Blue Origin

This computational fluid dynamics simulation shows Blue Origin's orbital Space Vehicle with a body flap placed toward the spacecraft's aft end. More than 180 wind-tunnel tests were used to analyze design alternatives.

Executives at Blue Origin, the rocket venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, have traditionally been reticent about discussing where they're going — but now that they're focusing in on development work for NASA, they're speaking out about their progress and their ambitions. And it turns out that those ambitions are ... well, pretty ambitious.

Like Armadillo Aerospace, Blue is developing a vertical-takeoff suborbital space vehicle for tourists and researchers. Like Sierra Nevada Corp., it's working on an aerodynamic spacecraft to carry NASA astronauts and other spacefliers into orbit. And like SpaceX, it's working on its own launch vehicles as well. The company may not provide many specifics about its timeline, but that doesn't mean the pace is lackadaisical.

"It's not a question of, 'Are we on some timeline,'" Brett Alexander, Blue Origin's director of strategy and business development, told me last week. "We've always said 'later in this decade' is when we're going to do it. Working with NASA will just accelerate us."

Alexander, who has worked on aerospace issues for more than two decades in government and industry circles, discussed Blue Origin's blue-sky ambitions as a follow-up to last week's news about a successful round of wind-tunnel tests for its orbital Space Vehicle, or SV. He said more than 180 runs were conducted at Lockheed Martin's wind-tunnel facility in Dallas to work out the right placement of aerodynamic body flaps on the aft end of the spacecraft.

The idea is that the flaps will enhance SV's biconic shape to give the capsule an extra bit of cross-range maneuverability "without the weight penalty and the complexity of wheels and wings," Alexander said. That could allow for a quicker return to orbit in the event of an emergency, since the SV could more easily be guided to a parachute-slowed descent over a designated land range.

May is a big month for Blue
Alexander said the resulting spacecraft design "will be officially blessed" at a system requirements review in May. Also during May, Blue Origin expects to begin testing of the thrust chamber assembly for its BE-3 rocket engine at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Alexander said.

The company, based in Kent, Wash., is receiving $22 million from NASA during the current phase of the space agency's program to help commercial ventures develop space taxis for the post-shuttle era. The SV isn't nearly as big as the space shuttle, of course, but it should be capable of transporting up to seven passengers to and from the International Space Station.

Alexander declined to say definitively whether Blue Origin would apply for further NASA funding during the next phase of the effort, known as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability or CCiCap. But with or without the money from NASA, Bezos and his team intend to create its their very own space transportation system.

"We started this design before NASA had the commercial crew program," Alexander said. "It was always our intention — and still is — to develop this."

He said that the plan calls for the "first few flights" to be launched on United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket, and that Blue Origin will eventually switch to its own launch vehicle with a reusable first stage.

Suborbital craft as 'pathfinder'
In parallel with its orbital development effort for NASA, Blue Origin is working on a separate crew capsule and propulsion vehicle that would blast off vertically for suborbital space trips. That part of the space program came into the spotlight last August, when Blue's unmanned test rocket went awry and crashed at the end of a supersonic test flight at Bezos' private spaceport in Texas. At the time, Bezos said that his team was "already working on our next development vehicle." Last week, Alexander said the development effort was "still under way."

In February, Alexander told Flightglobal that the suborbital crew capsule was undergoing testing, and that a pad-abort test would be conducted "in the summer sometime."

Although the funding arrangements for the privately backed suborbital program and the NASA-supported orbital program may be different, the two programs support each other technologically.

"Suborbital is definitely a pathfinder for our orbital system," Alexander said. The implication is that Blue Origin's rockets will be taking tourists and researchers to the edge of space significantly earlier than they'll be taking astronauts to orbit.

Bezos, whose net worth is currently estimated at more than $20 billion, doesn't strictly need NASA's money to pursue his long-held space ambitions. But Alexander said government backing will quicken Blue Origin's pace, and he argued against the sentiment in Congress that NASA should select just one company as the "leader" to go forward with spaceship development. Right now, NASA is supporting development efforts at four companies — the Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX as well as Blue Origin — and observers expect the field to shrink for the next round of funding. It's just a question of how much shrinkage there'll be.

"Competition is definitely better — better for the program, better for the country, better for the future of human spaceflight," Alexander told me. "If they down-select to one, it's no longer a commercial space program."

What do you think about Blue Origin's ambitions and the prospects for commercial spaceships? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More about Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos:

• Blue Origin spruces up its rocket report
• How tycoons will fuel future spaceflight
• Bezos aims to bring up Apollo 11's sunken engines
• Cosmic Log archive on the commercial space race

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

SpaceX conducted a successful test firing of a Falcon 9 rocket's engines on its Cape Canaveral launch pad, one week before its precedent-setting launch to the International Space Station. But it took more than one try.

The initial countdown was halted just 47 seconds before the nine engines were scheduled to start up. SpaceX fixed what it called a "limit that was improperly set" on the flight computer and quickly set up another countdown. The second countdown proceeded smoothly, and the rocket's nine engines fizzed to life for two seconds as expected, at 4:15 p.m. ET today.

"Woohoo, rocket hold-down firing completed and all looks good!!" SpaceX's millionaire founder, Elon Musk, reported in a Twitter update. Meanwhile, company spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham said "engineers will now review data as we continue preparations for the upcoming launch."

This was a full dress rehearsal for SpaceX's second official demonstration flight for NASA. The first demo flight, back in December 2010, sent a gumdrop-shaped Dragon space capsule into orbit for the first time. The second flight, scheduled to lift off as early as May 7, could see the Dragon go all the way to the space station.

The company has received more than $375 million so far from the space agency for the development of the Falcon 9 and the Dragon. SpaceX and another company, Orbital Sciences Corp., are getting the money to help NASA fill the gap in payload transportation capability left by last year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet.

In addition, SpaceX is receiving tens of millions of dollars from NASA under a separate program to make the Falcon/Dragon launch system suitable for carrying astronauts as well as cargo. Musk founded the California-based company in 2002 with the long-range aim of flying people to Mars.

The Falcon 9 didn't fly anywhere during today's test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40 in Florida, but if SpaceX and NASA stick to the current timeline, the rocket will send the robotically controlled Dragon capsule into orbit on May 7. A couple of days later, the spacecraft will catch up with the space station and go through a sequence of rendezvous maneuvers.

If the Dragon performs those maneuvers correctly, NASA would give the go-ahead for the Dragon to approach a station docking port. The station's robotic arm would grab onto it and bring it in for berthing. There'll be some cargo riding aboard the Dragon — water, clothing, scientific gear and the like — and the astronauts would take a couple of weeks to take on those payloads and load up the Dragon with Earth-bound cargo. Then the Dragon would be unberthed and sent back down to a Pacific splashdown, marking the successful end of the first flight of a private-sector spaceship to the International Space Station..

There are a lot of "ifs" on that list of contingencies. This launch has been delayed repeatedly due to software glitches, and if a snag like the one that occurred today happened to crop up on May 7, liftoff would have to be postponed for three days. To reach the space station, the Falcon has to lift off right on the dot. The orbital mechanics will not allow for same-day do-overs. But that's OK. Last month, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said "we may have to have a couple of attempts, but we're certainly looking forward to getting that flight off."

If the Falcon 9 and the Dragon pass their tests, that would put SpaceX in a position to ship supplies to the space station in earnest, under the terms of a $1.6 billion NASA contract.

Will SpaceX get 'er done? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More about SpaceX and the commercial space race:

• Private spaceship launch set for May 7 
• SpaceX has a lofty goal: Help save humanity
• Next steps in the new space race

Last updated 4:27 p.m. ET.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

More than a month after his record-setting solo dive to the bottom of the ocean, filmmaker James Cameron is fleshing out his adventure tale with personal details as well as comparisons to another one of his passions — space exploration. The story hit TV screens tonight on "James Cameron: Voyage to the Bottom of the Earth," a half-hour documentary premiering on the National Geographic Channel.

The main thrust of the story unfolded back on March 26: Cameron climbed into a custom-built submersible called the Deepsea Challenger and plunged nearly 36,000 feet (10,898 meters) to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. It's the deepest part of the ocean— reached only once before, by a two-man team in 1960.

Cameron recounted his adventure in a teleconference with reporters just after the trip, but during tonight's show, documentary footage added more color to the account. For example:

• The sea was unsettled in the days leading up to the dive, and at one point Cameron thought he would have to choose between making the attempt and attending the blockbuster premiere of "Titanic 3-D." If he missed the premiere, he said, the top movie executives behind the film release might never speak with him again. Fortunately, the weather cleared just in time to satisfy Cameron's tight schedule.
• Cameron's wife, Suzy Amis, gave him a good-luck smooch before the dive. "Is this going to be a PDA?" Cameron asked, using the acronym for a public display of affection. "Yup," Amis said. Cameron said that when he was at the very bottom, he took a phone call from Amis, "which of course was very sweet ... but let that be a lesson to all men: You think you can get away, but you cannot."
• The last guy to speak to Cameron before the dive, and the first guy Cameron spoke to after surfacing and climbing out of the Deepsea Challenger, was Don Walsh, who made the 1960 trip down to the bottom along with Jacques Piccard on the Trieste. "I'm glad it's you that's taking back the record," Walsh told Cameron beforehand. Afterward, Cameron told Walsh, "Hasn't changed a bit since you were down there."
• Cameron described the bottom of the seafloor as looking like "white Latex paint on a sheet of masonite." He extended the Deepsea Challenger's robot arm to collect a soil sample, but the hydraulic system sprung a leak just as he was extracting it. All he was left with was seawater with a bit of sediment at the bottom. He also lost his ability to move around the bottom, due to a thruster malfunction. "I was done," he said. "It was time to come back." Fortunately, the system for dropping two 600-pound blocks of ballast and sending the submersible back up to the surface worked as planned. "If this doesn't work, it's going to be a bad day," he recalled thinking at the time.

Cameron has been in the news lately not only for his deep-sea adventure, but also for his role as an adviser to Planetary Resources, the venture that is building spacecraft to identify and mine near-Earth asteroids. Cameron made the connection between the deep sea and outer space when he described how the Deepsea Challenger kicks up sediment when it reaches the seafloor. "It was just like landing a spaceship — it was the coolest thing."

National Geographic

A video shot through a porthole of the Deepsea Challenger shows the submersible's robotic sampling arm sticking out over the "white Latex paint" of the seafloor. Click on the image to watch a video clip.

Mark Theissen / National Geographic

James Cameron emerges from the Deepsea Challenger submersible after his successful solo dive to the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, on March 26.

The outer-space angle came out in a statement about the show issued before tonight's premiere: "More money gets put into space exploration, but the ocean is our life support here on spaceship Earth.  And we’re destroying it faster than we're exploring it," Cameron said. "I think it draws attention to the ocean and the lack of funding for ocean exploration."

