It has been said that there are many available solutions to any particular problem. And so goes NASA Chief Mike Griffin's message in the upcoming 20th Annual Conference on Small Satellites, set to begin on Monday at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

Griffin wanted to remind everyone that yes, there was a time in our history that all we could make are small satellites. But even though things are getting bigger and we are becoming more capable, we should not abandon these so called "smallsats". Should be asked, he actually prefers to have a network of smallsats doing the same work than a few big ones, calling it as the "distributed approach".

Research and deep space missions are often, if not always, given to smallsats. The NASA chief highlighted, for instance, the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) satellite and its delving into the secrets of solar flares. Similarly important smallsats are: Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) that has produced a new, more detailed picture of the infant universe by measuring the properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation over the full sky; Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) set to launch as a hitchhiker craft onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2008, as well as future scout missions at Mars.

But probably the most important of Griffin's message, was the discussion on the budget reality of NASA and the infrastructure needed in solar system space. According to him, communication, navigation and other services can be handled by smallsats, which in turn can be afforded by entrepreneurial space firms. This Friday in fact, NASA will unveil its strategy with private space companies to provide commercial orbital transportation services (COTS), starting with a pump prime money of half billion dollars over the next four years.

Unfortunately, the NASA chief also declared that the plan is not a given. “There have been some entrepreneurial space successes, but by and large I think it’s only fair to point out that most of space entrepreneurship exists on viewgraphs,” Griffin said.

On a happy note though, he concluded that should NASA be able to put the money on the table, the time will be right for these space entrepreneurs to help and step up.

For 35 years, scientists have been puzzled as to why deuterium appears to be distributed unevenly in the Milky Way Galaxy. A deuterium by the way is a stable isotope of Hydrogen, present in all the oceans of the earth. However, it also exists in space where it was supposed to be burned forever during star formations; thus, it was considered as a way to trace star formations. The less deuterium, the more stars present in that certain part of the sector.

A recent discovery by NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite seems to be supporting a theory presented by Princeton University's Bruce Draine that deuterium might preferentially be bonded to interstellar dust grains. The satellite is detecting telltale spectral fingerprints of deuterium in the ultraviolet energy range. The higher the interstellar dust, the lower deuterium - and vice versa.

Therefore, the decrease of deuterium in a sector does not necessarily mean that there are more star formations there, but rather that the deuterium may have bonded itself to interstellar dust. Scientists are now rethinking the whole chemical evolution of galaxies.

You might think it's no biggie, but imagine growing up thinking you're a woman and later on finding out that you're actually a man biologically (it happens!)? If what Draine thinks is true, it could shake up the very foundations of existing knowledge about space. Now that a more credible institution is supporting his claims, you might want to take a look under those pants, errr, skies.

A Japanese civilian communications satellite and a French military communications satellite was put into orbit via an Ariane-5 rocket. The launch happened in French Guiana, at Europe's space base in Kourou, on the northeast coast of South America.

Aboard the blasted rocket was a JCSAT-10 satellite for Japan's JSAT Corporation. Built by Lockheed Martin in the United States, the satellite - released into the orbit twenty-seven minutes after the launch - was designed to broadcast high definition television to the Asia-Pacific region. Explained by JSAT Corporation officials, it would be the "Sky Perfect TV" system that broadcasts 251 television channels.

Five minutes later, Syracuse 3B, a military communications satellite built by a European industrial consortium for France's Defense Ministry, was released as well into space. According to the French Defense Procurement Agency (DGA), it was necessary to have a dedicated military communications satellite network as satellites shared with civilian operators risked being immobilized by relatively unsophisticated means.

The Ariane-5 rocket was the third to be launched this year.

It looks like India would have to wait a little longer before it could hit outer space. Why is that? India's space program suffered a disappointment recently when a domestically made rocket carrying a television broadcasting satellite failed shortly after liftoff. The Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) was ordered to be extinguished when it it veered out of control 40 seconds after lifting off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. It performed really well in its first operational flight last September 2004.

