NASA has announced future plans of sending bigger chunks of the proposed base on the moon and better Rovers. These will be implemented in order to get more out of Space missions and hasten the development of Space Commerce.

The deputy associate administrator for exploration systems for NASA, Doug Cook, pointed out that their organization's new plan involves sending larger habitats to the moon instead of the smaller pieces that were initially planned.

These larger stations should theoretically allow the astronauts to learn more about the moon much faster than if they sent smaller habitat sections since the construction would take a longer time.

The rovers were called by astronaut Mike Gernhart as "habitats on wheels." He pointed out that it's like a sports car and spacesuit all in one. What makes this whole package even better is the fact that it retains the same size as the standard unpressurized Rovers used by astronauts during the Apollo landings.

This is a very exciting time for space-exploration as these innovations will allow us to learn so much more than conventional means being used today. Hopefully, the endeavors of the people at NASA pay off.

To prove that the land of the rising sun has the technology to reach for the moon, Japan recently launched the Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE), the biggest lunar mission since the Apollo landings. An orbiter named after the moon princess in a fairy tale, Kaguya, which weighs three metric tons was sent from Tanegashima island to explore uncharted polar areas of the moon.

The princess stripped 45 minutes into the flight, separating from its rocket near Chile's airspace. Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) planned for two successful orbits around the Earth before Kaguya reaches the moon to release two satellites equipped with high-definition cameras.

It took quite an effort before SELENE successfully took off, after previous failed attempts of rocket H-2 and H-2A which lost its path in 2003. Around US$ 479 million went to making the mission possible, but the Japanese scientists are quite proud with what they achieved.

Other countries are expected to follow suit in what seems to be a space race. China will launch its own craft later this year to do their own exploration, while India plans to join the scene by launching another rocket into space. The US has ideas for its own ventures, with a launch expected to kick off in 2008.

Google and the X-Prize Foundation have set up a high brow challenge to any private, non-government entity who can land a rover on the moon and send back at least a gigabyte of images, video and data back to Earth.

The Internet search giant is willing to invest over US$ 30 million to anyone willing to take up the herculean task.

The first prize of US$ 20 million will be given to the first private firm to reach the moon and then soft land a rover to travel at least 500m and gather a specific set of images, video, and data. The second prize winner will get up to US$ 5 million for being able to repeat the first placer's achievements.

Bonuses of US$ 5 million will be given to rovers which complete other objectives such as traveling further on the Moon, taking pictures of Apollo hardware, finding water-ice, and surviving an entire lunar night.

X-Prize Foundation CEO Peter Diamandis explains the objective for such a competition: "We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration."

Challengers have until 2012 to complete the task. After that, the prize money will be lowered to US$ 15 million until 2014, when the competition will officially end. This is actually the third competition administered by the X-Prize Foundation.

The first one involved a similar "space race" while the second one was the sequencing of 100 human genomes in 10 days.

This just goes to show that no matter how high and mighty we view astronauts, at the end of the day, they are human too. This image was taken from NASA and yup, it is the inside of the International Space Station. European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, Thomas Reiter (who'll be heading home soon), is going about with his work. Seems like a pretty ordinary picture, right?

So what do you do for fun while you're in space? You could listen to your favorite music tracks. This photo is getting popular over at Digg because of a fifth generation iPod sighting. The Apple creation is neatly attached to a Belkin external battery pack on the equipment rack in front of Thomas Reiter. (Reminds me of a scene in the movie Apollo 13 wherein Lovell and his crew brought a transistor radio on board, times have really changed).

Heck if I get sent to space, I would bring my mp3 player too. And a couple of other gaming thingamajigs of course.

Space.com reports that a whole batch of Vintage Apollo space mission tapes fount at a university in Western Australia aren't what they needed. In operation scientist John Sarkissian's own words: "These aren't the tapes we're looking for."

Apparently the one-inch magnetic tapes recorded at the Carnavaron station in Western Australia contain data from Apollo 11's Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package (EASEP) – a set of scientific instruments placed at the Apollo 11 landing site by astronauts.

What Sarkissian and his team are looking for is the Apollo 11 Slow-Scan Television tapes. The lost tapes that could very well give the world a clearer crisper view of the first human explorers on the Moon from three decades back.

The SSTV recordings were of better quality than the scan-converted imagery that the global audience witnessed.

The search for the lost tapes hasn't proven easy. Budget cuts at NASA in the post-Apollo years entailed that a whole lot of day-to-day records were discarded. Jobs and entire divisions that dealt with data records were eliminated. Moreover, since there wasn't an official requirement to archive data, it is likely that the SSTV tape could have gone the same way that many old television programs did: TV stations degaussed the tapes and reused them.

Still the experts are determined and are hopeful that they will find the fabled tapes. Bill Wood, a retired Apollo tracking station engineer says: "we are running down every lead."

What is it about lost tapes that gets conspiracy theorists all a-twitter?