Cameron also touched on that concern last week in a Q&A with The Hollywood Reporter, in which he said the lesson from the Deepsea Challenger's dives was that "a small group of privately funded, passionate young engineers can come up with something that governments can't do." The Hollywood Reporter's Patrick Brzeski went on to ask what that meant for the bigger picture, and here's part of Cameron's reply:

"Well, first it means, as governments, whether it's the U.S. or any other government, we've lost our edge when it comes to exploration — whether it's space or unexplored corners of the oceans. And secondly, there are a lot of new technologies and advancements being made in material sciences that allow us to do things at a fraction of the price that it would have been previously. That allows private individuals to come into the game. Those two factors combined are making exciting things happen. You see the same thing in space, with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. You know, Elon Musk's SpaceX is going to be regularly orbiting vehicles to service the International Space Station. They basically stepped into the shoes of NASA — for a fraction of the price. That’s a better business model than doing deep ocean exploration. I hate to even use the term entrepreneurial for what we’re doing, because entrepreneurial implies that there’s going to be some big profit at the end if you’re successful. But really for me the end result is the science and exploration and the imagery we’re getting. It's not a profitable thing — we aren't doing it because we expect to find oil and gold down there. But see, the thing is, you never really know where pure research is going to take you. The New Britain Trench — at 27,000 feet — no one had ever been down there to look at it. In one dive, in the first five minutes, I discovered two new species. In the first five minutes of being on the bottom!"

In the interview, Cameron also referred to his well-known efforts to take a trip into space himself and make a movie, either on Russia's Mir space station (before it was deorbited in 2001) or the International Space Station (before the Columbia tragedy in 2003). If last year's rumors turn out to be true, Cameron just might finally get his chance to film the final frontier, perhaps during a round-the-moon odyssey.

He might have to hold off on his next real-life adventure until he gets "Avatar 2" and "Avatar 3" into the theaters. But whether that next adventure involves outer space or the sea, I have a feeling it's going to be a doozy.

More about James Cameron and exploration:

• James Cameron's deep-sea team goes back for more
• Cameron's dive stirs call for more deep-sea exploration
• Filmmaker/explorer unfurls Explorer's Club flag
• Asteroid mining crazy? So is deep-sea drilling

 "James Cameron: Voyage to the Bottom of the Earth," airs again on the National Geographic Channel on May 3, 6 and 10. Check listings for times in your area.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Scott Thompson / Maryhill Museum file

Maryhill Museum's concrete replica of Stonehenge was designed to duplicate the ancient English monument.

British researchers conducted experiments at a Stonehenge stand-in as well as the actual 5,000-year-old monument to determine how sounds echoed within the ancient circle of stones — and they found that the sounds would have taken on an eerie reverberation.

"We can expect such a space to have a striking effect on someone of that time, identical to what we feel nowadays when we go into a church," the University of Salford's Bruno Fazenda, who orchestrated the research project, told me in an email.

The study is described on the university's website in a technical analysis as well as a news release issued last week, but the upshot is that the Neolithic people who gathered inside the circle could well have had a religious aural experience. That meshes with the view of most archaeologists that the monument on England's Salisbury Plain took on the trappings of a place of healing — a "Neolithic Lourdes," if you will.

It's not easy to reconstruct the sounds of ancient Stonehenge: For one thing, many of the standing stones are missing from what was thought to be their original places, ruining the acoustic arrangement. For another thing, researchers are not allowed to run electrical power out to the site, or bring in a generator. That limits the types of sound equipment and scientific instruments that can be used on site.

Replicating the reverb
Fazenda and his colleagues from the University of Huddersfield and the University of Bristol found a couple of clever solutions to those challenges. They brought air-filled balloons to the Stonehenge site in 2009, then popped the balloons with a needle and recorded the reverb with a microphone and a digital field recorder. The reflected sounds of the pops were hard to make out, but they appeared to follow a pattern of 1-second reverberation time at midfrequencies, for locations that were within the ruins of the stone circle.

To study the reverberation patterns in detail, the team headed off to the Maryhill Museum in Goldendale, Wash., which has a full-scale concrete replica of Stonehenge on its grounds. The monument was built by millionaire industrialist Samuel Hill as a tribute to fallen World War I servicemen. The museum let the researchers make their measurements with more sensitive instruments, powered by on-site generators. The same balloon-popping technique was used, and the readings confirmed the reverberation pattern that the team found at the real Stonehenge.

"For an outdoor space, the stone circle exhibits quite a 'live' acoustic environment," Fazenda said. "In the Neolithic, such an environment was not very common at all. The only spaces that might sustain reverberation were caves and perhaps some natural features such as opposing cliff faces."

Fazenda said the echo effect would be much more like what you hear in a cathedral than in a concert hall.

"The center of the space has potential for some focusing effects," he said. "That's the point where all reflections arrive at the same time, and with the largest gap relative to direct sound. On paper we would expect that to sound striking. However, there are quite a lot of scattering effects from the stones, so the clear echoes are somewhat destroyed by it."

He stressed that it's not at all clear whether Stonehenge was designed with the acoustics in mind, but he and his colleagues do think that the setting would have added a special something to drumbeats, chants or music inside the stone circle.   

'Research hobby'
Fazenda, who teaches audio production at Salford, has been working on this project for the past four years on an unfunded basis. "It has been a kind of 'research hobby' that I have managed to do after hours (don't really call it spare time)," he wrote. He believes the project could break new ground in the field of archaeoacoustics — the study of the sound characteristics of ancient spaces.

"The original focus was on studying the acoustic response of the space," he said. "The recent output has been that we replicated it using wavefield synthesis, which immerses you in a sound field, thus giving you the most approximate aural experience that you could get of being in the space. That was shown at a few recent events, and we have a permanent demo in our labs here at Salford. A wavefield synthesis system uses +64 channels and speakers, so it is not really portable."

Such a system can be tuned to provide a virtual-reality sense of the sounds of Stonehenge, as well as the sounds of other ancient settings that are no longer configured the way they were in their heyday. Want to hear the roar of the crowd in the Roman Colosseum? There's a wavefield synthesis app for that.

Fazenda is preparing a paper on his "research hobby" for Acta Acustica, the journal of the European Acoustics Association. He's also writing a chapter for a book on the acoustics and music of British prehistory. (For more on that subject, check out the website of the Acoustics and Music of British Prehistory Research Network.)

You can expect to hear more about the sounds of Stonehenge in the months and years ahead. In the meantime, give a listen to these sound files, and follow the Web links for more about archaeoacoustics.

Stonehenge sound files:

• Hand-clapping outside and inside the Maryhill stone circle (via Sonic Wonders)
• Univ. of Salford's rendering of a song with Stonehenge-style reverb (WAV file)
• Sounds of Stonehenge ... including a podcast on sound heritage

More about archaeoacoustics:

• Scientists revive sacred sounds
• Was Stonehenge inspired by a sound illusion?
• It turns out that cavemen loved to sing
• Stonehenge: Totally awesome place for raves
• Researchers re-create scary pre-Columbian sounds
• Acoustic archaeology yields mind-tripping tricks
• Listen to the sounds of science

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Mining asteroids for water and precious metals may sound like a sci-fi boondoggle, especially the way Jon Stewart described it Wednesday night on "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. When Planetary Resources co-founder Eric Anderson says water would be worth $20,000 to $50,000 a pound in space, Stewart quips, "Who amongst us wouldn't pay $50,000 for a pound of space water ... at the space convenience store?" To cut through the orbital debris, Stewart brought astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on stage to weigh in during a segment called "Bulls#*t or No Bulls#*t." In just one minute, Tyson rendered his decision — while solving a Rubik's Cube puzzle and ribbing Stewart about the reverse-rotating Earth in his show's opening credits. Watch how it went down in the video clip above, and get the straight story from MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan in the clip below.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto,"my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Skywatchers as far south as Colorado and Kansas witnessed a quick flare-up of the northern lights this week, which called to mind the brilliant, beautiful displays that northerners saw earlier this year. The skies have settled down — for now — but developments on the sun suggest we could be in for another wave of auroral glories.

The greenish glow over Lake Superior, recorded from Michigan's Upper Peninsula at 2 o'clock in the morning by Shawn Malone of LakeSuperiorPhoto.com, was impressive enough to make NBC's "Nightly News" on Tuesday night. In an email, Malone told me that the "intensity caught me off guard."

"Check out the passing freighter for scale," Malone said in his comments on the Vimeo version of the video. "What a view those sailors must have had!"

Mark Riutta had a similar view from Copper Harbor Cabins on the Upper Peninsula, as the time-lapse video below illustrates. Riutta told me over the phone that he and his girlfriend were getting the cabins ready for the summer season and were surprised by how bright Tuesday's display turned out to be. "We were just about to go to sleep, when we looked out and wondered, 'Why is it so light out there?' he said.

SpaceWeather.com provides a roundup of auroral images from a dozen U.S. states, mostly in the Midwest but also including the top state for the northern lights, Alaska. And speaking of Alaska, here's an unconventional view of the aurora that was recorded from a height of 90,000 feet during "Project Aether: Aurora," a scientific experiment that took place this month:

Project Aether, led by University of Houston physicist Ben Longmier, sent up almost two dozen weather balloons laden with high-definition cameras and scientific instruments to monitor auroral activity near Fairbanks. Most of the payloads have been recovered, but the student researchers are still on the lookout for a few that haven't yet been located. If you happen to be in the Fairbanks area and find one of them, you could win a prize.

More prizes could be in store for aurora-watchers: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center reports that we're currently in the midst of a minor geomagnetic storm, which could spark another wave of northern lights. What's more, an active region of the sun known as AR1465 has developed the type of magnetic field that's associated with stronger X-class outbursts.

To keep tabs on the solar weather report, check in with SpaceWeather.com as well as the Space Weather Prediction Center's website and Facebook page. And to watch some classic auroral videos, check out the gallery offered by NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

More auroral glories:

• Awesome auroras on Uranus ... and Earth
• Farewell to the northern lights
• Northern lights make for must-see TV
• Southern exposure for auroral lights
• Slideshow: The best of the northern lights
• Cosmic Log's auroral archive

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto,"my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Space entrepreneurs laid out a lot of the details for their billionaire-backed plan to extract resources from near-Earth asteroids today, but other details — such as how much they've received in investments, or exactly how they'll get their hands on precious water and precious metals — are still being held close to the vest.

If Planetary Resources is as successful as its founders hope, it could be bringing a fortune in platinum and gold back to Earth within the next decade or two, and supplying outer-space filling stations with water, fuel and air for interplanetary travelers. The company could tap into trillions of dollars' worth of space resources. But the venture could also go bust, just as some of the first European trading companies did when they came to the Americas centuries ago.

"There's a significant probability that we may fail," company co-chairman Eric Anderson acknowledged during today's big reveal at Seattle's Museum of Flight.

At least two things are certain: Planetary Resources is already bringing in income, and it's intending to launch real hardware within two years. "This company is not about paper studies. .... We're not just talking about it. We've done enough of that," Anderson said.

