HOUSTON -- The International Space Station crew, paving the way for NASA's return to the moon, will honor the first humans to journey there 40 years ago with a special message.

Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineers Sandy Magnus and Yury Lonchakov will pay homage to that bold December 1968 voyage in a message that will air on NASA Television as part of the daily Video File, beginning at 11 a.m. CST, Friday, Dec. 19. The video also will be broadcast in high definition on the NASA TV HD channel at 10 a.m., noon and 3 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 19, and Tuesday, Dec. 23.

Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders roared into space on the first flight of the massive Saturn V rocket on Dec. 21, 1968. They became the first humans to circumnavigate the moon on Dec. 24, 1968, and returned safely to Earth three days later. Their mission demonstrated the ability of the Saturn V and the Apollo command and service modules to cross the 238,000-mile gulf between Earth and the moon, and set the stage for the first human lunar landing six months later.

Alexandria, VA - Join Challenger Center for Space Science Education's live interactive webcast on Wednesday, December 17th at 10:30am ET with Richard Garriott, the 1st second-generation astronaut and sixth private explorer to travel to the International Space Station (ISS), and Challenger Center's Founding Chairman Dr. June Scobee Rodgers. Mr. Garriott and Dr. Rodgers will speak live from the Challenger Learning Center in Leicester, England talking to students and the winners of the Garriott UK space science challenge. The live interactive webcast is free and open to the public. It will be broadcast live at www.challenger.org.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will launch two years later than previously planned, in the fall of 2011. The mission will send a next-generation rover with unprecedented research tools to study the early environmental history of Mars.

A launch date of October 2009 no longer is feasible because of testing and hardware challenges that must be addressed to ensure mission success. The window for a 2009 launch ends in late October. The relative positions of Earth and Mars are favorable for flights to Mars only a few weeks every two years. The next launch opportunity after 2009 is in 2011.

"We will not lessen our standards for testing the mission's complex flight systems, so we are choosing the more responsible option of changing the launch date," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Up to this point, efforts have focused on launching next year, both to begin the exciting science and because the delay will increase taxpayers' investment in the mission. However, we've reached the point where we can not condense the schedule further without compromising vital testing."

NASA astronaut Carl Walz is leaving the agency to take a job in the private sector.

Walz most recently served as director for the Advanced Capabilities Division in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. In the division, he played a key role in developing technologies that will lead to greater capabilities in robotic and human exploration of the solar system. He oversaw work in many fields, including nuclear power and propulsion, human adaptation to spaceflight, and lunar exploration. Many of these programs will help humans return to the moon and develop a sustained presence there.

NASA has signed a $141 million modification to the current International Space Station contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency for crew transportation services planned through the spring of 2012.

The firm-fixed price extension covers comprehensive Soyuz support, including all necessary training and preparation for launch, crew rescue, and landing of a long-duration mission for three station crew members. The crew members will launch on two Soyuz vehicles in the fall of 2011. They will land in the spring of 2012. The flights may be used to meet NASA's obligations to its international partners for transportation to and from the station.

NASA is hosting Earth and space science working group meetings with officials from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) in Washington, D.C., SPACE.com has learned.

The talks, today and tomorrow, are a follow- up to NASA's most recent meetings with CNSA representatives held June 30 to July 1in Beijing. That meeting brought together CNSA officials and other interested Chinese agencies with a NASA delegation made up of representatives from the space agency's Office of External Relations and the Science Mission Directorate.

http://www.space.com/news/081202-nasa-china-talks.html

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.
Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about 20 million miles from Earth.

"This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary Internet," said Adrian Hooke, team lead and manager of space-networking architecture, technology and standards at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

A Soyuz spacecraft has returned safely from the International Space Station, touching down with an American space tourist and two Russian cosmonauts in a picture perfect landing that followed two flawed descents on similar vehicles.

The Russian-built Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft set down on the frigid Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan at 11:37 p.m. EDT (0336 Oct. 24 GMT) Thursday, though it was mid-morning Friday at the remote landing site. Freezing temperatures greeted the spacecraft's crew - space tourist Richard Garriott, Expedition 17 commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko - in what was the first on-target Soyuz landing in just over a year.

A Soyuz space capsule carrying two Russian crew and an American space tourist has returned to Earth.
The craft landed safely in Kazakhstan after returning from the International Space Station.

Richard Garriott, who paid about $30m (£17m) for the 10-day trip, is following in the footsteps of his father, who was a Nasa astronaut in the 1970s.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7688058.stm

NASA has awarded a two-year, $650 million contract extension to The Boeing Co. to continue engineering support of the International Space Station to Sept. 30, 2010.

The action extends the U.S. On-Orbit Segment Acceptance and Vehicle Sustaining Engineering contract, awarded in January 1995. Work under the contract extension will include completion of delivery and on-orbit acceptance of the U.S. segment of the station, sustaining engineering of station hardware and software, support of U.S. hardware and software provided to international partners and participants in the station program, and end-to-end subsystem management for the majority of station systems.