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If you've been following the long-running debate on the future of US human spaceflight, and what should replace the shuttle, then you ought to take a look at two articles just published in Florida newspapers.

The and were both party to a briefing with unnamed Nasa and administration officials, and , America's first female astronaut and a member of the convened to consider spaceflight options.

The Florida media are right on top of this story, as you would expect them to be.

If the space shuttle is retired later this year as planned, it is Florida which has most to lose in terms of jobs - .

The message emerging from the briefing appears to be that Obama has made his mind up. He will run with the "" of his Augustine panel and contract out the launch of US astronauts to commercial operators, and he will extend space station operations to 2020.

In doing so, he will cancel the Ares rockets currently in development at Nasa - both the that is designed to loft a capsule, and the Ares 5 which is the heavy-lift rocket designed to get all the hardware in orbit needed for missions beyond low-Earth orbit.

The papers say the president will pump something like an extra $1.3bn a year, for the next five years, into Nasa, to help seed and steer the development of the new "commercial taxi services" and invigorate the agency's technology research programme.

What's not clear is what form the "back up plan" takes.

If you remember, Augustine said that in going down a commercial launch route, Nasa should have a fall-back plan in case the new space companies failed to deliver.

The committee had the idea of accelerating the development of a heavy-lift rocket which America must have eventually anyway if it is going to go beyond LEO. There is no word on this.

Perhaps more will emerge when the president delivers his budget plans next week.

From a European perspective, the notion that the Americans are prepared now to put pen to paper on ISS life extension will be welcomed. In conversation with European Space Agency boss, , he said this was one of the big issues he wanted sorting out this year.

Europe will have committed about 10 billion euros to the space station by 2015 and it wants maximum return from the "laboratory in the sky".

Nasa's space station manager, Mike Suffredini, discussed ISS extension when shuttle managers gathered on Wednesday to approve the first orbiter launch of 2010.

He explained how the partners in the project were in the process of assessing just how long it would be possible to fly the outpost safely:

"From a structural standpoint, we have quite a bit of data on the vehicle, and we've already started the effort to look at life extension. It's the consensus of the engineers doing this work that we will be able to get to 2020 and even longer than that. We're looking at 30 years from the first launch; so from the November 1998 launch."

Decisions are pressing. Long build times mean all of the ISS partners have to start to commission the next round of cargo vehicles soon if the station is to be kept topped up with stores.

Each station crewmember needs about a tonne of supplies to sustain them for a six-month tour of duty.

Watch this space.

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He's absolutely convinced. has been scouring the sky for 50 years, looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

He's heard nothing... but he's in no doubt they're out there.

Drake was a founder-member of Seti, the .

has been pointing radio telescopes at the stars hoping to receive some indication - perhaps even a message - that an advanced alien lifeform exists elsewhere in our galaxy.

Many of us have been involved directly in this search by allowing Seti to use to crunch the radio data for any interesting signals.

Frank Drake himself has been in London this week to attend the - The Detection of Extraterrestrial Life and the Consequences for Science and Society.

The scientist is most famous for the equation that bears his name.

Drake's Equation is an attempt to express the potential number of intelligent civilizations that might exist in the Milky Way.

The number is dependent on several factors, such as the scale of star formation, the presence of planets around those stars that might harbour life capable of sophisticated communication, and the length of time over which any evolved species would be able to get in touch.

Remember, although we've existed as a species for at least 200,000 years, it's only in the last 100 years that we've developed the technology necessary to send messages into space.

There are a lot of assumptions in this game but when Drake plugs numbers he describes as conservative into his own equation, he comes out with a figure of 10,000 civilizations.

It sounds a lot until you consider there are at least 200 billion stars in the Milky Way.

So, here's one reason why we've not heard a dickybird out of ET yet: our searches so far have been puny compared with the scale of effort that would be required to do a thorough audit of the Milky Way.

The search field is simply enormous and the distances over which signals have to travel are colossal - tens of thousands of light-years potentially.

Talking with Drake today, he also raises another complicating factor:

"In searching for extraterrestrial life, we are both guided and hindered by our own experience. We have to use ourselves as a model for what a technological civilisation must be, and this gives us guidance for what technologies might be present in the Universe.
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"At the same time, this limits us because we are well aware that all the technologies that might be invented have not been invented; and in using ourselves as a model, we may not be paying attention to alternatives, as yet undiscovered and as yet unappreciated by us."

