ScienceInsider

A spokesperson for the Office of Science and Technology Policy said today that the White House has not received a report from the panel reviewing NASA's plans for human space flight (the so-called Augustine commission). The panel has until mid-October, according to its instructions from the NASA Administrator, but members had talked about submitting their report earlier.

—Jeffrey Mervis

See an update to this item here.

The much-ballyhooed report on the future of the U.S. human space program was submitted today to the White House. Or so rumor has it. The so-called Augustine report is the latest in a series of analyses of pressing issues affecting the research community—scientific integrity and biosecurity being the others—that the Obama Administration has chosen to keep under wraps. The pattern of asking experts to study an issue and then not disclosing their recommendations seems at odds with the repeated promises of President Barack Obama to maintain a culture of openness in government.

NEW DELHI—India’s maiden moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, has come to a shuddering and unexpected halt. On 29 August, the Indian Space Research Organization lost all contact with the spacecraft after a catastrophic failure of its electronics, said ISRO Chair G. Madhavan Nair.

The wildfire raging in Angeles National Forrest outside of Los Angeles, California, is inching close to Mount Wilson, home to the 105-year-old Mount Wilson Observatory. The facility was evacuated on Saturday. The fire has already destroyed more than 42,000 acres of forest and claimed the lives of two firefighters. Now it threatens to destroy telescopes and other scientific equipment worth millions of dollars. Firefighters say they are bracing for a tough battle today.

—Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

NEW DELHI—Indian scientists point to a search for water ice above the moon's north pole, conducted with the United States on 20 August, as a sign that India's lunar craft Chandrayaan-1 is functioning well.

India's first lunar satellite had trouble earlier this year with a fine guidance mechanism. But last week Chandrayaan-1 and the U.S. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, both now orbiting the moon, were brought within 30 kilometers of each other. Then they synchronously beamed their radars at the Erlanger crater, which is permanently shaded from sunlight, to look for evidence of water.

It was "a unique and complex experiment performed with precision," says G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization in Bangalore. Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, principal investigator for radar instruments on both spacecraft, says "we will soon have an abundance of data." Finding water is the key for future colonization of the moon.

—Pallava Bagla

Image Credit: ISRO/NASA/JHUAPL/LPI

The chair of a blue-ribbon panel reviewing the U.S. human space program briefed senior Obama Administration science officials today on what's expected to be a frank assessment of NASA's choices. The panel, led by Norman Augustine, held its final public hearing on Wednesday and has promised to give presidential science adviser John Holdren and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden its report by the end of this month. Administration sources say the panel will lay out several policy options ...

Astronomers are making good progress discovering and tracking large asteroids that could hit Earth, but they won't meet the goal set by Congress without dedicated funding, according to a report released today by the National Academies' National Research Council.

In a rare rebuke to NASA, today the National Academy of Sciences told the space agency it should reopen an organization designed to come up with innovative technologies.

The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) was set up in 1998 to provide the agency with creative aeronautics and space ideas that could lower the cost of air and space travel. But the institute—which cost about $4 million a year in operations and grant costs--was shut down two years ago because of budget constraints. That closure prompted Congress to order the academy to study the institute’s record. “NIAC inspired an atmosphere for innovation that stretched the imagination and encouraged creativity,” the report released today concluded.

The summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, home to many telescopes big and small, will be the site for what would be the biggest of them all: the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), astronomers announced this afternoon. The instrument, to be built by a consortium led by the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy, will cost upward of $1 billion. The consortium plans to start on-site construction in 2011.

Times have changed, says Norman Augustine, the retired aerospace executive who is chairing a blue-ribbon panel examining alternative futures for the U.S. human space flight effort. At a press conference today, he reminded reporters that President John F. Kennedy’s call to land humans on the moon was met with a groundswell of support from the public and Congress. But that is an experience, he noted, that has not been repeated since.