The company was founded in 2009 by Anderson and Peter Diamandis, but flew under the radar until last week. Both men have had long experience with space and technology ventures: Anderson heads Space Adventures, the company that has brokered eight private-passenger trips to the International Space Station. He also serves as president of Intentional Software, the company founded by billionaire space traveler Charles Simonyi. Diamandis is co-founder of the X Prize Foundation (which awarded a $10 million spaceflight prize in 2004), Zero G Corp. (which puts passengers on zero-gravity airplane flights) and the Rocket Racing League (which is currently in neutral).

Stephen Brashear / Getty Images

Planetary Resources' president and chief engineer, Chris Lewicki, shows off a full-scale mockup of the Arkyd Series 100 space telescope during a news conference at Seattle's Museum of Flight. "Good morning, everyone. I'm Chris Lewicki, and I'm an asteroid miner," he told the crowd.

This latest venture has the backing of Simonyi as well as other billionaires, ranging from Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt to Silicon Valley's Ram Shriram and Texas' Ross Perot Jr. (son of the former third-party presidential candidate). The company's advisers include filmmaker/adventurer James Cameron and astronaut/scientist Tom Jones.

Planetary Resources

An informational graphic explains Planetary Resources' perspective on a future "gold rush." Click on the image for a larger version.

Planetary Resources' executives declined to say how much the backers were putting into the business, but Diamandis touted them as "risk-tolerant investors" who were prepared to support the venture for decades. He also said "the company is cash-flow positive at this point," with about 20 engineers working at the company's headquarters in Bellevue, Wash. And there are still more openings to fill, which is a big reason why the company's executives decided to go public now.

Former Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki, who serves as the company's president and chief engineer, said the company had a contract with NASA to share data about the development a laser-equipped spacecraft system that combined imaging, optical communications and navigation. He hinted that there were other contracts as well, but wouldn't provide details.

Step 1: Launch space telescopes
The system will be used on Planetary Resources' first-generation spacecraft, the Arkyd Series 100 space telescope, also known as Leo. As Lewicki told me in a previous interview, the Arkyd Series 100 will serve as the company's Earth-orbiting survey telescope for identifying asteroids. It will also be sold to other parties for use as a "personal space telescope" or Earth-imaging satellite. He said the price tag for the telescope would be on the order of tens of millions of dollars, and eventually mere millions of dollars.

The Leo telescope would be built to have "multi-tool or Swiss Army knife capability," Lewicki said. Its imager would be capable of doing spectral analysis of near-Earth asteroids, to determine their chemical composition. There'd also be a camera mounted on a boom so it could take pictures of itself. The Museum of Flight's president, Doug King, said he and his institutional colleagues might someday consider becoming customers.

With a mass of 66 to 110 pounds (30 to 50 kilograms), the spacecraft would be small enough to launch as a secondary "rideshare" payload on any of a variety of launch vehicles, including the SpaceX Falcon, the Russian Dnepr or the European Ariane. The first launch is expected within two years, Anderson said.

Planetary Resources' prime targets would be among the estimated 1,500 asteroids that are energetically easier to get to than the moon. The team would be looking for water-rich or metal-rich asteroids that come close enough to Earth for a more detailed survey to be made. 

Step 2: Go beyond Earth orbit
The asteroid survey effort would continue with the Arkyd Series 200 "Interceptor," which would be equipped with a propulsion system and scientific instruments as well as an imager. Such craft could be placed into geosynchronous Earth orbit as a secondary payload — then identify, track and fly past asteroids that happen to come between Earth and the moon. Lewicki told me that the interceptor craft could get "up-close and personal" with a near-Earth asteroid within five years.

Planetary Resources

An artist's conception shows the Arkyd Series 200 spacecraft tracking an asteroid.

Planetary Resources

A swarm of Arkyd Series 300 spacecraft conducts reconnaissance on an asteroid.

Step 3: Swarm around an asteroid
The Arkyd Series 300 "Rendezvous Prospector" spacecraft would incorporate the laser-based communication system, enabling a swarm of probes to surround a distant asteroid for coordinated reconnaissance. "Within a decade, we hope to have identified our first target that we'll start extracting resources from," Diamandis told me. The Series 300 would demonstrate technologies that could be used for interplanetary missions by NASA or other entities.

Lewicki said the mission plan called for sending multiple low-cost spacecraft so that the failure of one probe wouldn't doom the mission. "When failure is not an option, success gets really expensive," he quipped.

Step 4: Get the goods
Later generations of spacecraft would have the capability to extract water from carbonaceous asteroids. If there's power available for a space processing system, the water could be broken down into hydrogen for rocket fuel and oxygen for breathable air. Such materials could be stockpiled in orbital or deep-space fuel depots, to be fed to spacecraft in need of a fill-up. Diamandis said a 165-foot-wide (50-meter-wide) asteroid with 20 percent water ice content could provide enough hydrogen and oxygen to power every space shuttle that ever blasted off.

The first goal for resource extraction would probably be a water-bearing asteroid, Diamandis told me, but eventually techniques would be developed for extracting gold and platinum-group metals from promising asteroids and returning the shipments to Earth. Platinum-group metals are particularly valued because they're used in a wide variety of high-tech devices, ranging from consumer electronics to fuel cells for electric vehicles. Platinum currently goes for more than $1,500 an ounce, which makes it almost as costly as gold.

If those valuable metals could be brought back from space at an affordable price, that could create a multitrillion-dollar shift in high-tech markets.

Hurdles to overcome
That's a big "if." In order for Step 4 to succeed, there'd have to be sufficient demand for deep-space refueling. Right now, there's zero demand, but that could change if NASA actually goes through with its current plan to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by the mid-2020s and to Mars and its moons by the mid-2030s.

Planetary Resources' long-term business plan assumes that in the next few decades, there'll be enough spaceship traffic to recover its investment in asteroid-mining infrastructure. The precise shape of that infrastructure is yet to be determined: One illustration provided by Planetary Resources shows swarms of spacecraft doing strip mining, while another shows a water-bearing asteroid being enveloped by a huge inflatable shell.

One option might be to capture a small asteroid and bring it closer to Earth for processing. This month, a study prepared for the Keck Institute for Space Studies at Caltech determined it would be feasible to capture a 500-ton, 23-foot-wide (7-meter-wide) asteroid and transport it to a lunar-scale orbit. Mission cost was estimated at $2.6 billion, which is about the same cost as NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. The members of the study group included Lewicki and Jones as well as John Lewis, who has been studying the prospects for asteroid mining for decades and is serving as an adviser to Planetary Resources.

Mining a 23-foot-wide asteroid won't produce as much of a payoff as the 165-foot-wide asteroid that Diamandis had in mind, but the bigger the asteroid, the more difficult it would be to bring it closer to Earth. There might also be risks associated with moving space rocks or even platinum shipments around our planet's celestial neighborhood.

"The energy equivalent of a medium-sized 'ore wagon' in space, if it fell to Earth, would be on the order of a hydrogen bomb," NBC space analyst James Oberg said in an email. (That might be an exaggeration. The fireball that blazed over California and Nevada early Sunday is thought to have been caused by a meteor about the size of a minivan, with the energy equivalent of 3.8 kilotons of TNT. That's roughly a quarter of the explosive power of the Hiroshima atom bomb.)

"Carl Sagan long ago warned that building asteroid-deflecting technologies had a dark side — the same technology could be used to steer asteroids directly at Earth for military threats," Oberg wrote. "Fortunately, Sagan's fears were science-based and not spaceflight operationally based. It turns out to take far too long — years in flight — to actually drop a space rock on Earth. And the ability to deflect space objects safely away from Earth, or into commercial mining zones, is nowhere near accurate enough to do the opposite — aim for Earth itself.

"But the issue is a perfect rallying cry for environmental activists who can be counted on to rally against this looting of heaven's virginal treasures."

If Planetary Resources' long-term plan is successful, that could force nations to face the long-dormant issue of property rights in outer space. Oberg said widescale commercial exploitation of space resources could spark a diplomatic outcry, "at least until the United Nations gets some acknowledged 'tax' on any space-based profits." That issue is at least a decade away, however.

Even if Planetary Resources doesn't hit its long-term goal, the earlier phases of its business plan — the data deals and the spacecraft sales — would still give the billionaires an opportunity to recoup their investment. And it's virtually certain that other companies will eventually join the fray. For example, a venture called Moon Express is chasing after a share of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize and making plans for mining operations on the moon. Just today, Moon Express announced the expansion of its scientific advisory board.

"We don't believe you have to wait around for a date with a near-Earth object," Bob Richards, the venture's co-founder and CEO, told me in an email. "If you want to mine asteroids, go to the moon  —  they have been bombarding the moon for billions of years."

How would you rate the chances for Planetary Resources, Moon Express and other would-be extraterrestrial miners? Feel free to cast your vote and/or leave a comment.

More about space resources:

• Asteroid mining venture starts with space telescopes
• Google billionaires back space resource venture
• Could legal loophole lead to extraterrestrial land claims?
• Private property in outer space? It's debatable
• To infinity and beyond: Investing in space travel
• How to make the moon pay

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

The venture known as Planetary Resources eventually plans to go asteroid mining — but the first step in the billionaire-backed business plan is to launch an orbital fleet of "personal space telescopes" capable of looking out into the heavens or back down on Earth.

Right now, the idea of sending robotic drilling operations to near-Earth asteroids, extracting water for powering interplanetary spaceships — and, by the way, turning that into a profitable business — sounds like pure science fiction. But to quote Planetary Resources' president and chief engineer, Chris Lewicki: "Everything is science fiction right up to the point that it's science fact."

Lewicki knows his way around an outer-space challenge. He's been involved in managing NASA's twin Mars rover missions as well as the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which made the first on-the-spot observations of Red Planet water ice. Even by that scale, however, his new mission at Planetary Resources is special. It's not just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. "Maybe once in a species, that kind of opportunity comes along," he told me.

The venture, which was hinted at last week and formally unveiled Tuesday at Seattle's Museum of Flight, is sufficiently down to Earth to attract funding from such A-list investors as Google CEO Larry Page, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Texas billionaire Ross Perot Jr. and spacefaring software executive Charles Simonyi. Filmmaker James Cameron has signed on as a senior adviser.

Planetary Resources is the latest brainchild of Eric Anderson, whose company Space Adventures has helped millionaires and billionaires go on 10-day trips to the International Space Station; and Peter Diamandis, the motive force behind the multimillion-dollar X Prize program, the Rocket Racing League and the Zero G Corp.'s weightless-airplane tourist venture. Anderson and Diamandis serve as co-chairmen of the venture they co-founded.

Diamandis said Planetary Resources follows up on discussions that he and Anderson had starting about three years ago — and also follows up on a nearly lifelong ambition he's had.

"As a teenager, when I was asked what I wanted to be, I'd say, 'An asteroid miner,'" Diamandis told me.

