GSC Update

*Using data from NASA's SOHO sunwatching spacecraft, scientists have calculated the speed limit for potential damaging electrical solar flares (12 hours). This will help determine safeguards for satellites and power grids.

*June 8th, 2004- extremely rare transit of Venus across the sun.

*NASA's Cassini spacecraft is closing in on it's final destination, making a flyby of Saturn earlier this month. It came within 1,285 miles (2,068 kilometers) of one of it's moons, Phoebe, the last visit since Voyager 2 in 1981. The small, backward orbit moon may be a small iceball stolen from the Kuiper Belt, a small finge cloud of asteroids in the outer solar system.

*The new astronaut class of 2004 began training ealier this month, alongside three Japanese specialists.
"I think our class is definitely destined to go to the moon," said Jose Hernandez, an engineer and branch chief at JSC in Houston who was accepted into the new class. "I'm really looking forward to this training, it's an unknown entity to me."

*Alongside goals of a space station, multi-person crews, and a moon base, China plans to send a woman astronaut into space by 2010.

*A commission chartered by U.S. President George W. Bush to advise him on implementing a broad new space exploration vision is recommending streamlining the NASA bureaucracy, relying more heavily on the private sector, and maintaining more oversight of the nation’s space program at the White House.

The 60-page report outlines the organizational changes the commission says NASA needs to make if it is to achieve the space exploration goals laid out by Bush in January. Those goals include returning humans to the moon by 2020 in preparation for eventual human expeditions to Mars.

The nine-member commission, headed by former U.S. Air Force Secretary Edward (Pete) Aldridge, said if those goals are to be met, the nation needs to commit to space exploration for the long haul, and that the private sector must be given a much larger role in the U.S. space program.

*Mojave, California: poised to make space history on June 21st through X-Prize competitor Scaled Composites. If all goes by the book, SpaceShipOne will rocket to some 62 miles (100 kilometers) altitude above Earth, flying a sub-orbital trajectory above the commercial airport, followed by a glide back to a runway stop- the first commercial piloted space vehicle.

-material provided by Space.com