NASA

NASA plans to retire the Space Shuttle program in 2010 and have a replacement, the Constellation, ready for launch in 2015. But the budget-starved space agency set the odds of making that deadline at only 65 percent in a report to Congress this week. Even if it meets the deadline, the Constellation's launch will come at the end of the longest gap between crewed U.S. space missions since the end of the Apollo Program and the development of the Space Shuttle. Sounds bad, but it could mean the beginning of the true Space Age.

Robots and humans always seem to end up at odds, whether it's battling over pieces of NASA's budget or literally fighting in science fiction stories such as "The Matrix" and "Battlestar Galactica." Now a former NASA historian and an American University professor suggest that the future of space exploration could very well depend on a merging of metal and flesh.

A former military scientist and senior NASA official is being tapped to be the first chief scientific researcher for all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. Lisa Porter was named as the first director of the new Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, in a statement from the Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell. "This is an important milestone for the Intelligence Community," he said in the statement last week. "We are incredibly fortunate to have someone of Dr. Porter's stature take on this vital role." Porter, of Scituate, Mass., is the associate administrator of NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, and co-chairman of the National Science & Technology Council's subcommittee on aeronautics.

Jeb Corliss wants to fly — not the way the Wright brothers wanted to fly, but the way we do in our dreams. He wants to jump from a helicopter and land without using a parachute. And his dream, strange as it sounds, is not unique. Around the globe, Corliss said, at least a half-dozen groups — in France, South Africa, New Zealand, Russia and the United States — have the same goal in mind. Although nobody is waving a flag, it is a quest that has evoked the spirit of nations' pursuits of Everest and the North and South poles.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy should pursue the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) as the first mission in the "Beyond Einstein" program, according to a new report from the National Research Council.