Why mine asteroids?
Planetary Resources' ultimate goal is to set up a commercial infrastructure for fueling trips far beyond Earth orbit, with Planetary Resources controlling the equivalent of oil wells, refineries and filling stations in outer space. That's the long-term promise of near-Earth asteroids.

NASA file

An artist's conception shows a robotic mining operation on a near-Earth asteroid.

"A water-rich asteroid would greatly enhance the large-scale exploration of the solar system," Anderson said in a news release. "Water has many uses in space. For instance, it would not only be used for hydration, but also would be broken down into oxygen and hydrogen, for breathable air and rocket propellant."

But why go to all the trouble, when there's so much water on Earth? "It costs on the order of $20,000 per kilogram to get a liter of water into orbit," Diamandis explained. "If you're able to buy it on orbit for one-hundredth of the cost, that would be transformative."

Asteroids also could yield precious metals such as platinum, gold and rare-earth materials — treasures that are worth bringing back to Earth. Diamandis said a single asteroid in the range of 200 to 500 meters in diameter could contain more platinum-group metals than has ever been mined in the whole of human history.

"When the availability of these materials increases, the cost will reduce on everything, including defibrillators, hand-held devices, TV and computer monitors, catalysts; and with the abundance of these metals we'll be able to use them in mass production, like in automotive fuel cells," Diamandis said in the news release.

Humbler materials could be used for construction of deep-space facilities. "Even dirt is valuable as a radiation-shielding material," said former NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who got his Ph.D. in planetary sciences by researching remote-sensing techniques for asteroids. Jones is now serving as an adviser to the Planetary Resources team.

First launch in two years?
Building a commercial empire in outer space may be the long-range plan, but the short-term plan is closer to home. The first step to mining an asteroid is figuring out what's out there. To that end, Planetary Resources' first hardware project is what's known as the Arkyd-101 personal space telescope.

Planetary Resources

Planetary Resources has developed the Arkyd-101 space telescope with remote sensing capability, as shown in this artist's conception. Data gathered from near-Earth asteroids will assist in analyzing the composition of the body to determine a commercial value.

Lewicki hopes the personal space telescope will do for astronomy what the personal computer did for information technology. Planetary Resources plans to put the instrument into Earth orbit to survey the sky for potential targets — asteroids that come close enough to Earth often enough to make them reachable, and have a spectral signal that would make them good candidates for mining. The main target is C-type or carbonaceous asteroids, which are dark and not so easy to detect with existing instruments.

The Arkyd-101 telescope is designed to be launched on any of a variety of rockets, including the Russian Dnepr, the European Ariane, the Indian PSLV or the SpaceX Falcon, Lewicki said. It would have arcsecond resolution for astronomical observations, and if the camera were turned earthward, Lewicki said the resolution would be a "couple of meters per pixel," which comes close to the standard for commercial Earth imaging.

The key factor is the cost: Lewicki noted that an imaging instrument like NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer would typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars. "We're looking to go one to two orders of magnitude below that," he said.

Diamandis said that price reduction would significantly widen the market for orbiting telescopes. "We're in discussions with groups that might want to buy personal telescopes," he told me.

Another part of the Planetary Resources' early-phase business plan would be to strike a deal with NASA, under which the space agency would buy data about the spacecraft and astronomical observations. NASA may find such data useful for planning its own missions to near-Earth asteroids, culminating in manned flights in the 2020s. Similar data purchase deals were made a couple of years ago with several of the companies that are planning to put landers on the moon to win a share of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize.

Thanks in part to technology development contracts with NASA and other partners, "the company is cash-flow positive at this point," Diamandis said.

He said about 20 engineers have already been hired to work for Planetary Resources, with operations based in Bellevue, Wash., east of Seattle. The need to advertise for more employees was one of the reasons why the company's principals decided it was time to go public with their plans, Diamandis said.

He and Lewicki are projecting the first launch of hardware in the 18- to 24-month time frame. Once the telescopes are up and running, the team will identify likely candidates for future missions. The top targets would be near-Earth asteroids that are energetically easier to reach than landing on the moon. Getting to those asteroids would require the development of additional spacecraft for the Arkyd product line, such as an in-space propulsion vehicle and an experimental resource-extraction package. 

"Three, four, five years out, depending on trajectory, is when we envision getting up close and personal with an asteroid," Lewicki said.

Time for a reality check
Planetary Resources says space mining could "add trillions of dollars to the global GDP," but such an estimate assumes that there'll be a significant demand for the water, fuel and air produced in outer space. If NASA doesn't send out deep-space transports, or goes with a space propulsion system that doesn't require a periodic fill-up, that could reduce the projected demand for the materials that Planetary Resources aims to produce.

That doesn't faze Lewicki, however. Even if NASA doesn't turn into a buyer, "we've got a private interest in developing those resources," he said.

There's also a question about the part of the operation that would involve shipping platinum and other materials back to Earth. Platinum now costs more than $1,500 an ounce, but with current technology, the cost of launching a mining probe, extracting ore, processing the metal and returning it to Earth would almost certainly be more than that on a per-ounce basis.

"The question is, how does the economics come into this?" said Adam Bruckner, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington. "Can it ultimately be less expensive to find it on an asteroid than to find it on Earth? At some point in the future — and it's debatable how far in the future — the two lines will cross."

Anderson acknowledged in a video statement that Planetary Resources would be an unconventional, long-term venture: "On a scale of 20 to 30 years, I envision the resources from space contributing a significant amount to the GDP of the planet — truly creating a world where one plus one equals three."

Bruckner noted that the idea of mining asteroids for water and other resources has been around for decades. Fourteen years ago, for example, a company called SpaceDev planned to take on a commercial deep-space mission to an asteroid. SpaceDev eventually abandoned the idea and turned its attention instead to the development of small satellites and hybrid rocket engines. In 2008, the company was acquired by Sierra Nevada Corp., which is currently receiving millions of dollars from NASA for spaceship development.

Bob Richards, co-founder and CEO of Moon Express Inc., one of the ventures competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, said he welcomed Planetary Resources' efforts but insisted that the moon was a better target for resource extraction than any near-Earth asteroid. Just today, Moon Express announced that it sent NASA a mission plan that eventually could lead to mining missions on the moon.

"I looked at this myself," Richards told me. "The energy argument doesn't trump the fact that we've sampled the moon and we know what's there. ... But it's a big universe. There are trillions of trillions of dollars in space resources, so there's enough room for a lot of players."

More about extraterrestrial investments:

• Google billionaires back space resource venture
• Could legal loophole lead to extraterrestrial land claims?
• Private property in outer space? It's debatable
• To infinity and beyond: Investing in space travel
• How to make the moon pay

This report was last updated at 3:40 p.m. ET.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Bill Ingalls / NASA

The prototype space shuttle Enterprise is seen mated on top of NASA's modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft at Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Friday. Enterprise was the first orbiter built for the space shuttle program, but never went into orbit. It was used primarily for ground and flight tests within the atmosphere. Enterprise had been on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, but is now being prepared for its new home at the Intrepid Sea Air and Space Museum in New York.

A day after the space shuttle Discovery took its place at the Smithsonian, the prototype shuttle Enterprise is perched on a modified 747 jet for its journey to New York. Now the timing of the trip depends on East Coast weather.

Overnight, Enterprise was towed out to Dulles International Airport and hoisted up into the air with two giant cranes. The jet, known as the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft or SCA, was brought underneath the 75-ton artifact. Then Enterprise was lowered down and "soft-mated" onto the plane at three attach points. The bolts will be tightened down for hard-mating on Saturday, in preparation for the big flight to New York.

This is the same process that Discovery went through in Florida leading up to Tuesday's flight to Dulles for its installation at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, next to the airport. On Thursday, Enterprise was moved out of the space it held since the center's opening in 2003, and Discovery was moved in.

NASA had been planning for Enterprise and the SCA to take off from Dulles as early as Monday morning, but this afternoon the space agency said the flight would be delayed due to a forecast of inclement weather in Washington as well as New York. "Managers will continue to review weather forecasts and announce a new flight date as soon as practical," NASA said in its advisory.

When forecasters give the go-ahead, the shuttle-jet combo will head up the East Coast and do a series of New York flyovers. You can expect to see the double-decker behemoth sailing over the Statue of Liberty as well as the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, the retooled ship where Enterprise will be put on display. After the flyovers, the Enterprise will be set down at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The shuttle-jet flight is old hat for Enterprise: The craft was the first vehicle built for the space shuttle program, and got its name in part thanks to a write-in campaign by "Star Trek" fans. Unlike the fictional starship, NASA's Enterprise never flew in space. Instead, it was used for ground tests as well as aerodynamic test flights atop the 747 carrier plane. Once the shuttle launches ramped up, Enterprise was deemed no longer needed for testing. It was handed over to the Smithsonian in 1985. The Udvar-Hazy Center's James S. McDonnell Space Hangar was specifically designed to show off the Enterprise.

After the 2003 Columbia tragedy, some sections of the Enterprise's wing panels were removed for impact tests, and those tests made a huge contribution to the accident investigation. That demonstrated that the shuttles can continue to benefit the space program long after their retirement.

It will take a few weeks for Enterprise to settle into its retirement home: The cranes will have to be set up for the shuttle's "demating" at JFK. Then Enterprise will have to be lifted onto a barge and brought up the Hudson River by a tugboat. The schedule calls for Enterprise to be hoisted aboard the Intrepid's flight deck sometime in June. It'll be put on display in a temporary climate-controlled pavilion this summer, and eventually housed in a permanent exhibit facility.

After Enterprise, there's one more shuttle-jet flight on tap: the transfer of Endeavour from NASA's Kennedy Space Center to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. That cross-country trip, due to take place in the latter part of this year, is likely to spark a nationwide frenzy of "Spot the Shuttle" sightings.

The last shuttle that flew in space, Atlantis, is going just down the road to Kennedy Space Center's visitor center, so there'll be no need to bring out the plane for that trip.

For more pictures of the Enterprise-747 mating, check out NASA Headquarters' Flickr gallery. And to get updates on the timing of Enterprise's flight and the flyovers, keep tabs on NASA's website as well as msnbc.com's space news section.

More about the shuttle shuffle:

• Astronauts revisit the shuttle's pros and cons
• How NASA selected the shuttles' future homes
• Seattle gets first pieces of shuttle trainer

Updated 5:20 p.m. ET.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Retired senator-astronaut John Glenn is surrounded by other space veterans in front of the space shuttle Discovery during its handover to the Smithsonian at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., on Thursday. Glenn says the shuttles were "prematurely grounded" but accepts the shuttle program's end.

For some veteran astronauts, today’s transformation of the shuttle Discovery into a museum exhibit is a cause for celebration. For others, it’s a reminder of their regrets. But for John Grunsfeld, the one-time “Hubble Hugger” who is now NASA’s science chief, the dominant feeling is a sense of relief.

