...Want the ultimate space collectible? Consider a space shuttle. The orbiters have flown 29 years and have a few miles on them (tens of millions), but soon all three will be up for grabs.

Some time this year—right now it looks like September 30—NASA plans to shut down the program. For all the shuttle’s successes in missions like deploying satellites, fixing the Hubble Space Telescope, and building the International Space Station, flying it was always risky. Two orbiters were lost, Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, killing 14 astronauts. Now NASA says it will donate the ones remaining— Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour—to whoever it feels can provide the best homes. In 2008, the agency issued a Request for Information, and21 institutions entered the competition. NASA won’t say when it will ask for formal proposals or identify the candidates, but some have declared themselves, apparently feeling that if you want a national treasure, you shouldn’t be shy about saying so.

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I'm hoping that National Museum of the USAF (formerly the USAF Museum) in Dayton snags one of the shuttle when they are retired.  The NMUSAF is one the nation's premier aviation museums and a space shuttle would be a great addition to their collection which already includes many one of a kind artifacts.

NASA has produced a cool, free, lunar rover game for the iPhone.

Get it Here

There's a lot to read but basically this is the new 31,862 lb bunker buster bomb. It can be carried in only a B-2 or b-52. It's designed to penetrate and then explode. The first photo is testing the explosion underground.

GBU-57A/B

The Pentagon is accelerating by three years its plans for a super bunker buster, the GBU-57A/B or Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a powerful new bomb aimed squarely at the underground nuclear facilities of Iran and North Korea . The gargantuan bomb is longer than 11 persons standing shoulder-to-shoulder or more than 20 feet base to nose and weighs over 15 tons (31,862 pounds). Some 18 percent of its total weight is comprised of explosives.

The GBU-57A/B MOP is so immense it can only be carried by either a B-52or a B-2A Stealth bomber. The weapons explosive power is 10 times greater than its predecessor, the BLU-109. Moreover, the GBU-57A/B MOPis one third heavier than the MOAB dubbed the Mother of All Bombs. This super buster all started with a break-through by the RaytheonCompany when it developed and tested a new conventional warhead technology to defeat hardened and deeply buried bunkers. The new technology, called Tandem Warhead System, consists of a shaped-charge precursor warhead combined with a follow- through penetrator explosive charge.

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The latest issue of Air & Space magazine is out and it has some great articles.

I especially liked the articles on Mars rovers, the upcoming disposition of the remaining space shuttles, MiG vs F-18 war games, and the great Kelly Johnson. 

Check it out online

An amazing achievement that shows the innovation of private industry.  I can't wait to see these aircraft fly!

Virgin Founder, Sir Richard Branson and SpaceshipOne (SS1) designer, Burt Rutan, today reveal SS2 to the public for the first time since construction of the world’s first manned commercial spaceship began in 2007. SS2 has been designed to take many thousands of private astronauts into space after test programming and all required U.S. government licensing has been completed.

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The recent Shuttle mission to the International Space Station has brought ESA’s Columbus module a step nearer to beginning an ambitious experiment to track global maritime traffic from space.

Full Article- ESA Atlantis leaves Columbus with a radio eye on Earth’s sea traffic

The rocket took off from launch pad 39B at 11:30 a.m. ET, after waiting more than three hours for Florida's famously changeable weather to clear. Skies today at the launch site were partly cloudy, but controllers worried that static electricity could build up on the rocket as it rose above the Atlantic ocean.

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Awesome video rendering of an Ares launch.

Here