ENTERTAINMENT
April 12, 2013 | By August Brown
As L.A.'s center of musical gravity shifts east to Coachella for the next two weekends, night life in the city will finally get some breathing room. No lines at the bar, cabs when you need them, an entire population of trustafarian party people otherwise occupied - why, it's a veritable Eden of going out close to home. Take advantage of the reprieve by hitting up some of these local events. Some are deliberate ripostes to Coachella, others just happen to fall on the calendar this week.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 25, 2013 | By Steven Zeitchik, Los Angeles Times
On Feb. 14, a Hollywood delegation showed up at the White House. Motion Picture Academy President Hawk Koch, Oscar producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron and film mogul Harvey Weinstein had come to explore a rather important matter (for them): They wanted to see if they could secretly work out the details for Michelle Obama to present best picture at the Oscars 10 days later. Senior members of the first lady's team met with the group, discussing a series of questions from the big to the picayune, according to a person present who requested anonymity because the person was not authorized to talk about the meeting.
BUSINESS
February 11, 2013 | By W.J. Hennigan
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE -- A 19-story white rocket successfully lifted a NASA science satellite into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base, located northwest of Santa Barbara. The picture-perfect launch, which took place Monday at 10:02 a.m. PST, occurred at the base's Space Launch Complex-3 along the Pacific Ocean. The Atlas V rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, boosted the Landsat 8 satellite about 410 miles above the Earth. The satellite's first signal was received 82 minutes into the mission at a ground station in Svalbard, Norway, the space agency said.
BUSINESS
February 1, 2013 | By W.J. Hennigan
A 20-story rocket carrying a massive communications satellite failed to reach orbit and fell into the ocean after being launched from a floating platform near the equator. The failed launch is a potentially huge setback for the rocket venture Sea Launch, which exited bankruptcy protection in late 2010 and has major operations in Long Beach. Late Thursday, Sea Launch said that about 40 seconds after liftoff all telemetry was lost, indicating a loss of mission. The company said it will establish a board to determine the root cause of the incident.
WORLD
January 30, 2013 | By Jung-yoon Choi and Barbara Demick
SEOUL -- In danger of falling behind in the space race on the Korean peninsula, the South Korean government announced Wednesday that it had successfully launched a rocket into space. Pressure had been mounting ever since mid-December when communist arch-rival North Korea managed to launch a multi-stage rocket and put a satellite into orbit. South Korea's Satellite Launch Vehicle-1, also known as Naro, blasted off at 4 p.m. local time from a space center in Jeolla province on the southwestern coast.
BUSINESS
January 22, 2013 | By Frank Shyong, Los Angeles Times
A group of private entrepreneurs is raising $20 million to fund the first stage of a mission to identify asteroids close to Earth and mine them for valuable materials. Deep Space Industries plans to launch three small crafts armed with cameras, called Fireflies, on an asteroid discovery mission as early as 2015. Three more spacecrafts, called Dragonflies, are expected to launch in 2016 to collect samples to be evaluated for mining potential. Planetary Resources, a Seattle company that launched its asteroid-mining operation last year, is developing a space telescope for spaceflight soon.