Discovery's handover to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum has re-ignited questions about the end of the 30-year space shuttle program. Why did they have to be retired? The short answer is that in the wake of the 2003 Columbia tragedy, policymakers decided that once the job of building the International Space Station was finished, it would just be too risky and expensive to keep the shuttles flying.

Instead, President George W. Bush decided to re-target the space program on destinations beyond Earth orbit. For Bush, the first focus was going to be the moon. President Barack Obama shifted that initial focus to near-Earth asteroids, but the endpoint is the same: eventually getting to Mars. And the shuttles could never do that. They weren't built to go beyond Earth orbit.

Nevertheless, some of America's best-known astronauts think the shuttles should have been kept around a while longer — particularly because NASA will be dependent on the Russians for rides to the space station for the next three to five years.

'Unfortunate decision'
"The unfortunate decision eight and a half years ago to terminate the shuttle program, in my opinion, prematurely grounded Discovery and delayed our research," retired senator-astronaut John Glenn said during today's handover ceremony at the museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.

Another retired astronaut who rode on Discovery, Tom Jones, voiced similar frustration during an interview conducted before today's ceremony. "I'm reliving the disappointment that the shuttles are retiring without a rapid successor," he told me.

Jones wishes that the White House and Congress had revved up NASA's plan for new spaceships capable of going to the space station and beyond: the Constellation Program, which initially aimed to put U.S. astronauts back on the moon by 2020. Instead, Constellation was so cash-starved and technically challenged that the Obama White House scrubbed the program and reworked elements of it into the current plan to visit an asteroid by 2025.

"We dropped the ball on this," Jones said. "If we just went from 0.5 percent of the federal budget to 0.6 percent, this would all be a non-issue."

The benefit of retaining an American system for resupplying the space station is what motivated Glenn's call to keep the shuttles flying. Glenn made his pitch to the White House in 2010 — but Obama didn't go for it, and the former Democratic senator told me today that he accepts the verdict.

"No need crying over what happened in the past," Glenn said. "Let's get on with the future."

The 'Hubble Hugger' and his pin
Grunsfeld thinks the White House made the right call, at least on the question of grounding the shuttles. He's best-known for his role as a spacewalker on Hubble servicing missions in 1999, 2002 and 2009. During that last mission, Grunsfeld was the one who bade the Hubble Space Telescope goodbye forever. Now he's NASA's associate administrator for science. The way Grunsfeld sees it, keeping the shuttles flying might have led to another disaster like the 1986 Challenger explosion — or the loss of Columbia and its seven STS-107 crew members in 2003.

"There's a possibility we could have flown them for a little bit longer, or extended them at some cost," Grunsfeld told me. "I'm actually extremely thankful that we are rolling Discovery into the Air and Space Museum, and not burying its parts. We flew out the space shuttle program gracefully. We didn't lose another one. It would have been tragic. The fact is that the space shuttle program was ended with dignity — it was an amazing accomplishment, and I'm just thankful for that."

Then he shared what he called a "small, personal story."

"Just this morning, on my flight suit for the first time since the loss of Columbia, I took my STS-107 pin off. I felt like this was an apt celebration, that we flew out the program safely after Columbia, and that affected me very deeply," Grunsfeld said. "Now that we are where we are, I'm looking forward to getting the next space vehicle going."

The end ... and the beginning
Retired astronaut Eileen Collins, who became NASA's first woman shuttle pilot during a 1995 mission on Discovery and went on to command shuttle missions in 1999 and 2005, has some firsthand knowledge about the risks associated with flying the shuttles.

The 2005 mission on Discovery marked NASA's "return to flight" after the Columbia tragedy. She and most other people at NASA had thought they had solved the foam-loss problem that led to the Columbia's doom — but mission managers were shocked to see that the fuel tank shed a substantial piece of foam insulation during Discovery's ascent. No significant harm was done, but it took another year for NASA engineers to rework the problem to their satisfaction.

This week, retired NASA shuttle manager Wayne Hale recounted the episode in a blog item headlined "How We Nearly Lost Discovery."

Today, Collins noted that each shuttles was originally designed to fly for 100 missions or 10 years, whichever came first. Discovery, the most traveled of the shuttles, flew 39 missions ... over the course of 28 years. She recalled that she agreed with the shuttle retirement plan that was announced in 2004, but was disappointed when the Constellation Program was canceled in 2010.

"At that time, I would say yes, we should keep the shuttles flying — with one major exception. Back in 2006, we at NASA made major decisions to start shutting down the pipeline for parts. In 2010, to reverse the decision and continue flying the shuttles was going to be very expensive and take a very long time. So it wasn't realistic to fly them again," she told me.

"The worst thing we can do to our people is to constantly change things ... so in the end, the right thing to do was to fly out shuttle. I am personally very sad to see it go. But the big problem is, we don't have anything to follow on right now. We're going to get there. It's just that right now, we don't have it."

It's not the end of the shuttle program that bothers Collins. Rather, it's the possibility that NASA won't be able to follow through on the beginning of the next program.

"I don't want to see any more canceled programs," she told a school group after today's ceremony. "If we have problems, we need to fix those problems and press on. We can't just cancel and walk away from them. I go to schools, and I talk to kids, and I say, 'If you have problems, stick with it, fix it, don't give up.' We don't want to continue to give up on programs that are going to be taking us out into space, whether it's with robots or with people. We need to keep working on those programs."

What do you think? Here's your chance to weigh in on the end of the shuttle program and the beginning of the next chapter in exploration. Just leave a comment below.

More about what's next for NASA:

• NASA gives all-clear for commercial launch to space station
• NASA's chief says end of shuttle era could usher in new age
• NASA unveils giant rocket design for future space odysseys
• NASA retools spaceship design for missions beyond Earth orbit
• Next steps in a commercial space race

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

The folks who brought you zero-gravity airplane flights and multimillion-dollar trips to the International Space Station have lined up some billionaire investors for their next space venture — but they're not quite ready to tell you all about it.

Instead, they're sending out a media alert for a Seattle news conference next week, when they promise to "unveil a new space venture with a mission to help ensure humanity's prosperity." The new venture, called Planetary Resources, has the stated aim of expanding Earth's resource base. That's led a couple of observers to speculate that Planetary Resources is being formed to go into the extraterrestrial mining business.

One of the venture's founders is Peter Diamandis, who has played a leading role in setting up multimillion-dollar X Prizes for private space travel and other technological feats. He also founded Zero G Corp., which turned weightless-airplane flights into a tourist attraction. The other co-founder/co-chairman is Eric Anderson, who is chairman of Space Adventures, the company that has arranged space station trips for a succession of millionaires and billionaires.

A former client of Anderson's, software billionaire (and two-time spaceflier) Charles Simonyi, is listed as an investor in Planetary Resources. Other investors and advisers on the list include Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, plus fellow billionaires K. Ram Shriram and Ross Perot Jr. (son of the former presidential candidate), plus filmmaker James Cameron. 

X Prize Foundation

Google co-founder Larry Page and X Prize co-founder Peter Diamandis share the microphone in 2007 during the unveiling of the Google Lunar X Prize. Page is listed as an investor in Planetary Resources, another venture that Diamandis is founding.

Today's media alert says the new company "will overlay two critical sectors — space exploration and natural resources — to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources.'"

"That sounds like asteroid mining," Christopher Mims writes on MIT Technology Review's "Mims' Bits" blog. "Because what else is there in space that we need here on earth? Certainly not a livable climate or a replacement for our dwindling supplies of oil."

Parabolic Arc's Doug Messier, meanwhile, writes that the venture will be an "extraterrestrial mining company."

Diamandis has said on more than one occasion that he's intrigued by the idea of digging into asteroids, for materials ranging from water (for fuel as well as for astronauts) to precious metals such as platinum. The Verge points to a TED talk in 2005 where Diamandis discusses his dream, while Forbes magazine has brought up the subject with him more than once in the past few months.

For now, Planetary Resources is keeping the mystery close to the vest. The plan is to reveal the details next Tuesday at the Seattle Museum of Flight's Charles Simonyi Space Gallery. Diamandis, Anderson and Simonyi will be in attendance, along with Chris Lewicki, a former NASA Mars mission manager who is the company's president and chief engineer; and Tom Jones, a planetary scientist and retired astronaut who serves as an adviser to the company.

Will the mystery keep until then? Stay tuned.

More about extraterrestrial investments:

• Could legal loophole lead to extraterrestrial land claims?
• Private property in outer space? It's debatable
• To infinity and beyond: Investing in space travel
• How to make the moon pay

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Slideshow: 2012's top underwater shots

Ximena Olds

Click through the best pictures from the University of Miami's 2012 Annual Underwater Photography Contest, hosted by the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

Launch slideshow

Even a humble sea slug can be stylish, if you find the right slug in the right place. That's what photographer Ximena Olds did when she snapped a picture of an orange headshield sea slug amid the green seagrass in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Her contrasting-color picture took the top prize in this year's Underwater Photography Contest, hosted by the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

More than 700 images were submitted for the 2012 contest, showing scenes from 20 countries. Awards were given in several categories, including Macro, Wide Angle, and Fish or Marine Mammal Portrait. Another category was set aside for University of Miami students. Olds' photo was submitted in the Macro category but was singled out for the "Best Overall" prize.

The judges included University of Miami lecturer Myron Wang, underwater photographer Nicole Wang and Michael Schmale, a professor at the Rosenstiel School.

"The quality of photos keeps getting better each year," Myron Wang, who has been judging the contest since its inception in 2005, said in today's announcement of the winners. "Judging becomes more difficult when you have so many wonderful pictures to choose from. For me, there were excellent entries in every category, but this year’s standout was the great picture of the juvenile sperm whale taken by Douglas Kahle in Dominica — it is spectacular!”

This year, for the first time, a "Fan Favorite" category was created for Internet voting. More than 1,200 ballots were cast in the poll, with Todd Aki's shot of a silhouetted jellyfish taking the prize.

The underwater photography contest is held annually, and is open to all amateur photographers who earn no more than 20 percent of their income from their photography. Click through the slideshow above, or check out the Rosenstiel School's website for more about the winners.

More underwater beauties:

• Flip through this year's candidates for fan favorite
• Bellyflop! Amazing photos of underwater dogs
• 2011: Cameras capture underwater wonders
• Photo exhibit displayed on artificial reef

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

J. Craig Venter Institute

A genetically transformed strain of bacteria takes on a bluish cast as a signal that synthetic coding was incorporated into the cell's genetic machinery.

Someday, microbiomes just might give us a world where crude oil is grown like a crop, where vaccines for new flu strains can be produced in days instead of months, and where physicians can tweak the bacteria in your gut to cure what ails you. At least that's the promise held out by genomics pioneer Craig Venter and others at a symposium conducted this week at Seattle's Institute for Systems Biology.