In other words, we've been listening for extraterrestrials' radio signals but this may not be how they're trying to announce their presence.

It's one of the reasons why Seti, in the last few years, has also started to look for the optical flashes that might originate from powerful alien lasers systems.

Drake highlights another fascinating issue - and that is that we ourselves are becoming invisible to the extraterrestrials searching for us.

The signals emanating from Earth most likely to reach distant civilisations are our TV broadcasts. But the switchover from analogue to digital television means "our voice" is being diminished.

Part of this is down to the TV satellites which deliver targeted beams to the Earth's surface; and also to cable TV which runs direct to the home underground. Both don't "bleed" as much into space as the old high-power analogue TV transmitters; and the digital signal itself requires a good deal more sophistication to interpret it.

Drake says this may mean in future we have to establish a dedicated system of beacons to broadcast our presence.

"There are people who're saying we should be running a beacon - a simple message that we send to one star after another, pointing out that we exist.
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"When you think about that, you quickly reach the conclusion that there should be two beacons - one that's easy to detect and has only the information on it that tells you what radio frequency you should tune to to get the other beacon with a great deal more information.
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"Right now, we don't have to do this because we're sending all this information through our television, but when the Earth goes quiet it makes much more sense."

I'm fascinated by - whether it has any point, and what we'd do if we got a contact.

Would we be filled with fear or excitement? How should we initiate a dialogue, knowing a reply might not come back for hundreds of years because of the light-travel time between our two locations?

Or would shocked and scared earthlings immediately want to "hang up" as if to say "sorry, wrong number"?

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After all the talk, it's now for real. Having spent most of last year working out how they could , Nasa and Esa posted their first on Monday.

It's a call to scientists to propose instruments for .

Europe will build it; the Americans will launch it. Researchers on both sides of the Atlantic will be involved in developing its sophisticated sensors.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), as it is known currently, will circle the Red Planet looking for methane and other substances that might indicate the presence of life.

is a really intriguing subject, not least because on Earth we know this gas to be associated with life processes.

The gas was first detected in the Martian atmosphere in 2003 by the Mars Express orbiter and by Earth-based observations.

Subsequent mapping has found it to be more abundant over particular parts of the planet. Its distribution seems also to come and go very rapidly, much faster than one would expect.

Some researchers have naturally speculated that its persistence is linked to the existence of microbes living in the near-surface layers of the planet.

Others think it much more likely the methane is produced by geological activity, from active Martian volcanoes or from a geochemical process called .

The latter occurs at low temperatures when rocks rich in the minerals olivine and pyroxene react chemically with water, releasing methane.

The TGO will try to get us nearer to solving some of these riddles.

The have already been outlined by the space agencies.

It will have a dry mass (ie not including fuel) of about 1,000kg and carry about six instruments.

It will have some spectrometers that look straight down through the atmosphere; and others that look across towards the limb of Mars, using the Sun in the background to illuminate the entire atmospheric column.

The latter technique, so-called solar occultation analysis, has the potential to reveal gas concentrations in parts per trillion.

Of course, no orbiter would be complete without cameras - and the TGO will have the means to view a whole hemisphere at once to give context to its trace gas measurements, and a high-resolution capability to look closely at specific geological formations that might be associated with methane "hotspots".

So what happens if the TGO finds a really interesting source, one that cries out to be investigated by a surface robot?

Well, under the joint exploration programme, Esa and Nasa will send to Mars in .

The Esa rover in particular will have a suite of instruments designed to test for microbes and it will even be able to drill two metres into the ground to find them.

But the TGO information may make little practical difference to the targeting of the two rovers. And here's why.

The TGO will not get into orbit around Mars and into its science operations phase until May 2017; and assume also that scientists will need a year perhaps to make some sense of its observations.

This takes you into the time period when the two rovers will be launching.

Normally, their landing location (they will go to the same place) would have been selected by then.

A re-targeting would mean carrying out a new landing site evaluation, photographing the touchdown zone to assess whether it is safe.

It is something which has to be done carefully; it's not something you really want to be doing "on the fly".

What Esa and Nasa could do instead is prepare a number of landing options in the years ahead, based on the best available science, and then hope, when the TGO information finally comes through, one of the favoured choices turns out also to be a hotspot of high significance.

In other words, we may need a bit of luck if the 2018 rovers are to get to go to one of the most promising sites for life on Mars today.

Watch this space.

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• - What's this?

The this week have been truly shocking.

As I wrote , if there was one country in the world that really didn't need this kind of catastrophe then the Caribbean nation was it.

