Nasa

Show children how big the universe is at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Children and their families can get a glimpse of plans for the James Webb Space Telescope and its research into galaxy formation and star life cycles. Children will get to see how the telescope will explore using infrared light. The “Sunday Experiment” event is Sunday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Goddard Center's Visitor Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road. Find more information on the center's website .

Is there life elsewhere in the universe? It's a question that has long intrigued astronomers and science fiction buffs alike, and now the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has launched its most ambitious attempt yet to find the answer. Curiosity, NASA's 1-ton wheeled rover vehicle, blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday for the 346 million-mile journey to Mars, where it will spend two years roaming the Red Planet's surface in search of tell-tale organic compounds that could signal the presence of life there, either now or in the distant past.

Florence Tan says she'll have fingers and toes crossed when NASA's latest Mars mission blasts off as early as Saturday morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The 47-year-old electrical engineer from Montgomery County oversaw all the wiring of an instrument package on board that was designed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center here. In the years leading up to the launch, Tan has painstakingly checked and rechecked all 2,000 pieces of wire inside the microwave oven-sized box — enough to stretch more than a third of a mile if strung together.

Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said Wednesday she expects the Senate will pass a budget bill on Tuesday that will include $530 million to continue work toward launch of the Webb Space Telescope in 2018 "and secure America's place in astronomy for the next 50 years. " Speaking at a ribbon-cutting for a new Webb Telescope exhibit at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore, the Democratic senator added that she hopes to have the funding bill "on the president's desk to be signed into law by Thanksgiving.

A full-size model of the James Webb Space Telescope, the tennis-court-length receiver that will be assembled in and operated from Maryland, is on display at the Inner Harbor through Oct. 26. "Webb will find the first galaxies in the universe," said NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. at the unveiling at the Maryland Science Center on Friday. The orbiting telescope, recently at the center of budget battles in Washington, will be the "most powerful that NASA has ever built," he said.

Congressional wrangling over the future of the overdue, over-budget James Webb Space Telescope has split astronomers in a struggle over billions in funding. Astrophysicists worry that action in the U.S. House to eliminate funding for the Webb project, which already employs hundreds of people in Greenbelt and Baltimore, would extinguish a century-long quest for knowledge about the origins of the universe, just as it seemed to be headed for new triumphs. "The project is the core of astronomy; not only astrophysics, and not just in the U.S., but in the world," said astrophysicist Alan Dressler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

How fitting the crew of NASA's final space shuttle mission will end almost 42 years to the day men set foot on the moon. On July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to visit earth's closest neighbor in space. I'm fortunate to be able to recall that July evening in 1969 when the world held its breath as the Eagle landed on that airless world. Although Neil Armstrong and Buzz Armstrong planted the American flag on the lunar surface, I give credit to the Russians for making the "one small step for man" possible.

If you see a large aircraft flying particularly low over the Interstate 95 corridor Sunday, don't panic. It will only be NASA, taking air quality samples. The space agency said that as part of its DISCOVER-AQ air quality field campaign, it will send a P-3B research plane over Northeast Maryland and the main route between Baltimore and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. NASA said the 117-foot, four-engine turboprop plane will flay as low as 1,000 feet above the ground as it does its part in a mission to improve the ability of satellites to measure ground-level air quality from space.

I find the outlook for NASA over the next decade by Waleed Abdalati and Robert Braun to be very narrow minded, self-serving and steeped in false hope ("After space shuttle program, NASA's future still bright," July 4). I can see how as NASA's chief technologist and chief scientist, they would welcome an increase in funding in their respective areas, but they must face reality. In this unsettled budgetary environment, unfocused investments in science and technology are ripe for cuts and outright deletion.

With the final flight of the stalwart space shuttle Atlantis just a few days away, America is beginning an exciting new chapter in human space exploration. This chapter centers on full utilization of the International Space Station, development of multiple, made-in-America capabilities for astronauts and cargo to reach low-Earth orbit, and pursuit of two critical building blocks for our nation's exploration future: a deep space crew vehicle and an evolvable, heavy-lift rocket. Today, we embark on a new knowledge and innovation-driven approach to space science and exploration that will lead us into the new frontiers of deep space.