A decade ago, Venter was among a cadre of researchers who first decoded the human genome — in Venter's case, his own. Today, as the head of the J. Craig Venter Institute, he's among a cadre of researchers who are not only working out the implications of that genetic code for our daily lives, but also studying how to tweak the genetic codes of the myriad microbes that surround us — and in some cases, live within us. The makeup of those microbial communities is what scientists refer to a "microbiome."

A decade ago, the main challenge facing geneticists was to translate the "analog" information of cellular chemistry into a digital database, Venter told attendees. Today, the main challenge is to reverse course and make the "digital to analog" conversion, so that innovations in genetic code can be applied to the real world.

How's that done? Venter and his colleagues made a start on that task just a few years ago, by pioneering a process to synthesize DNA and insert it into a strain of bacteria. The daughter cells reflected the artificially altered programming instead of their forebears' natural genetic code.

Now Venter and others are putting synthetic biology to work. Here are just a few of the examples cited at the Seattle symposium, titled "Systems Biology and the Microbiome":

• Novartis, a major pharmaceutical company, is working with Venter on techniques to crack the genetic code of an influenza virus strain and pass it along to the vaccine-makers within five days. A quick turnaround is the key to containing the spread of deadly flu strains like the one that killed tens of millions in 1918. "We think we're actually pandemic-ready," Venter said.
• Several commercial ventures, including Sapphire Energy, are tweaking algae to produce oil-like compounds at a price that's cheaper than the cost of crude oil. Sapphire CEO Jason Pyle pointed out that based purely on commodity costs, corn is a cheaper energy source than oil (though not as cheap as natural gas). If genetically modified algae could be grown in mass quantities as cheaply as corn, it could become a renewable energy source that's much closer to carbon-neutral than fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide could come to be seen as "the raw material of the future," Venter said.

• Algae strains could also be reprogrammed to produce foodstuffs, Venter said. Such genetic twists could outpace today's chemical-heavy agricultural methods, which are increasingly being seen as too wasteful for the planet's rising population. "Ultimately, the elimination of agriculture as we know it should be a goal of modern science," Venter said. However, harnessing synthetic algae cells is "not a short-term project," he cautioned.
• Unraveling the human microbiome, particularly in our digestive system,. ranks among the top priorities for microbiologists. Physicians are already experimenting with "fecal transplants" — a gross-sounding procedure that involves injecting material from a donor's intestines into the gut of a patient who needs a healthier bacterial community. Having your digestive bacteria analyzed, and tweaked if necessary, may someday become part of a routine physical. (However, MIT's Eric Alm noted that it wouldn't have to be done annually, because your gut's microbiome doesn't usually change that quickly.)
• The bacteria in our bowels may even play a role in space exploration: If we ever get to the point of sending astronauts to Mars, Venter said one of the first items on the agenda should be to replace the astronauts' Earth-centric gut bacteria with a selection more suited to the Mars trip. Venter has said other bacteria cold be engineered to create fuel and food from raw materials on Mars, including the carbon dioxide in its atmosphere.

This all sounds like a science-fiction utopia, but some believe there's the potential for a sci-fi nightmare instead. Last month, an international environmental consortium called for a moratorium on the commercial use of synthetic organisms, and an outright ban on the application of synthetic biology to the human genome or the human microbiome.

"It is our obligation to safeguard the future, to be wise in our development and use of technologies which could threaten humans and the Earth," said Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network. The results of an online survey on synthetic biology are due to be released next month.

What do you think about the idea using genetically altered microbes to produce fuel, food and medicine? Is it a panacea, a Pandora's Box, or something in between? Feel free to register your opinion in the online poll above, or in the comment space below.

More about the microbiome and synthetic biology:

• Scientists map the world's microbes
• What's living on your smartphone?
• Bacteria prefer prime real estate
• Renewable rubber highlights new economy
• One-third of Americans back ban on synthetic biology

NASA file

An artist's conception shows a mining operation on a near-Earth asteroid.

If private ventures start building settlements and factories on the moon, on Mars or on asteroids, someone may also have to build a new legal framework for the exploitation of those extraterrestrial resources. Experts on both sides of the debate over property rights on other worlds agree that the current rules may not cover the challenges that could crop up on other worlds.

But should that take the form of legislation on a nation-by-nation basis, or a new international code of conduct? For now, the question is theoretical. But this month's debate over measures such as the 45-year-old Outer Space Treaty and the proposed Space Settlement Prize Act may mark one small step toward a giant leap in off-world commerce.

Earlier this week, we discussed the idea of using a perceived "loophole" in the Outer Space Treaty that could allow the United States to recognize the property rights of private parties on other worlds. Since then, I've gotten in touch with Tanja Masson-Zwaan, the president of the International Institute of Space Law, and now I've heard the other side of the argument.

Masson-Zwaan told me trying to get around the 1967 treaty is "not the solution."

"Things have to be agreed on an international level," she said. "I don't think that the treaty has any kind of 'loophole.'"

The idea behind the Space Settlement Prize Act is that the Outer Space Treaty bars its signatories, including the United States, from asserting sovereignty over other worlds, but may not bar them from recognizing claims made by private parties. The act's backers note that a follow-on treaty, drawn up in 1979 and known as the Moon Treaty, specifically bans private property claims — and note that the United States is not a party to that particular pact.

Wouldn't that imply that the United States still has a free hand on private property claims? Masson-Zwaan says no. She says the private-property angle is addressed by the Outer Space Treaty, and merely reiterated in the later Moon Treaty. "It's often so in treaties," she said.

The key to her argument is that Article 2 of the 1967 treaty holds nations responsible for the extraterrestrial activities of their citizens. And it's not just her arguing that. This is the view of other legal experts, including TechFreedom's James Dunstan. (Masson-Zwaan said Dunstan's comments were "quite well worded.") What's more, it's been the stated view of the U.S. government. In 2003, a State Department official cited Article 2 in turning back a claim for parking and storage fees relating to NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft on the asteroid Eros.

A later ruling in federal court rejected the claim on different grounds, saying that the claimant failed to show any property interest in Eros. Would the outcome have been different if someone landed a robotic probe on Eros, and then commanded it to put down stakes and build a homestead? What if you had actual human homesteaders working and living on Eros? Should there be a law to recognize the settlers as property owners?

"If America would make such a law, then any country would do the same," Masson-Zwaan said. And that could lead to the kind of interplanetary discord the Outer Space Treaty was designed to avoid. She pointed to statements issued by her institute in 2004 and in 2009 to back up her point.

Masson-Zwaan acknowledges that the current treaty is not perfect. "More rules are needed," she said, "but I am also of the opinion that you do not need to create property rights." She points to the example of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which set up procedures for deep-sea mining licenses. (The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which commissioned this month's white paper on the Space Settlement Prize Act, has called the Law of the Sea Treaty "a bad deal for America.")

Right now, the outer-space property debate is a theoretical blue-sky extension of the globalism-vs.-libertarianism debate that runs through so many issues here on Earth. But if private ventures start putting rovers on the moon, or start sending mining machines to near-Earth asteroids, the debate could get much less theoretical. Feel free to re-read Monday's item on the outer-space "loophole," and then register your opinion in the poll above and/or the comment space below.

More about space settlement:

• Could lunar real estate spark a future war?
• Colonies on the moon? It's not a loony idea
• Will China take over the moon?
• Russia wants to build moon colonies

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Logcommunity by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Laurent Lamy

These composite images show Uranian auroras as bright spots on the planet's disk on Nov 16, 2011 (left), and on Nov. 29 (right). The images from the Hubble Space Telescope have been processed to bring out details in Uranus' faint ring system.

Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have caught a rare display of auroras on Uranus, which ranks among the solar system's oddest planets.

Unlike the beautiful, rippling curtains of greenish light we've been seeing in earthly skies over the past few months, the Uranian auroras are short-lived bright spots sitting on top of the ice giant's bluish cloud tops. But they're caused by a similar mechanism, involving the interaction of electrically charged particles with atoms and ions in the planet's upper atmosphere.

NASA's Voyager 2 probe picked up the first evidence of Uranus' auroras in 1986. "Since then, we've had no opportunities to get new observations of this very unusual magnetosphere," Laurent Lamy, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, said today in a news release. There have been a few hints of auroral observations, but Hubble's views from last November rank as the best views yet. Lamy and his colleagues provide the details in a paper published by Geophysical Research Letters.

The team took advantage of a lucky break and a favorable planetary alignment: Last year, Earth, Jupiter and Uranus were lined up so that energetic solar emissions could flow past each planet in turn. When the sun produced several outbursts in September, the astronomers timed the flow of the particle storm past Earth a couple of days later, and then detected the flow past Jupiter two weeks after that. On the basis of those readings, they calculated that the outburst would reach Uranus in mid-November, and scrambled to schedule observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Uranus is an oddity because it basically rotates on its side as it orbits the sun. The orientation of its magnetosphere is tilted 60 degrees with respect to its rotational axis. As a result, during the current season, each of the planet's magnetic poles turns to face the sun in the course of a Uranian day. "This configuration is unique in the solar system," Lamy said.

Hubble was well-placed to catch the auroral flashes on the sunlit side, near Uranus' north magnetic pole. Each flash appeared to last only a couple of minutes, the astronomers said.

These new findings solidify Uranus' place on the list of planets flashing with auroral lights. Jupiter and Saturn are also on the list. Mars is thought to be capable of localized auroral effects, even though it doesn't have a global magnetic field. (In fact, some observers suspect we saw evidence of those effects last month.) Earlier this month, astronomers reported seeing auroral-type activity on Venus as well.

Lights on Earth
And then there's Earth. Last October, a solar outburst sparked northern lights that could be seen as far south as the state of Mississippi, and over the past month, higher-latitude residents have been treated to almost as many fireworks displays as Disneyland tourists typically get to see. Although the approach of summer is starting to cut down on the opportunities to see auroras in the Northern Hemisphere, some folks got great views as recently as last night. Here are a few of the highlights:

Shawn Malone of Marquette, Mich., snapped pictures of the aurora from the shores of Lake Superior. "The sky was ablaze in light," Malone told SpaceWeather.com. "Northern lights were so bright they lit up the beach!" For more from Malone, check out LakeSuperiorPhoto.com and his Vimeo video gallery.

Brian Larmay

Here's a different angle on the aurora and the International Space Station, captured by Brian Larmay of Beecher, Wis. The long streak in this time-lapse photograph is the space station, sailing across the sky. To see more of Larmay's pictures, check out his SmugMug gallery.

'Where in the Cosmos'
Today's picture of auroral displays on Uranus served as this week's "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. It took only a couple of minutes for Shirley Beningo to blurt out which celestial body was shown in the picture, and what the bright spots were. To reward her for her quick cosmic vision, I'm sending her a pair of cardboard 3-D glasses, wrapped up in a 3-D picture of yours truly. Ashley Nicole and Gerry Marien came in as the runners-up, and are eligible for 3-D glasses as well. Be sure to click the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page so you're ready for next Friday's "Where in the Cosmos" contest.