Its infrastructure is wobbly at the best of times and watching the photographs and video from Port-au-Prince has been heart-wrenching.

I spent Thursday morning with the director general of the European Space Agency to talk about the eye-catching events coming up in 2010, but it was no surprise when he wanted to mention first the events in Haiti.

Natural disasters are the occasion when that fleet of metal boxes orbiting hundreds of kilometres above our heads really come into their own.

A map of roads and public buildings in Port-au-Prince. (SERTIT https://sertit.u-strasbg.f)

The first thing an emergency response needs is an up-to-date view of the land affected.

Which roads and bridges are still intact? Which remote areas look to have been worst hit?

Where is the best place for a base-camp? And if terrestrial communications are down, which satellite assets can be used to co-ordinate the relief effort, not just for phones but to drive computers as well?

Many space agencies have signed up to something called the .

It was initiated back in 2000 by Esa, and the French (Cnes) and Canadian (CSA) space agencies; but then quickly acquired other signatories including important US bodies like Noaa and the US Geological Survey.

The UK, too, is involved. It has a very particular contribution to make through the Guildford-based , which manages a six-strong fleet of optical and near-infrared imaging satellites that can - as a team - picture the entire Earth's surface in one day.

When the Charter is activated, the signatories re-task their satellites to get the data most urgently needed in a devastated region.

- of course it was.

The French Civil Protection authorities, Public Safety Canada, the American Earthquake Hazards Programme of the USGS and the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti called for spacecraft to turn their eyes on Haiti.

You can see on this page one of the first maps generated from satellite imagery taken within 24 hours after the Magnitude 7.0 quake.

It's being used to identify roads and major public buildings reported to have been damaged. The map relies on data provided by Japan's ALOS spacecraft and France's Spot-5 satellite.

I know it doesn't look like it here because of the way it is rendered but the original has 10m resolution (Go to the to see some of the latest maps in more detail).

Others sats have been deployed as well, including Esa's leading Earth observation spacecraft, ERS-2 and Envisat.

These satellites have a radar capability, which, unlike optical sensors, sees the ground whatever the weather.

Radar is particular useful because you can detect how the ground has actually moved by comparing data gathered before and after a quake.

This type of information will be important in assessing future seismic hazard in the region, so it's not just in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster like this that satellites return on their investment.

Watch this space.

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It was at one of those "press breakfasts" in June last year that the top man for satellites at Europe's biggest space company declared that the contract to build should not be split between two suppliers.

Evert Dudok told the croissant-chomping journalists that to do so would :

"I want to be extremely clear: 'there is one winner and one loser, and the winner takes it all' has to be the principle for best value for money - otherwise we will be in a mess. I promise you, we will be in a mess."

What he meant of course was that his company - - should be the winner. They were bullish words, and words which some pointed out at the time could come back to haunt him. On Thursday, they did just that.

The a contract for the production of for the operational Galileo network.

They will all be built by the / consortium.

Astrium has been given nothing even though it helped build a sophisticated demonstrator () to prove the technology and the four that will showcase the Galileo system.

In a British context, there will now be different emotions in two towns in southern England.

There will be disappointment in Portsmouth where EADS Astrium has done much of its Galileo work, but elation over at Guildford where SSTL will now be involved in an intense five-year project to roll out an operational Galileo.

It guarantees work for about 100 people which is about a third of the company. The total OHB/SSTL contract is worth 566m euros (£510m). Of that, the SSTL
side is worth 236m euros (£212m).

Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) will integrate the payloads.

This means it will fit together all the different parts that make up a sat-nav spacecraft's "brain" - its atomic clocks, signal generators, amplifiers, antennas, etc - before passing this box to OHB System in Germany.

OHB will attach the payload to the spacecraft bus, test the whole set-up before then despatching the completed satellite to Sinnamary in French Guiana where a Soyuz rocket will blast the thing into orbit.

The schedule promised to the EC has the first OHB/SSTL spacecraft coming off the end of the production line in 2012 ready for launch in the October.

After that, they should be pushed out the door at a rate of about one every six weeks.

What does that mean for you and me and increasing numbers of other sat-nav users?

It means that by early 2014, there should be sufficient numbers of spacecraft in orbit for Galileo to really start to make a difference to the performance of space-borne timing and location-based signals.

Devices fitted with GPS and Galileo-enabled chips should be making faster, more accurate fixes.

