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U.S. Senate Committee hears submissions on NASA's 2013 budget request & U.S. space program The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has been hearing submissions regarding NASA's 2013 budget request and on the priorities, plans and progress of the U.S. space program. Witnesses appearing before the Committee on March 7 included Charles F Bolden Jr, NASA's Administrator, and Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and well known commentator on space exploration. Bolden, who flew on four space shuttle missions after a career in the Marine Corps, was appointed to lead NASA in 2009 after being nominated by President Obama. Administrator Bolden outlined the space agency's achievements in 2011 and updated the Committee on the status of current missions. His statement outlined how the requested budget of $17.7 billion for 2013 would be allocated and concluded by stating: "NASA's FY 2013 budget request of $17.7 billion represents a substantial investment in a balanced program of science, exploration, technology and aeronautics research. Despite the constrained budget environment facing the Nation, this request supports a robust space program that keeps us on a path to achieving a truly audacious set of goals. NASA is working to send humans to an asteroid and ultimately to Mars, to observe the first galaxies form, and to expand the productivity of humanity's only permanently-crewed space station. We are making air travel safer and more efficient, learning to live and work in space, and developing the critical technologies to achieve these goals. The coming year will include the first commercial cargo flights to the ISS, a nuclear powered robot the size of a small car landing on the surface of Mars, and the launch of the Nation's next land observing satellite. We have spacecraft studying the Sun, circling Mercury, cruising to Pluto and investigating almost everything inbetween. In the face of very difficult times, the American people continu

SLIDEBOOM - MARGAO: The proposed scientific capping of Sonsoddo garbage dump has raised concerns among those who were once involved in providing solutions to the problem. Solid waste management expert Joe D'Souza, who was earlier on the Margao municipal council (MMC) panel to monitor the garbage management exercise at Sonsoddo, has written to chief minister Manohar Parrikar alleging a scam in the making and demanding a vigilance inquiry in the matter. In his letter to Parrikar, D'Souza has raised questions regarding capping the existing garbage dump when the project concessionaire was, in fact, tasked with treating the dump. "I was surprised and shocked to know that after years of tomfoolery by successive consultants and garbage handling contractors, Sonsoddo garbage dump yard is sought to be capped. Why is Ahmedabad-based consultant, PU Asnani, who earlier promised to end the garbage woes of Margao by appointing a firm to involve itself in solid waste management, incurring crores of rupees expenditure of Goa state funding, is now offering a disastrous capping solution to the garbage woes of Margao," D'Souza wrote to Parrikar. D'Souza has urged Parrikar to "put a full stop on an urgent basis to the mega scam involving the capping of the Sonsoddo garbage by instituting a vigilance inquiry at your earliest." "The scandalous approach to the garbage scam at Sonsoddo has to be exposed. As such, Asnani and the Ahmedabad-based firm have collected consultancy fees to offer solid waste management solution. Now that he has failed miserably, the untenable approach of capping the Sonsoddo site is being sought instead of the garbage treatment solution which was his task," D'Souza's letter adds, urging the chief minister to "punish the guilty as it involves flushing off of public money and endangering the lives of the residents of Margao." D'Souza has also raised questions over the efficacy of the capping exercise maintaining that scientific capping is a "disastrous" solut