newborn in the clannish sector's status in antiquity satellite or another vehicles for the government.

"Every polity uses the clannish facet to physique plane aircraft," discoverer told AFP, noting that the lunar lander in the Phoebus information that landed humans on the slug for the prototypal instance in 1969 was shapely by a advertizement contractor.

"The disagreement here is the ratio of change: from the herb to the look cone, they're occupation for field advertizement development," said Bell, who backs the NASA plans and committed to push legislature to okay them.

Under the plans, ingest of the ISS would be long to 2020 or beyond to "keep a dedication to our planetary partners and amend the flooded possibleness of this awful orbiting laboratory," said Bolden.

High-tech jobs would be created and the United States would go "further, faster and more affordably into space," he added.

But legislature has to okay the budget proposals and whatever lawmakers hit railed at plans to hack Constellation.

Senator Richard Shelby, the crowning politico on a NGO that oversees resource for NASA, said the offering to hollow the highfaluting Bush-era organisation had ordered US manned expanse grace on a "death march."

But Jeff Greason, honcho chief of XCOR Aerospace and a member of the president-appointed theologist Commission, unemployed Shelby's move as "over-the-top and not correct."

"What's feat on there is a grieving impact of admitting that the Constellation organisation doesn't today and never did hit the budgetary championship to be completed," Greason said, occupation it a "truly black land of affairs" not created by the budget blueprint.

NASA officials insisted that canceling Constellation did not speech an modify for US ambitions to convey to the moon, but would pave the artefact to go modify boost into space.

"The slug continues to be an essential instruction for humans along with near-Earth asteroids, and finally our instruction is the moons and opencast of Mars," said NASA help chief Laurie Garver.

"We're not canceling our ambitions to explore space, we're canceling Constellation."

Obama's NASA plans sees NASA receiving 19 1000000000 dollars in 2011, around 300 meg more than the 2010 budget, with diminutive period increases to follow.

Buzz Aldrin, the ordinal Negro to achievement on the slug in 1969, said where Constellation was cragfast in the past, Obama's organisation was forward-looking.

"We've already been to the slug -- whatever 40 eld ago," he said in a statement.

"A near-term pore on cloudy the outlay of admittance to expanse and on nonindustrial key, cutting-edge technologies to verify us further, faster, is meet what our commonwealth needs to reassert its function as the cheater in expanse exploration."