Nasa

LOS ANGELES - Now that NASA has mothballed its fleet of space shuttles, the space agency needs a new ride to the International Space Station. On Friday, NASA handed out $1.1 billion in contracts to three companies to privately develop rockets and spacecraft for what could be the next step in manned spaceflight. The announcement was made by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on a cloudless day from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The winners included Hawthorne, Calif.-based rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, and Boeing Co., which develops spacecraft in Huntington Beach, Calif., and uses rocket engines made by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, Calif.

NASA has dubbed the Mars landing planned for early Monday morning the "seven minutes of terror" because that's how long the craft has to slow from 13,000 miles an hour to zero. The entry starts with a parachute, then rockets, and, finally, a novel "sky crane" with a cable that will lower a rover the size of a car gently onto the planet's surface. Though previous craft have landed on relatively gentle terrain, this is the first aimed at a precise spot close to more hazardous topography.

By Chris Gibbons   One of the greatest pay-per-view events in history — expensive to produce but very affordable for viewers — will begin its broadcast around the globe on Monday. It's not WrestleMania or the long-awaited Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. showdown, and it's not taking place in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or the Superdome. As a matter of fact, it will unfold more than 150 million miles from Earth.   NASA's car-sized Curiosity rover will begin its perilous plunge through the atmosphere of Mars early Monday morning, and modern technology will enable millions around the world to anxiously follow the descent and subsequent explorations of the Red Planet's surface.

Court-martial set in alleged hazing NEW YORK - Chinese Americans decrying the suicide of an Army private who allegedly was hazed because of his ethnicity left Monday for the North Carolina court-martial for one of eight U.S. soldiers accused of pushing Pvt. Danny Chen to the edge. Dozens of supporters of Chen's family held a news conference in Manhattan before some boarded a van for the 10-hour trip to Fayetteville. Military officials said Chen, 19, shot himself last year in Afghanistan after weeks of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of fellow soldiers.

Los Angeles Times PASADENA, Calif. - Three weeks from Sunday night, an amiable, whip-smart engineer named Ray Baker will be staring into his computer screen at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, hopeful and helpless - or, as he puts it, "sweating blood. " The night will have been 10 years and $2.5 billion in the making, incorporating the work of 5,000 people in 37 states. And then, 154 million miles from home, the fate of the most ambitious machine humans have sent to another planet will rest on a seven-minute landing sequence so far-fetched it looks like something Wile E. Coyote devised to catch the Road Runner.

For 250 of Philadelphia's young people, 20 questions wasn't a guessing game but the number of chances to hear firsthand from astronauts on the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Joe Acaba and Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers spoke via a satellite video to 250 Philadelphia Destination Imagination participants visiting the Philadelphia University campus Tuesday morning. The questions may have sounded mundane to many on Earth, but the answers from space elicited laughs and cheers from the audience.

WASHINGTON - There's no firm date yet, but sometime in early 2014, NASA intends to take its first major step toward rebuilding its human spaceflight program. The milestone is the maiden test flight of its Orion spacecraft, a launch that has come into sharper relief in the three months since NASA and manufacturer Lockheed Martin announced it. As planned, an unmanned Orion capsule will begin its journey at Cape Canaveral and take two loops around Earth before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

"The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky. " - Carl Sagan Chris Gibbons is a Philadelphia writer The recent news of NASA's incredible discovery streamed across the Internet on Dec. 20: "The First Earth-Sized Planets Found Beyond Our Solar System.

LOS ANGELES - The New Year's countdown to the moon has begun. NASA said Wednesday that its twin spacecraft were on course to arrive back-to-back at the moon after a 31/2-month journey. "We're on our way there," said project manager David Lehman of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $496 million mission. The Grail probes - short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory - won't land on the lunar surface. Instead, they were poised to slip into orbit to study the uneven lunar gravity field.