actual race to mars could begin saturday

from foxnews: It’s a grueling marathon, only this time the finish line is the Red Planet -- and the race takes place at 70,000 miles per hour. NASA’s newest Mars rover is scheduled for launch Saturday; Curiosity should arrive at the Red Planet's mineral-rich Gale Crater next August, after a 354-million-mile, 8.5-month voyage aboard an Atlas V rocket. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency has received the first signal from an unmanned Russian spacecraft bound for a moon of Mars since it was stuck in Earth's orbit two weeks ago, officials said Wednesday -- raising hope that mission might be saved. ESA spokesman Bernhard von Weyhe said contact with Russia's Phobos-Grunt probe could be the first step in restabilizing the mission. If successful, Phobos-Grunt could leave Earth's orbit at more or less the same time as its American counterpart. It's a head-to-head race begun not with a pistol but a rocket launch. So who will reach Mars first?

launch of x-37b revisited

David Axe writes in "US Starting Asia Space Race?" April 22nd launch of X-37B robotic spacecraft into orbit by US Air Force counters China's anti-satellite capability and goes a step further. "The X-37B, built by Boeing, could also be used to spy on and even disable other nations’ satellites, all without them necessarily knowing that it’s even happening."

Eric Sterner, a Washington-based analyst, says, "the smoke probably exceeds the fire." Sterner believes most likely the spacecraft will be used to put satellites into orbit more cheaply. Russia, China and India find the inspection capabilities of the X-37B most worrisome. The US defied a consensus among the other countries by launching the 30 foot long craft. Further, the US is the only nation with the ability to comprehensively track foreign spacecraft, which clearly gives the US a tactical advantage.

The Air Force's intentions aside, the X-37B with its satellite inspection capability represents an escalation of the space race with China. Finally, since the launch, the X-37B changes orbits frequently and evades tracking by amateur spotters, which only adds to the speculation about its celestial activities!