The Orion will be the bigger, but younger, brother of Apollo. It will have the same multistage rocket, crew vehicle, and lunar lander--but bigger and more high tech of course. When asked why there are similarities between the two shuttles; Patrick McKenzie, the Business Development Manager for the Orion Project at Lockheed Space Systems, said that the Apollo shuttle got the aerodynamic shape of the capsule dead on; the shape has been proven safe by NASA.

However, there will be some major upgrade in technology under the hood. They are planning to build an automated rendezvous and docking capability. It will also have a new design and material for the heat shield. They'll be using materials such as PICA [phenolic impregnated carbon ablator] and SLA [a cork-based ablative material].

They're also looking forward to developing better landing-impact systems. The capsule will be bigger than Apollo's: it can seat six crew members. The cockpit has been replaced by a modern "glass cockpit" design. The avionics systems will be up to current technology.

No more "Houston, we have a problem." The Orion will have a "dual fault tolerance" element. Two failures in the system? The Orion will still run safely. The system constantly monitors the other; if one fails, another takes its place. It may add more weight to the vehicle, but it'll make it safer.

When asked about the gap between the last moon mission and 2020, Patrick answers that the budget for lunar missions these days aren't that big as the last mission. He added that they are still in the process of developing the lunar lander, the Earth-departure stage, and lift vehicles.

So in 2020, we'll be grooving and jiving to the 60's Apollo look-alike Orion as it pushes itself from Earth's atmosphere to the moon.

Gamers who like driving sims but are tired of all the same old race tracks - or are looking for new frontiers - will be interested in this one. NASA's new educational PC game, Lunar Racing Championship, is a virtual reality simulator offering players a chance to drive around the surface of the moon.

Using a 3D map created from the 1998 Clementine Mission, LRC will allow players to visit the site of the Apollo 11 Lander or the  Tycho crater - or most anywhere else on the Lunar surface. Players wear goggles that allow for stereo vision, and the player's movement is tracked using motion sensors.

The game features a high degree of realism, we are told.  Dan Rasky of NASA's Ames Research Center says that NASA engineers will even be using  it order to plan missions and solve design problems. The same "virtual" thrusters that  give the game's cyber- buggies a little extra high-speed traction may very well find their on onto the real thing, he says. Lunar Racing Championship is scheduled to be released sometime in October.

Last Monday, German astronomers have revealed that they currently have in their possession one of the world's rarest video tape collections that consist of original images of the Apollo moon landings. These tapes have been reported as lost by NASA with all but two of the 700 cartons of tapes that were placed in the archives could no longer be recovered.

However, Thilo Elsner, director of the Bochum Observatory, has noted that they have the actual raw images of signals from the moon, and what they have are not copies of copies. Unfortunately, they only have the sound record of the historic 1969 mission Apollo 11, and no images.

Elsner has also stated that they have images from Apollo 15 in 1971, as well as missions that came afterwards. He said that they have up to 150 reels of two-inch magnetic tape which would be useful for reference, if NASA also lost the originals for that period. With the availability of these tapes, scientists are hoping to disprove the urban legend that the American moon landings were hoaxes.

The tapes of the Apollo landing, taken and telecast around the world in 1969 by pointing a TV camera at 10 frames-per-second images received by radio telescopes in Australia and California, have also been lost.

Whether conspiracy theorists would have a field day with these tapes remain to be seen.

Conspiracy theorists hold your horses as you could be about to be proven wrong. A reel of film that contains the original Apollo moon landing has been found in the hands of Australian film producer and rock video director Peter Clifton. The all-important footage contains Neil Armstrong's "one small step" that amazed the world back on July 20th 1969 at a much higher resolution than any of the 600 million viewers had seen on the day. The reel also contains images that were never released to the public.

The footage of Neil Armstrong's "one small step" is considered among the most important artifacts of the 20th century but the original NASA tapes have been mislaid somewhere in the US, much to the delight of the conspiracy theorists. Clifton's then-$180 tape contains high-res images running at 10fps, a film which he ordered in 1979 for Pink Floyd's Dark side of the moon video. If you believe in the age-old moon landing conspiracy theory then you may be worried about what the video contains. It's either that or NASA are worrying about what it contains...

NASA is taking on the tried and tested formula of the Apollo program that brought the first humans to the Moon way back in 1969, as they are faced with tight deadlines and uncertain budgets. The team has been ripping apart the Apollo to examine its ancient parts as a reference for the new rocket.

The new manned exploration project, called Constellation, is deliberately drawing upon lessons from the past as the space agency works to meet a congressional deadline of flying the Ares rocket by 2014. In fact, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has described the new program as "Apollo on steroids."

"We're not inventing rocket engines. This is an evolution," NASA associate administrator Scott Horowitz said during a visit to Marshall, which is in charge of developing propulsion systems for the new spacecraft. "You get the benefits of the heritage, but you also get the benefits of new technology to help drive down costs."

But will history repeat itself?