SOREX-2 experiments gathered data on high-speed flight and next generation planetary entry technology. Three test packages were lobbed to approximately 43.5 miles (70 kilometers) altitude. A Lockheed Martin Space Systems booster -- the first test flight of their large "hybrid" sounding rocket system that uses liquid oxygen and solid fuel -- pushed the payloads onto their suborbital trajectory. In essence, the test shot served as a flying wind tunnel for shaking out technology.

The SOREX - 2 payload is a joint project between NASA Ames Research Center and Wallops. The payload experiments included a 'wave rider' flying wedge, a linear aerobrake (or hypersonic parachute), and a Slotted Compression Ramp Probe (SCRAMP), a super stable planetary reentry probe.

The SOREX-2 project team is currently analyzing data on the payload's performance.

-- Leonard David

Bush Legislation Raises Science Spending 
 
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday signed legislation putting the National Science Foundation on a path to more than double its budget by 2007.

The law gives the government's premier research agency for the physical sciences more money for a variety of scientific and engineering research, for information technology and for mathematics education, among other fields.

The foundation had a budget of $4.8 billion in the spending year that ended Sept. 30. The new budget authorizes that to rise to $7.4 billion in 2005 and $9.8 billion in 2007. Congress has also backed big budget increases for the National Institutes of Health.

The first of two scheduled attempts to raise NASA's Comet Nuclear Tour (CONTOUR) spacecraft from the dead have produced no pre-Christmas joy for scientists and engineers.

Commands sent on December 17 toward the spacecraft's expected location through NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) did not raise a peep from the lost-to-space probe. A second attempt to reach CONTOUR is slated for December 20. At that time a four-hour session employing the largest DSN antennas available and sophisticated radio-science gear is scheduled.

Edward Reynolds, CONTOUR Project Manager at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) -- builder of the comet probe -- says the chances of obtaining a signal remain remote. "If we don't get a signal on Friday, our recommendation to NASA will be that we not try again," he says.

The craft hasn't been heard from since August 15, right after CONTOUR fired its solid rocket motor to shove itself from a parking orbit around Earth onto a pathway to intercept several comets.

-- Leonard David

The European Space Agency's new high-energy telescope has successfully collected its first data, the results of which were presented today at a press conference in Paris, France.

Integral, or International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, was launched on October 17. The most sensitive gamma ray instrument ever built, the ESA created the spacecraft to study mysterious, violent events such as black holes and gamma ray bursts.

ESA scientists have been calibrating Integral by pointing it at Cygnus X-1, 10,000 light years away. Scientists believe Cygnus X-1 is a black hole with five times the mass of the Sun that is consuming a nearby companion star.

While taking the so-called first light images, Integral also detected a gamma ray burst (GRB). GRBs are distant events that can release as much energy in a few minutes as the Sun does in 10 billion years and occur somewhere in the universe about twice an Earth day. Scientists generally believe GRBs are caused by the collision of two neutron stars or by a hypernova, a more energetic form of a supernova.

Integral is scheduled to be a two-year mission but has enough fuel for five.

-- Diana Jong 

After several launch attempts, the Coriolis mission has been put off until early January, at the earliest. Today's early morning attempt to loft the Air Force mission aboard a Titan II booster from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was scrubbed due, in part, to spacecraft problems. The launch team also became concerned about high winds aloft, potential for lightning, and thick cumulus clouds that violated flight constraints.

When rocketed into space, the Coriolis mission will fly the Navy Windsat microwave polarimetric radiometer and Air Force Solar Mass Ejection Imager in a low Earth, sun synchronous orbit. The Windsat radiometer will provide important meteorological information on wind speed and direction at or near the surface of the ocean and the Solar Mass Ejection Imager will provide valuable early warning of coronal mass ejections that affect communications and power distribution systems here on Earth.

The Coriolis mission is being assembled and launched by the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Centers Detachment 12 Space Test Program Office at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

-- Leonard David

Engineers made contact on Dec. 5 with the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, NASA announced today. The Deep Space Station (DSS) near Madrid (DSS-63) found the signal but could not lock onto the receiver, and so no telemetry was received, according to Pioneer project manager Larry Lasher. The signal level was just under the threshold value.

Pioneer 10 is 7.52 billion miles (12.10 billion kilometers) from Earth. A signal takes 22 hours and 25 minutes to make the round-trip, travelling at the speed of light.