Space Programs

The character of space exploration is changing dramatically as nations with major programs grapple with rising costs and shrinking budgets. And it seems likely that some past alliances will fall apart and the military will play an expanding role in the use of space, experts from around the world said at a conference in San Diego this week.

Mounds of titanium and steel glinted in the afternoon sun, valves and pipes protruding in all directions like half-formed metal organisms. In one corner of the warehouse was a twin of the Apollo command module engine that brought Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong back from the surface of the moon nearly 40 years ago. Nearby was the second-stage motor for a Saturn V, the most powerful rocket ever used in the U.S. space program.

Nearly four decades after astronaut Neil Armstrong planted his boot on the surface of the moon, the U.S. is about to take the first small step toward colonizing Earth's tag-along satellite. On Wednesday, NASA is scheduled to launch a robotic mission aimed at finding the best site for Earth's first off-world colony, the centuries-old dream of science fiction writers and utopians.

China said today that it is ready to expand its fledgling commercial satellite launch service to meet the "urgent need" created by failures in the U.S. and European space programs. Vice Minister of Astronautics Sun Jiadong said delays in the U.S. and European space programs, combined with China's launch and insurance prices--10% to 15% less than international rates, have brought at least 12 nations as potential customers to Peking.

Slowly, astronaut Rick Husband worked the rust off the roof of his Camaro, wearing a drenched T-shirt outside his home near the Johnson Space Center. Next came the copper-colored hood, soon so shiny it would blind you if the sun caught it right. He turned it into a mean muscle car, drove it for a while, even gunned the engine once or twice for friends. Then he gave it to his pastor to raise money for his church.

Three student employees at the Johnson Space Center in Houston have pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to steal moon rocks collected by Apollo astronauts. Tiffany Fowler, Thad Roberts and Shae Saur pleaded guilty in federal court in Orlando last week to conspiracy to commit theft and interstate transportation of stolen property. Undercover FBI agents arrested Roberts, 25, Fowler, 22, and a fourth defendant, Gordon McWhorter, 26, in Orlando in July.

Every 90 minutes, a multibillion-dollar monument to human ingenuity orbits Earth: a 206-ton behemoth that can outshine the brightest star at night. The twinkling speck is the International Space Station. It was conceived decades ago as an advanced research platform that would one day become a launchpad to distant planets. Instead, the half-completed station is a two-person outpost in low Earth orbit. Construction has been frozen by the grounding of the space shuttle fleet.

In the most significant linkup so far between U.S. and Russian defense firms, Lockheed and Khrunichev Enterprise of Moscow announced Monday that they have formed a joint venture to sell commercial launch services with the Russian Proton rocket. The alliance combines two Cold War industrial adversaries: Lockheed, the largest U.S. manufacturer of military space hardware, and Khrunichev, one of Russia's leading state-owned aerospace operations. Lockheed Vice President Mel R.