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Editorial Team

Space Travel Editorial Team

Editorial Team

The Space Travel Editorial Team produces Space Travel's coverage of human spaceflight and access to space. We report on launch, crewed missions and space tourism, and the propulsion, vehicles and human factors of getting people to space. Articles reflect our team's collective editorial process, source verification, drafting, technical review, and editing, rather than a single writer's work. Space Travel takes editorial responsibility for content under this byline. For more on how we work, see our editorial policy.

Mice Stressed In Simulated Weightlessness Show Organ Atrophy

New Brunswick NJ (SPX) Sep 04, 2007 - A ground-based, experimental model used to simulate astronaut weightlessness in space has provided Rutgers scientists an opportunity to study the effects of stress on immune organs. Earlier collaborative research with Japanese scientists employing this model implicated the protein osteopontin (OPN) in bone mineral loss associated with simulated weightlessness in mice. This research was made possible by the creation at Rutgers of a mouse unable to make OPN (a knock-out mouse).

Sep 4, 2007

India launches communications satellite

Sriharikota, India (AFP) Sept 2, 2007 - India on Sunday sent into orbit a rocket carrying the replacement for a communications satellite destroyed last year, raising its hopes of competing for global satellite launch business.

Sep 2, 2007

India Lofts GEO Bird Using Powerful New Domestic Built Launcher

Sriharikota, India (SPX) Sep 02, 2007 - India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, GSLV-F04, had a successful launch at 18.20 hours September 2nd from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR (SDSC SHAR), Sriharikota and it placed India's INSAT-4CR into the Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). This was the fifth flight of GSLV and the fourth successful one.

Sep 2, 2007

Environmental Tectonics’ NASTAR Center To Provide Space Training For Virgin Galactic

Southampton PA (SPX) Aug 31, 2007 - Environmental Tectonics' National Aerospace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center, has signed a contract with Virgin Galactic to provide training for Virgin Galactic's suborbital space travelers. NASTAR Center is the world leader in aviation and spaceflight training and research, and Virgin Galactic is on track to become the world's first commercial spaceline and provider of private suborbital spaceflights. Virgin Galactic has named NASTAR Center as its official spaceflight training provider.

Aug 31, 2007

SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft Receives Initial Approval From NASA Safety Review Panel

El Segundo CA (SPX) Aug 30, 2007 - SpaceX has successfully completed the first of three phases of review required by NASA's Safety Review Panel (SRP) to send its Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS). Over a series of meetings spanning four days at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the team of SpaceX engineers developing the Dragon spacecraft presented their Phase I plans for sending the cargo version of Dragon to the $100 billion dollar orbiting space laboratory.

Aug 30, 2007

NASA Study Will Help Stop Stowaways To Mars

Pasadena CA (SPX) Aug 30, 2007 - NASA clean rooms, where scientists and engineers assemble spacecraft, have joined hot springs, ice caves, and deep mines as unlikely places where scientists have discovered ultra-hardy organisms collectively known as 'extremophiles'. Some species of bacteria uncovered in a recent NASA study have never been detected anywhere else.

Aug 30, 2007

NASA’s Centennial Challenges To Advance Technologies

Washington DC (SPX) Aug 29, 2007 - From Oct. 19 to 21, more than 20 teams from across the nation and around the world will compete for a total of $1,000,000 from NASA for the development of cutting-edge technologies. The Beam Power Challenge and Tether Challenge, two of NASA's seven Centennial Challenges, will take place at the 2007 Space Elevator Games at the Davis County Event Center in Salt Lake City.

Aug 29, 2007

Science Teachers Take Flight In Zero-Gravity

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 29, 2007 - The Northrop Grumman Foundation kicked off the second year of its Weightless Flights of Discovery Program today, flying 57 teachers in Dallas, with another 58 scheduled to fly in New Orleans on Aug. 30. These are the first of the flights in eight cities planned as part of the company's program to inspire the next generation of scientists, mathematicians and engineers -- critical areas where the U.S. has fallen behind globally.

Aug 29, 2007

Boeing Selected To Build NASA’s Upper Stage For Ares I

St. Louis MO (SPX) Aug 29, 2007 - Boeing has been awarded a NASA contract valued at approximately $514.7 million to produce the upper stage of the Ares I crew launch vehicle. This element provides the navigation, guidance, control and propulsion required for the ascent of the second-stage Ares I into low-Earth orbit.

Aug 29, 2007

Chinese Astronauts Test Traditional Chinese Medicines In Space

Beijing (XNA) Aug 29, 2007 - China's astronauts have been testing new varieties of traditional Chinese medicine that could help treat osteoporosis, insomnia and improve immunity. Doctors with the China Astronaut Research and Training Center say the new remedies will be prepared for sale after further tests during the country's third manned space program in 2008.

Aug 29, 2007

NASA debunks claims of drunken space flights

Washington (AFP) Aug 29, 2007 - NASA's safety chief Wednesday dismissed sensational claims that astronauts had been drunk on flight missions, boosting the US space agency's battle to repair its tarnished credibility.

Aug 29, 2007

Ball Aerospace Presents Proposal For Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle Instrument Unit Avionics

Huntsville AL (SPX) Aug 29, 2007 - Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Hamilton Sundstrand, and Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne, Inc., (Team Ball) presented an oral summary of its Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle Instrument Unit Avionics (IUA) proposal to NASA Marshall Space Flight Center on August 7, following a July 30 submission of the proposal for cost volume.

Aug 29, 2007

E’Prime Aerospace Corporation Selects First Launch Operations Facility

Falls Church VA (SPX) Aug 28, 2007 - E'Prime Aerospace has announced the selection of Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) as E'Prime's Launch site for the Canister Launch Program and E'Prime's engagement of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA/AST) for a Launch License to operate from MARS.

Aug 28, 2007

Sea Launch Awaits Delivery Of New Gas Deflector

Long Beach, CA (SPX) Aug 27, 2007 - Sea Launch's newly manufactured gas deflector arrived at Home Port in Long Beach, Calif., on Aug. 20. Within hours, workers unloaded the 280-metric-ton structure from a cargo vessel, the Thor Amalie, and set it on a barge alongside the pier in preparation for installation on the Odyssey Launch Platform.

Aug 27, 2007

Northrop Grumman Completes Acquisition of Scaled Composites

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 27, 2007 - Northrop Grumman announced Friday that it has completed a transaction that increases its ownership in Scaled Composites, LLC from approximately 40 percent to 100 percent.

Aug 27, 2007

Creating The Ultimate Artificial Arm

Nashville TN (SPX) Aug 27, 2007 - I sometimes describe what I do as glorified garage projects. There is some validity to that, I think, says Michael Goldfarb with characteristic modesty. But I hope there will be some societal impact from what we're doing now. As a professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University, Goldfarb's current research on artificial limbs and the systems by which they are powered shows promise of ushering in a new generation of prosthetics with near-human form and functionality.

Aug 27, 2007