Earlier stories of auroral glories:

• Farewell to the northern lights
• Northern lights make for must-see TV
• Southern exposure for auroral lights
• Sky lights go wild, north and south
• Solar storm lights up northern skies
• Slideshow: The best of the northern lights
• Cosmic Log's auroral archive

In addition to Lamy, the authors of "Earth-Based Detection of Uranus' Aurorae" include R. Prange, K.C. Hansen, J.T. Clarke, P. Zarka, B. Cecconi, J. Aboudarham, N. Andre, G. Branduardi-Raymont, R. Gladstone, M. Barthelemy, N. Achilleos, P. Guio, M.K. Dougherty, H. Melin, S.W.H. Cowley, T.S. Stallard, J.D. Nichols and G. Ballester.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto,"my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Planetary Society

Researchers are looking into the possibility of sending a swarm of "laser bee" satellites to deflect a potentially hazardous asteroid, as shown in this artist's conception.

How do you solve a problem like Apophis? For years, researchers have been tracking the asteroid to determine whether or not it could get into a catastrophic smash-up with Earth on Friday the 13th in April 2036. Last week, Russian reports suggested that Moscow is thinking about launching a probe to Apophis as early as 2015 to track the threat, but U.S. experts say it's the wrong idea for the wrong asteroid.

So what's the right idea? They have a modest proposal that just might save the planet someday.

First, here's a little more background on Apophis: The 885-foot-wide (270-meter-wide) space rock was discovered in 2004 and set alarm bells ringing when experts said it had a 1-in-40 chance of hitting Earth in 2036, due to the uncertainty about its orbit. Since then, astronomers have gotten a better fix on Apophis' parameters and set the chances of collision at 1 in 240,000 or so. Some uncertainty remains, because if the asteroid passes through a relatively small region of space known as a "keyhole" in 2029, Earth's gravitational pull would deflect its course just enough to guarantee the hit in 2036.

Last week, the Russian Academy of Sciences recommended sending a small, radioisotope-powered probe with a radio beacon on board, so that astronomers could get a high-precision fix on Apophis' trajectory. "From a technical point of view, the mission could be started for implementation from 2015," the academy was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news service.

I ran that idea past several experts on the asteroid threat, and the consensus was that you almost certainly wouldn't need that kind of mission to rule out a collision threat. Retired astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who has become deeply involved in studying potential threats from near-Earth objects and how to address them, noted that there's an excellent opportunity for high-precision, Earth-based observations of the asteroid coming up in early 2013. Another opportunity comes along in 2021. Chances are that the upcoming observations will turn Apophis into a complete non-threat.

"Why, given this circumstance, the Russians would send a probe to Apophis in order to pin down its impact probability is indeed puzzling," he told me in an email.

Scientific value
That's not to say a trip to Apophis would be totally useless. Far from it.

"I would support a mission to study Apophis, either a lander or an 'orbiter' rendezvous mission," David Morrison, director of the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center for Study of Life in the Universe, wrote in email. "I wish the Russians luck. This fascinating object is a favorable target mostly because it will come so close to Earth in 2029, so that ground-based observations can be made in synergy with in situ measurements."  

Clark Chapman, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, agreed that there are plenty of good scientific reasons for studying Apophis up close. "It is expected that the tidal effects on the body could change its characteristics markedly ... and I know a number of colleagues who would like to see such a mission," Chapman wrote. But based on RIA Novosti's report, the kind of mission that the Russians are contemplating may not fill the bill. In fact, it could do more harm than good.

"I wouldn't totally dismiss the concerns about physically interacting with Apophis during its close approach," Chapman said. "If a spacecraft were actually to dock with it, there is the possibility of interfering with the natural responses that are of interest ... and, in the extremely low-probability case that Apophis were right at the threshold of passing through a keyhole, tampering with it could raise legal issues.  I'm not aware that anyone has deeply thought through these concerns."

The right target
All three of the experts are giving deep thought to another potentially threatening asteroid, a 460-foot-wide (140-meter-wide) rock that's been designated 2011 AG5. Right now, the rock has been given a 1-in-500 chance of hitting Earth on Feb. 5, 2040, due to the uncertainties about its orbit and its location relative to a cosmic keyhole in 2023.

Schweickart has been calling on NASA to start making preliminary plans for a mission to 2011 AG5, just in case we need to get a better fix on its orbit between now and 2023. If observations over the next couple of years eliminate the possibility of a threat, hallelujah! But if they don't, and if we're still worried about AG5, we'll have a head start on the asteroid deflection campaign.

"So it would seem that Russia is heading toward the wrong object!" Schweickart wrote. "There could hardly be a better example of the need, not currently in place, for international coordination when it comes to NEO [near-Earth object] impact analysis and deflection planning. So why aren't we?? Ask NASA. Please."

Chapman had a similar assessment: "I agree with Rusty that precisely determining the orbit of Apophis seems like a low priority at this time.  And I also agree that, as of now, 2011 AG5 is the near-Earth asteroid of interest."

Back in February, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued a statement noting that there'll be good opportunities for observations of 2011 AG5 in late 2013 and late 2015. "I fully expect we will be able to significantly reduce or rule out entirely any impact probability for the foreseeable future," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office.

Zapping vs. whacking
Even if Apophis and 2011 AG5 turn out to be totally harmless, it's not such a bad idea to have the plans for a "reference mission" to a worrisome asteroid ready to put into effect. And if it turns out that a future asteroid really is on a collision course, what should we do about it?

That brings us to another angle in the debate over near-Earth impacts: Some have suggested sending in the nukes. Others have proposed launching a "gravity tractor" to shepherd a threatening asteroid into a non-threatening orbit. Researchers at the University of Strathclyde in the Scottish city of Glasgow have been working on a different approach: using a swarm of solar-powered, laser-equipped satellites to blast away at the rock and deflect it.

They say their system could be effective with objects that are smaller than Apophis — say, 150 feet (50 meters) across, like the object that is thought to have blasted a Siberian forest to bits in 1908.

"We could reduce the threat posed by the potential collision with small- to medium-size objects using a flotilla of small agile spacecraft, each equipped with a highly efficient laser which is much more feasible than a single large spacecraft carrying a multi-megawatt [laser]," engineering professor Massimiliano Vasile said in a news release. "Our system is scalable, a larger asteroid would require adding one or more spacecraft to the flotilla, and intrinsically redundant. If one spacecraft fails, the others can continue."

Schweickart said researchers have been talking about zapping asteroids  for a few years. "I've never been able to convince myself that they've ever done any cost-effectiveness investigation ... assuming that they can actually solve the multitude of other technical issues inherent in the concept," he wrote.

It may well be that crashing one of the swarming satellites into an asteroid would have more of an effect on its trajectory than having the whole flotilla aim lasers at it, Schweickart said. In his email, he laid out the more likely scenario:

"It is difficult to take this proposal seriously when compared with the already available kinetic impact [KI] solution.  About the only advantage it has over a simple kinetic impact is that it would presumably be able to execute a precise orbit change (vs. the KI approximate orbit change).  However, in the last few years it has become generally accepted in the NEO deflection 'community' (such as it is!) that a gravity tractor capable 'observer' spacecraft would be pre-positioned to observe, verify, and ultimately precisely adjust (if necessary) the KI-generated orbit change.  The cost, current availability and simplicity of the KI/GT deflection concept is still the 'standard' against which other systems will have to be compared... and especially re their cost effectiveness."

Morrison agreed: "What is needed for deflection is to change the momentum of the asteroid in a controlled way. Surely a simple impact by a fast-moving interceptor is the most efficient way to do that, since the spacecraft is not required to brake and rendezvous, and then fly in formation with, the target."

Former astronaut Ed Lu, president and CEO of the B612 Foundation, also cast a vote for hitting an asteroid with something, if that's what needed to be done: "I couldn't agree more with Rusty's comment about how the real-life feasibility of such schemes needs to be taken into account.  The same could be said of suggestions that asteroids could simply be 'painted.'"

So it sounds as if the right course of action is to draw up the plans for a quick trip to a potentially hazardous asteroid, just in case we need some up-close reconnaissance, and working out a strategy for giving it a good whack if necessary. NASA's OSIRIS-Rex mission, due for launch in 2016, might serve as a good first step. The target for that $800 million mission is the asteroid 1999 RQ36, which has an ever-so-slight chance of threatening Earth in 2182. By then, we should have our anti-asteroid strategy well in hand. And who knows? We might even have to put the strategy into practice long before then.

Are we on the right track to avoid the dinosaurs' fate? Where would you rank the asteroid threat on your list of worries? Feel free to register your opinion in the vote above, and/or the comment space below.

Update for 1:40 a.m. ET April 13: I've made a few tweaks to the story in consultation with Schweickart. In an email, he said a successful asteroid deflection campaign requires two missions: first, an observer spacecraft to monitor the asteroid's position, and then a kinetic impact spacecraft to do the whacking:

"The observer spacecraft is more properly designated a 'transponder/gravity tractor' spacecraft ... the gravity tractor being potentially needed to adjust the NEO orbit slightly after the KI impact. Not either/or, but both/and. There should never be a KI deflection without a transponder/GT spacecraft in place before, during and after the KI impact. It's both/and."

Got it? On it!

More about asteroids:

• Asteroid debate rises to next level
• To fight off asteroids, humans must cooperate
• Largest digital camera hunts killer asteroids
• Here's how to counter a killer asteroid
• Interactive: Close encounters of the asteroid kind

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or following the Cosmic Log Google+ page. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

The five-day window for the launch of a North Korean rocket mounted with an observation satellite opened Thursday as the rest of the world waits to see if Pyongyang will defy international warnings and go ahead with the controversial mission.

NBC News is in North Korea to observe the launch with space expert James Oberg. With a 22-year career as a space engineer in support of NASA’s spaceflight operations, Oberg has the experience and technical expertise to determine the veracity of North Korea’s claims about this mission.

Oberg answered reader questions for an hour earlier today. The questions and answers were extremely engaging and informative.
Click below to replay the chat.

Read some of Oberg's reports on North Korea's space program:

What happens if North Korea's satellite fails?

North Koreans desperate for Western approval of launch

North Korea's 'unconvincing' answers to satellite questions

NBC space expert on North Korea satellite launch: 'It's not a military missile...but it's darn close'

Reuters

A Russian Soyuz rocket blasts off in October 2011, lofting an unmanned Progress craft that contained, among other things, an experiment in the chemistry of malt whisky.

Is Scotch whisky flowing on the International Space Station? Not exactly ... but an experiment in the chemistry of whisky maturation could eventually lead to exotic drinks that take advantage of aging in zero gravity.

Ardbeg Distillery, headquartered on the Scottish island of Islay, announced this week that it sent up vials containing unmatured malt ingredients as well as particles of charred oak to the space station, on an unmanned cargo flight that blasted off from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan last October. The experiment was facilitated by Houston-based NanoRacks, a company that arranges to send experiments (and the occasional iPhone) to the station for a fee.

