National Aeronautics And Space Administration

What makes plutonium so notorious? With hundreds of particles in the nucleus (compared to one, for say, hydrogen), plutonium is a huge, ungainly, complex atom. In fact, so many particles are crammed into plutonium's nucleus that the center cannot hold. The inter-atomic forces that normally keep atomic nuclei glued together aren't strong enough to keep the atom intact.

NASA has taken the next small step toward reshaping its future in space travel by awarding five contracts worth as much as $250 million to aerospace companies for researching and developing propulsion systems. Although NASA hasn't laid out how it will use such technology, officials from the contract winners -- three of which are based in California -- say they envision their work being used on a broad range of missions: sending research equipment deep into space; building thrust engines for robotic Mars landers; or developing boosters for spacecraft to explore far-flung asteroids.

NASA lost its $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because spacecraft engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched, space agency officials said Thursday.

"Hello, from the children of planet Earth!" Someday, these friendly words might greet beings from another world! No one knows whether life exists anywhere else but Earth. Even if it does, no one knows whether any alien life forms might be intelligent. Or whether they might be advanced enough to have space travel. But, what if . . . ? Let's go back to 1977. The United States launches two robotic spacecraft. Robotic means they have no people in them. The spacecraft are named Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They are going to explore the outer planets of our solar system.

NASA Lifts Suspension of Rockwell Unit: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration lifted the suspension it imposed last November on Rockwell International's Collins Avionics and Communications Division in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The suspension was imposed after Rockwell and two individuals were indicted for overcharging NASA in 1987 and prior years.

A plan to build housing, offices and research space for thousands of people on 500 acres at Moffett Field has nearby cities worried about increased traffic congestion and decreased air quality. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has a 1,000-acre air field there, is about to approve an environmental study that would clear the way to start the project. It would include 1,930 housing units and provide 7,100 jobs.

Virginia could become the first state on the Eastern Seaboard to open its coast to energy exploration since a decades-old federal drilling ban expired more than a year ago. The new Republican governor, Robert McDonnell, pledged to make Virginia the "energy capital of the East Coast" at his swearing-in last month. The state's Democratic senators, Jim Webb and Mark R. Warner, are also urging the Obama administration to begin selling leases next year for drilling 50 miles offshore.

The people who work on the space shuttle don't fly on the orbiters they maintain -- but it appears at least one of them may have been getting high. A shuttle worker employed by United Space Alliance found a plastic bag with a white powder residue -- later confirmed to be cocaine -- in a shuttle processing hangar at Kennedy Space Center last week. The worker gave it to NASA security, and about 200 workers were given drug tests. There was no indication that any of the workers were impaired, NASA said.

NASA heads into 2010 with the bittersweet assignment of retiring the space shuttle after nearly three decades. But the agency also plans to launch three new satellites aimed at better understanding the sun and Earth's climate and oceans. Two satellites will examine Earth -- specifically, the concentration of salt in the world's oceans and the presence of aerosols, or minute particles, such as dust or ash, in the atmosphere. A third satellite mission will study the sun and its effect on space weather, including solar flares that can disrupt communication on Earth.

In the predawn hours Friday, while those on the West Coast still snooze, a rocket is scheduled to punch a 13-foot-deep hole in a crater at the moon's south pole that hasn't seen sunlight in billions of years. The purpose: to find out whether ice lies hidden there. NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which set out for the moon in June, made a late-course correction Tuesday to better position itself to steer the rocket into the 2-mile-deep crater Cabeus at 4:30 a.m. PDT on Friday.

A special advisory committee on the future of America's manned spaceflight program delivered a report to the White House on Tuesday that could help launch the country on an Apollo-style adventure to Mars, but which also warned darkly that any ambitious program of exploration will require big infusions of cash. Without a significant boost in NASA's budget, not only will it be impossible to return to the moon by the current goal of 2020, but astronauts might not be able to go at all, according to the report by the Human Space Flight Plans Committee.

NASA took the first concrete step toward returning human beings to the moon Thursday, successfully launching the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on a mission to find the best place to land and build Earth's first off-world colony. The 19-story-high, two-stage rocket and spacecraft launched at 2:32 p.m. Pacific time. As the huge first-stage Atlas V rocket roared to life at Cape Canaveral in central Florida, NASA spokesman George Diller called it "America's first step in a lasting return to the moon."

The House approved $28.7 billion in spending for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration over the next two years. The legislation, passed on a 399-17 vote, also sets a cap on development costs for the international space station. The measure moves to renegotiate the space station agreement so that benefits to the 16 participating nations are more in line with actual contributions and so the U.S. shares less of the future operating costs.

House Panel Restores Some NASA Funding: The Appropriations Committee has restored funding for the Cassini probe to Saturn, a project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena that accounts for more than 1,000 jobs. The committee also rescinded an appropriations subcommittee report that recommended closing three National Aeronautics and Space Administration centers in Virginia, Tennessee and Maryland and transferring some of the work to JPL and Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

President Obama's selection Saturday of former astronaut Charles F. Bolden Jr. to head NASA gives a boost to the agency's manned space program and its stated goal of returning humans to the moon by 2020. During the presidential campaign, Obama had seemed lukewarm toward NASA and its hugely expensive human spaceflight program. Space enthusiasts were particularly worried after Obama staffers floated the idea of taking money from the agency to fund domestic programs.

President Obama will name former astronaut Charles F. Bolden Jr. as NASA administrator, according to three congressional sources. If confirmed by the Senate, the retired Marine Corps general would be the first African American to head the agency. The timing, the sources said, is keyed to the landing of the shuttle Atlantis, which remained in orbit Friday because of bad weather but will return today or Sunday.