NASA’s Mars Rover Might Be Stuck For Good

Space.com: “Efforts to free the stuck Spirit rover on Mars have been dragging on since May and today a NASA official said the robot may never get free.”

Students Take Pictures From Space On $150 Budget

Slashdot: “An anonymous reader writes ‘Two MIT students have successfully photographed the earth from space on a strikingly low budget of $148. Perhaps more significantly, they managed to accomplish this feat using components available off-the-shelf to the average layperson, opening the door for a new generation of amateur space enthusiasts. The pair plan to launch again soon and hope that their achievements will inspire teachers and students to pursue similar endeavors.'”

Risk Aversion At Odds With Manned Space Exploration

Slashdot: “Several readers including tyghe!! sent in a Popular Mechanics piece analyzing the Augustine Commission’s recommendations and NASA itself in terms of a persistent bias towards risk aversion, and arguing that such a bias is fundamentally incompatible with the mission of opening a new frontier. ‘Rand Simberg, a former aerospace engineer finds the report a little too innocuous. In this analysis, Simberg asks, what happens when we take the risk out of space travel? … Aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan said a few years ago that if we’re not killing people, we’re not pushing hard enough. That might sound harsh to people outside the aerospace community but, as Rutan knows, test pilots and astronauts are a breed of people that willingly accepts certain risk in order to be part of great endeavors. They’re volunteers and they know what they’re getting into.'”