The vials will sit on the space station for at least two years. The astronauts on board won't have to do anything with them. They'll be brought down on a future homeward flight, to be chemically compared with control samples at NanoRacks' facility as well as at Ardbeg's Islay distillery.

Ardbeg's researchers want to find out whether the zero-G environment has an effect on terpenes, chemicals that play a role in giving whisky and other spirits their flavor and aroma. "This is believed to be the first time anyone has ever studied terpenes and other molecules in near zero-gravity," the distillery said in a statement.

"This experiment will throw new light on the effect of gravity on maturation," Bill Lumsden, head of distilling and whisky creation at Ardbeg, was quoted as saying in a variety of British news reports originating from the Edinburgh International Science Festival. “We are all tremendously excited — who knows where it will lead?”

It's not certain whether the stuff will be drinkable when it comes back from orbit. In order for it to be considered Scotch whisky, it has to age for at least three years. And in any case, there's not much of it to drink: The liquid is contained in four of NanoRacks' MixStix vials, with each vial containing no more than 1.29 milliliters. That adds up to a little more than 5 milliliters, or roughly an eighth of a shot.

"This is not a taste-testing exercise," Jeffrey Manber, NanoRacks' managing director, told me today. He said it's not certain whether Ardbeg's experiment will lead directly to a new type of space spirit. Instead, it's focusing more generally on the molecular chemistry behind taste and smell, specifically as it applies to terpenes.

"It might lead to new insights into how these molecules behave in zero gravity," Manber said. "It could have applications in beverages — beer, whisky — and it could have applications in perfumes, in cosmetics. In short, this is really good commercial space research."

Manber said Ardbeg paid NanoRacks less than $100,000 to facilitate the experiment, and the hubbub over space whisky has sparked more inquiries about consumer product research in orbit. He pointed out that this isn't the first time space research has resulted in spin-offs for the beverage industry, product-wise as well as publicity-wise. In 2008, for example, Japan's Sapporo brewing company experimented with a "space beer" that was made using a strain of barley studied on the International Space Station.

Although Russian cosmonauts have been known to take a nip of cognac ever so often, NASA has a strict ban against alcohol use on the space station, so I wouldn't expect the astronauts to set up stills in orbit anytime soon. But if it turns out that spending time in zero-G makes spirits taste different, there could be an intoxicating new space spin-off just waiting in the wings.

"Maybe because of what we're doing today, someday SpaceX will have entire launch vehicles filled with kegs, going into orbit," Manber joked. Or maybe "Star Trek" fiction will become fact sooner than we think:

More about alcohol in space:

• Alcohol in space? Da!
• Red wine could benefit astronauts in orbit
• Beer for space tourists: More taste, fewer wet burps

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with theCosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

DigitalGlobe

This picture from DigitalGlobe's QuickBird satellite shows the launch pad at the Tongchang-ri Launch Facility in North Korea, as seen on April 9. Three dark-colored support vehicles are lined up on the launch apron. The rail-mounted mobile launch platform is toward the bottom of the pad, with an exhaust deflector that's designed to deal with the hot blast of launch.

While North Korean officials were showing off their preparations for a controversial satellite launch, DigitalGlobe's Quickbird satellite was snapping high-resolution pictures of the scene from far above. The images reveal how far the North Koreans have come — and how much can be gleaned about their intentions from orbit.

DigitalGlobe is a commercial satellite imagery provider, and QuickBird can provide pictures at a resolution of a half-meter (20 inches) per pixel. But you can bet that U.S. intelligence agencies are getting significantly better views of the Tongchang-ri Launch Center from their satellites.

North Korea is due to launch its Unha-3 ("Milky Way 3") rocket anytime between now and April 16, ostensibly to send an Earth-observing satellite known as Kwangmyongsong-3 ("Bright Shining Star 3") into a pole-to-pole orbit. The United States and its allies worry that the launch is really more of a test of North Korea's capability to launch intercontinental missiles as weapons.

International journalists, including a team from NBC News, were invited to visit the secretive hard-line communist nation this week for an on-the-ground assessment of the space mission. NBC News space analyst James Oberg said that in its current configuration, the booster is "not a military missile ... but it's darn close."

"This rocket is not a weapon, but it's maybe 98 percent of one," Oberg said. "It can be converted all too easily and all too frighteningly into a weapon, and they don't need it."

AmericaSpace's Craig Covault said the Tongchang-ri facility is clearly built to handle rockets much larger than the Unha-3. He quoted U.S. and South Korean intelligence analysts as saying they believe the complex could be used for tests of North Korea's "Satan" long-range ballistic missile, as well as a North Korean-Iranian booster with up to six engines clustered in the first stage.

"Iran and possibly North Korea plan to use the large new space launch booster to send Iranian and North Korean astronauts into space," Covault wrote. He lays out a Korean-Iranian missile development program that sounds positively scary.

North Korea might have been hoping that this week's visit by journalists would put Washington's fears to rest. But based on the feedback so far, it doesn't sound as if that'll be the case.

Here's tonight's report from NBC News' Richard Engel in Pyongyang:

... Here's a computer-generated animation of the expected launch from Analytical Graphics Inc.:

... And here are more satellite pictures from DigitalGlobe:

An orbital view from DigitalGlobe's QuickBird satellite shows North Korea's Tongchang-ri Launch Facility from an altitude of 420 miles (680 kilometers).

James Oberg / msnbc.com (left) / DigitalGlobe (right)

The map of the Tongchang-ri Launch Facility that was displayed by the North Koreans during a news briefing (left) is compared with the overhead view from DigitalGlobe (right). The orientation of the satellite picture has been rotated to approximate the orientation of the map.

DigitalGlobe

This satellite view shows the horizontal processing building at the Tongchang-ri Launch Facility in North Korea, with a support vehicle parked in the dark-colored parking lot below the building.

DigitalGlobe

This DigitalGlobe satellite image, taken from orbit on April 9, shows the Tongchang-ri Launch Facility in North Korea. The structure in the lower part of the frame is known as the high-bay processing building, and the structures in the upper pat are housing facilities. VIP housing is at leff.

More about North Korea's space plans:

• North Korea says it's fueling rocket for launch
• What you need to know about the launch
• North Koreans desperate for Western approval
• Clues about North Korea's plans come to light
• North Korea shows off its launch pad and satellite
• Q&A: Rocket is 'not a military missile ... but it's darn close'
• World News: NBC gets a rare peek inside North Korea
• PhotoBlog: Pictures from the North Korea rocket tour
• Inside North Korea: Closely watched launch poses risks
• North Korea's launch sparks more worries than Iran's
• A look at North Korea's rocket technology

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Negotiations to decide the fate of a $189 million collection of artifacts from the Titanic are going into overtime.

Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions, which is seeking to sell 5,500 items recovered from the shipwreck site over the past 25 years, said today that it's "in discussions with multiple parties" for the purchase of the collection. The legal rulings that paved the way for the sale require that the collection must be sold as a single lot — and that the buyer must make the artifacts available for public exhibition and research.

The deadline for sealed bids passed more than a week ago, and since then Premier Exhibitions has been weighing the offers.

"In order for the company to settle on the most appropriate bidder and maximize the ultimate value of the artifacts for shareholders, it conduct these negotiations and due diligence in confidence," Premier said in a statement. The company said it would "provide an additional update to shareholders as soon as practical," and would reschedule a news conference that had been planned for Wednesday to announce the winning bid.

Premier's subsidiary, RMS Titanic Inc., is the only company with legal permission to recover objects from the Titanic, which ran into an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912, during its maiden trans-Atlantic voyage from Southampton to New York. More than 1,500 of the ship's 2,228 passengers and crew lost their lives in the disaster. The 100th anniversary of the tragedy is boosting interest in the Titanic to new heights.

In addition to the physical artifacts, RMS Titanic has been collecting data and high-resolution imagery of the wreck site, two miles beneath the Atlantic surface. Its most recent expedition took place in 2010. The archaeological assets, including underwater video and 3-D mapping, are among the property being sold.

"Titanic is slowly being consumed by iron-eating microbes on the sea floor and, at some point in the not-too-distant future, it will be only a memory," Mark Sellers, chairman of Premier and RMS Titanic, said back in January. "We are proud of what we have accomplished as salvor-in-possession of the wreck site and we believe we have faithfully honored the legacy of those who were lost. After all those efforts, we have determined that the time has come for us to transfer ownership of this collection to a steward who is able to continue our efforts and will preserve and honor her legacy."

Actually, three major Titanic auctions are taking place this month. In addition to the Premier Exhibitions sale, which is being managed by Guernsey's auction house, there's a Bonhams auction set for Sunday in New York, and an RR Auction online sale due to begin April 19. Last month, the highlight of a London auction was the sale of a first-class menu from the Titanic's last lunch for $120,000.

Ben Stansall / AFP - Getty Images

A wreath floats in berths 43/44, the place from which the RMS Titanic set sail on its ill-fated maiden voyage 100 years ago, during a ceremony at Southampton's docks on April 10, 2012.

It's not clear whether any more artifacts will ever be brought up from the Titanic site. Beginning on the 100th anniversary of the sinking, the remains of the Titanic will be covered by a 2001 U.N. convention on the protection of underwater cultural heritage. In a statement issued last week, UNESCO said parties to the convention can seize artifacts taken from the Titanic, and prevent exploration of the site that is "deemed unscientific or unethical."

Neither the United States nor Canada are parties to that convention. However, UNESCO said the protections specified in the convention are also reflected in an international agreement on Titanic salvage that was signed by those two countries as well as France and Britain.

One of the most outspoken critics of Titanic salvaging has been oceanographer Robert Ballard, who was one of the co-discoverers of the Titanic wreck site in 1985. He has long said that if he could do it all over again, he would not publicize the location of the wreck, and today on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," he said he now wishes he claimed the site for himself.

"When I found the Titanic, I went to the courts, and I said, 'Well, can I own the Titanic?' And they said, yes. It's an abandoned shipwreck. All you have to do is go down and retrieve one object of saucer or plate or something, come into the courts, and we'll make you the owner. But we'll make you the owner under one condition, that you remove it from the bottom of the ocean. ... I was opposed to that. I wished I'd gone and got that one cup and brought it up and said, 'I want to turn it into an underwater museum.' I'd rather take people there through the technologies we now have, and I really regret I didn't do that."

In retrospect, do you think that would have been the better course? Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts about the fate of Titanic artifacts in the comment space below.

More about the Titanic:

• Titanic cruise diverted due to medical emergency
• Ship leaves NYC to visit Titanic graves in Canada
• Astrophysicist gets 'Titanic' director to tweak the sky
• 10 reasons for the Titanic tragedy
• Titanic's legacy: a fascination with disasters
• New images of Titanic shipwreck revealed
• PhotoBlog: More amazing pictures from the site
• Events mark 100th anniversary of Titanic's sinking
• Slideshow: Titanic Belfast museum makes debut  
• Cosmic Log archive on the Titanic

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.