Along with the destroyed rocket, a $20 million Insat-4C communications satellite also got distinguished and its debris fell into the Bay of Bengal. At 2,180 kilograms, Insat-4C would have been the heaviest payload sent to space from Indian soil. Equipped with 12 Ku-band transponders, the satellite was expected to boost direct-to home television broadcasting in India. The setback was actually the second one for India, earlier, its Agni-3 intermediate range ballistic missile, designed to cover 3,500 kilometers, failed in its first test launch due to a stage-separation glitch.

To add more woes to the Indian Space expedition, Sri Lanka’s state-owned broadcaster, Rupavahini, had booked a capacity aboard the satellite, becoming the first foreign client for Indian satellite broadcasting services other than Intelsat, which has leased 11 Insat transponders.

Gopalan Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said that the root of the GSLV failure would be fully understood once all the data are analyzed, but according to ISRO insiders, there appears to have been a problem with one of the vehicle’s four liquid-fueled strap-on boosters. However, the chairman doesn't consider this as a major setback since India’s lunar orbiter set for launch in early 2008 and any contracted commercial launches won't be affected by the said mishaps.

Did you know that the Hubble Space Telescope:

• Travels around Earth at 5 miles per second (the speed it would take a car to travel from Los Angeles to New York City in 10 minutes)?
• Completes one full orbit every 97 minutes?
• Uses about the same amount of energy as 28 100-watt light bulbs?
• Travels more than 150 million miles (241 million km) per year?

If that didn't arouse your curiosity about the Hubble, nothing will! But if it did make you wonder about the Hubble and the over 900 satellites somewhere out there you will definitely get a kick out of NASA's J-Track 3-D. The website (requires JAVA applet) is a plot in 3D that shows the position of each of these satellites. Just click on the select satellite function and you can locate where they are at the very moment. It's one of those things that will take your mind off the foibles of life back on Earth!

I know a lot of people who are scared of these white bolts from the sky; at the same time, there is a handful who loves watching lightning amidst the dangers it could pose. But there are those hapless victims when lightning strikes -- the type who did not know what hit them. That is why NASA is improving their lightning detecting facilities and are busy spreading the latest news and findings on lightnings.

Aside from the safety issues, detecting lightning strikes is important for warning land managers of possible wildfire triggers, and protecting electrical and transportation systems. Also, Earth scientists are interested in detecting lightning because it helps pinpoint where and when strong convection or the rising of air is occurring.

Convection is one of the Earth system’s key mechanisms for heat and moisture across the globe, and yearly maps of lightning flashes may help scientists identify how parts of the Earth's climate system, such as severe storms and precipitation, might be changing over time.

The thumbprint shows the average yearly counts of lightning flashes per square k.m. based on data collected by NASA satellites--  the Lightning Imaging Sensor that flies on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, a joint NASA/JAXA (the Japanese Space Agency) mission and by the the Optical Transient Detector. These data were collected between 1995 and 2002.

Places where less than an average of one flash occurred each year are gray or light purple while places with the largest number of lightning strikes are deep red. More lightning occurs over land than ocean because daily sunshine heats up the land surface faster than the ocean. The heated surface heats the air, and more hot air leads to stronger convection, thunderstorms, and lightning.

If you would view the map closely, you would also realize that more lightning occurs near the equator than near the poles. This pattern could also be caused by differences in heating. The equator is warmer than the poles, and convection, thunderstorms, and lightning are widespread across the tropics every day.

At 6:15 p.m. EDT, Delta II took flight off Launch Launch Complex 17A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. It carried into orbit an experimental payload for the joint U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), U.S. Air Force and U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) team.

Micro-Satellite Technology Experiment (MiTEx) is a joint project of DARPA, the Air Force and the Navy. It is basically an experimental payload that will aid to identify, integrate, test and evaluate small satellite technologies.

"Today's mission was a great team effort, involving talented people from DARPA, the Air Force, the launch range, The Aerospace Corporation and our suppliers, as well as the professionals on the Delta program," said Dan Collins, vice president of Boeing Launch Systems. "The team faced many challenges, but maintained its focus on quality and teamwork throughout the mission."

