Archive for February, 2010
Space Monkey Business
Critics say NASA is taking a giant leap backwards by irradiating monkeys in space-travel tests designed to simulate the intense radiation astronauts would experience in voyages to the moon and Mars. The Pasadena Weekly discovers that Italian human radiation tests aboard the International Space Station obviate the need for these crude and inhumane radiation tests on primates, the first of their kind in nearly three decades.
Goo-ology
EnviroReporter.com discovers a pathway for pollutants from rocket test stands into the soil and groundwater of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. In the early 1950s, a rocket crew member figured out how to keep rocket exhaust flames from melting the bottom of not only the test stands, but the rock they were standing on: use cascading showers of water to cool the hot zone. The result may have been to massively spread poisonous rocket fuel on a level not previously known. Finding may help explain one major contributing factor at the astronomically polluted lab.
NASA’s Monkey Business
The future of manned space exploration may be revealed Monday when President Obama unveils his 2011 budget request for NASA. The budget’s approval by Congress may also determine the future of 28 squirrel monkeys and renewed animal radiation experiments.
