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it would work with EADS Astrium to market launch services to an array of European space agencies through 2015

Astrium, a subsidiary of the French-and-German-owned European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company

At a workshop last month in Washington, D.C., NASA canvassed the scientific, human spaceflight and planetary defense communities about their priorities for a mission to a near-Earth asteroid.

an asteroid mission is possible as early as 2019 using a pair of enhanced Orion spacecraft with a two-person crew.

November 2019 and spend three months flying more than 7 million miles to an asteroid that's about 33 feet across.

A private space company offering room on inflatable space habitats for research has found a robust international market

A question that continues to float through the halls of NASA and the Congress: Is there a commercial market for utilizing space?

The NanoSailD is a solar sail designed to use light particles to accelerate. If all goes well it will be the first solar sail deployed by NASA.

It instead uses the sail for the humble but important mission of testing a potential orbit-cleaning tool.

Success at building large amounts of inexpensive nanotubes opens the door for lighter, faster car frames; affordable space vehicles; and ultralightweight armor. Or on a smaller level, BNNTs could be used with pinpoint precision to attack cancer cells by sticking to tumors, absorbing neutrons from a targeted beam, and generating localized alpha radiation to kill the cancer. "This is the start of a revolution in materials," says Dennis Bushnell, a NASA engineer who has watched the work closely in the hopes of using BNNTs for space vehicles.

If an entire shuttle is beyond your budget, consider a main engine instead. NASA had hoped to charge up to $800,000 for these but lack of interest has forced it to slash the price. They are now available for free

No offense to Avatar creator James Cameron, but this is the real deal.

NASA's grand plan to return to the moon, built on President George W. Bush's vision of an ambitious new chapter in space exploration, is about to vanish with hardly a whimper

a commercial spacecraft that could taxi astronauts into low Earth orbit

Obama budget as disastrous for human space fligh

a few megabits per second might someday get as much as 600 megabits per second, if not more. That could enable far more scientific payoff per mission in the long run.

new communication innovations such as disruption tolerant networking

one of the biggest communication revolutions will come from laser-driven optical communication