Have a blow-by-blow account of this historic launch by heading over to the read link just below this article. The launch also marked the 250th Aerojet-supported Delta launch.

Excerpt from Space.com:

1845 GMT (2:45 p.m. EDT)

The launch team members have been polled to ensure all console stations are manned and ready to resume the countdown as planned at the end of this hold. No issues were reported. Clocks will start ticking again at 2:54 p.m. EDT as the Terminal Countdown begins.

1834 GMT (2:34 p.m. EDT)

Now 40 minutes through this scheduled hour-long hold in the countdown. Readiness polling of the launch team is coming up shortly.

1754 GMT (1:54 p.m. EDT)

T-minus 150 minutes and holding. Clocks are entering a planned 60-minute built-in hold in the countdown. Holds are scheduled into the count to give workers a chance to catch up on any activities that may be running behind.

Over the next hour, all launch team members and management officials will be seated at their consoles. A series of polls will be conducted to verify everyone is ready to enter Terminal Count at end of the built-in hold.

Liftoff of the Delta 2 rocket remains scheduled for 5:34 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

China is gearing up for their moon probe! After predicting that their will be a manned lunar landing for China in 2024, China is now gearing to set up radio telescopes to monitor that country’s first lunar orbiter, Chang’e 1, according to Li Yan, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Yunnan Observatory.

This monitoring project just goes to show that China is indeed more than capable of monitoring and tracking their future Moon-orbiting satellites. Spread out in distance from each other, the radio dishes are set up in Beijing, Shanghai, the southwestern Yunnan Province, and the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The testing was conducted in an agreement between the CAS and the European Space Agency. Every four hours, the satellite circled the Moon and the telescopes were able to detect half the orbit, or about two hours. This Moon probe is based upon the country’s Dongfanghong III satellite platform and other technology. Chang’e 1 is on track to be tested at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province in December. If the probe’s readiness is green-lighted it will be launched in April 2007.

Aside from that, Chang'e 1 will also sport a stereo camera system that will chart the lunar surface, an altimeter to measure the distance between the spacecraft and the lunar surface, a gamma/Xray spectrometer to study the overall composition and radioactive components of the Moon, a microwave radiometer to map the thickness of the lunar regolith, and a system of space environment monitors to collect data on the solar wind and near-lunar region. From the looks of that alone, it seems that there is a lot on Chang'e 1's shoulders.

PanAmSat announced that its Galaxy 16 satellite was successfully sent to space at 12:50 am PDT. The high-powered fixed satellite service (FSS) spacecraft was delivered into a geosynchronous transfer orbit aboard a Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket from the Odyssey Launch Platform.

Built by Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) for PanAmSat, Galaxy 16 is designed to provide over 10 kilowatts of power throughout its 15-year mission life. It will enable PanAmSat to provide coverage for data and video services, including HDTV broadcast and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) across the United States as well as Canada and Mexico.

A fifth satellite, Galaxy 18, is currently under construction at SS/L's facility, scheduled for a 2007 delivery.

Kazakhstan joined the ranks of space-exploring nations when it launched its first communications satellite into space. The unmanned KazSat-1 satellite was launched from Baikonur space center, the world's largest space center, just before dawn.

The satellite, which was launched into space by a Russian Proton rocket, will remain in orbit to relay television and other communications signals to Kazakhstan, parts of Russia and three other Central Asian nations.

Russia currently leases the Soviet-era cosmodrome, but oil-rich Kazakhstan is looking to boost its own role in the lucrative space and satellite industry. Though the know-how came from Russia, Kazakhstan is already training its own cosmonauts for future Baikonur projects. It plans to build its own satellites and provide launch service for other countries.

Russia and Kazakhstan are currently building a new launch facility at Baikonur for the new Angara rocket, which will be an environmentally-friendly alternative to the Proton. The Proton rocket uses poisonous fuel that sometimes spills onto the steppe after blastoff.