#TISH John Glenn blast off atop an Atlas rocket and became the 1st American in orbit. Proud to help continue his legacy. #AtlasV #Starliner pic.twitter.com/aLHyNgg6rY — ULA (@ulalaunch) February 20, 2017 Really @ulalaunch? This is like saying that these two cars are related because they have a similar shape and have 4 tires #AtlasV #Starliner pic.twitter.com/PSYOkLY9pJ — NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) February 20, 2017

Senate Armed Services Committee Sticks to Its Guns on RD-180 Rocket Engines, Space Policy Online “U.S. national space transportation policy requires that at least two independent launch systems be available for national security launches. If one suffers a failure, access to space is assured by the other. For more than a decade, those two have been Atlas V and Delta IV, both ULA rockets. SpaceX argues that now the two […]

Keith’s note: I have lived and worked in the Washington, DC metro area for 30 years. One thing I quickly noticed when I moved here was that big companies and organizations use a large canvas – literally – when they are pushing an issue at Congress. It is not uncommon to see Metro stations near the Pentagon or Capitol Hill transformed by a “take over” ad campaign with every possible […]

A Win-Win Sanction – It’s past time for the nation that won the space race to get back in the business, National Review Online “Russia may retaliate by cutting off our supply of RD-180 engines. Imported Russian RD-180s power the first stage of the American Atlas V rocket; the Atlas V launches our military satellites. If Putin does threaten our rocket shipments, we can dip into the two-year store that […]

Take a Virtual, High-Resolution Tour of Vesta, NASA “An atlas of the giant asteroid Vesta, created from images taken as NASA’s Dawn mission flew around the object (also known as a protoplanet), is now accessible for the public to explore online. The set of maps was created from mosaics of 10,000 images taken by Dawn’s framing camera instrument at a low altitude of about 130 miles (210 kilometers).”

NASA must build rocket, not Congress, editorial, Sun Sentinel “Congress did, fortunately, leave NASA a loophole. The bill says the space agency must use existing elements of other programs “to the extent practicable.” That leaves NASA some room to make its own decisions. It should, however, use that wiggle room cautiously, ever mindful that Congress may look for other ways to meddle in NASA’s work. When you have 535 meddlers, […]

Garver, Bolden Urge Passage of NASA Authorization, Space News “Despite prescriptive language in the Senate bill that directs NASA to begin building a space shuttle-derived heavy-lift launch vehicle next year, Garver said the agency would work with stakeholders in Congress to determine an appropriate transportation architecture for exploration beyond low Earth orbit.” NASA’s future looks bleak amid policy shift, Orlando Sentinel via LA Times “Engineers at Kennedy Space Center in […]