Manufacturers have been planning for this. You can expect the TomToms and Garmins of the world to start advertising "Galileo compatible" on the boxes.

And with the turn-over rate in new mobile phones, Galileo compatibility should spread quite rapidly through the handheld market as well.

But there's still a long way to go with this story. The Commission asked both OHB/SSTL and Astrium to quote for batches of eight, 14 and 22 satellites.

It has ordered 14 now but there is money in the budget to order more. And eventually a full constellation will have about 30 satellites including in-orbit spares.

Brussels could well turn around to Astrium and say "OK, you provide the second source".

Yes, this could be more expensive than having one supplier, but the Commission has recently made great play of the need for speed.

So much time has been lost through commercial and political squabbling that any benefits that ought to accrue to the European economy from having a more advanced system will be diminished as the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese also pursue next-generation technologies.

And if a technical issue arises in the production of the satellites, the roll-out of the system might not be delayed if there is a dual source. It would, as they say, lower the risks.

In a statement today, the Commission said further satellites would be procured from OHB or EADS Astrium "".

The next major event to watch out for in the Galileo story is the first flight of a Soyuz rocket from its new . This should happen mid-year. If that goes well, it will enable Galileo to proceed with the launch of Astrium's first two pathfinders, or "In-orbit Validation" (IOV) spacecraft, before the year's end.

These two IOVs, and an additional pair to fly in 2011, will prove the Galileo system works end to end.

Watch this space.

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We ended 2009 with one anniversary, and we start 2010 with another.

Six years ago on 4 January (GMT), Nasa's Deep Space Network picked up a signal sent 170 million km across the Solar System to Earth.

The had landed on Mars.

Engineers promised an initial operational mission of 90 Martian days; and yet, this plucky six-wheeled "mobile geologist" just kept on rolling... and rolling... and rolling.

The US space agency has warned though, that this remarkable robot's days may now be numbered.

For the past nine months the vehicle has been stuck in a sand trap.

With just four working wheels (five intermittently), Spirit cannot get the traction it needs to free itself.

The concern is that the rover will not be able to position its solar panels to make the most of what will soon be a faint winter sun on the Red Planet. Without sufficient power, the robot will not be able to heat its systems, never mind run its science instruments.

If Spirit is unlucky and gets covered by more of the dust that can accumulate on its panels and block out the light (and it doesn't get the wind that can sometimes clean the cells), the rover could die.

Whatever happens in the next few months, the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover will be remembered as a magnificent success.

It was targeted at the 170km-wide Gusev Crater. Orbital images had suggested this near-equatorial location might once have held a giant lake.

The investigation of that watery history got off to a slow start.

Most people will have forgotten by now that 18 Martian days into its mission. It took engineers back on Earth about two weeks to find the fix for a flash memory glitch that made the rover constantly re-boot itself.

Once it did get going, Spirit found the volcanic rocks on the plain where it landed had undergone very limited alteration by exposure to moisture.

Only when it got into the Columbia Hills about 2.5km from its touch-down site did the robot discover some rocks and soils that had experienced extensive exposure to water.

One of its biggest finds was made by accident on the 1,158th Martian day of its mission. Spirit was by then driving backwards because its right-front wheel had jammed.

As it dragged this wheel through the soil, it dug a trough. And scientists studying pictures returned to Earth noticed how on this particular day, a bright material had been uncovered.

Detailed examination found this material to be . The rover team concluded the deposits had formed through the interaction of hot spring water or steam with volcanic rock.

On Earth, such locations tend to teem with bacteria. What's more, these types of hydrothermal environments will also entomb any lifeforms as the deposits are laid down.

No wonder the rover's lead scientist Steve Squyres said that of all the rock and soil samples he'd seen on Mars, this was material he really wished could be brought back to Earth to study in a laboratory.

Keep your fingers crossed for the plucky rover. You can follow its progress as Nasa continues to try to ease it out of the sand trap at the .

A brief word also while I've got your attention on the future of Mars exploration. Just before the festive break, we got word from the European Space Agency that its member states had formally bought into a joint roadmap with Nasa.

The missions despatched in 2016 and 2018 will now be combined ventures.

The designed to track down the sources of methane and other trace gases recently detected at the Red Planet. It will also include a small, short-lived static lander to give Europe the opportunity to try to land something on Mars.

2018 will see two rovers fly to the planet - one European vehicle and .

It will be intriguing to follow the development of these spacecraft in the coming years. Esa has now updated its website to reflect its .

Watch this space.

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