New News This Week

In this week's space science news, NASA announced a new launch date for the shuttle, pending safety approval on hydrogen flow control valves. The tentative date is March 12. They have also named a chair of the investigation committee for the failed launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.
Anticipation is building for the March 6 launch of the Kepler spacecraft. You'll be hearing lots more about this one next week because I'm very excited about it, but in a sentence, it's a spacecraft designed to look for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has gone into safe mode after the automated safety response registered an anomalous event. Some conjectures as to the event include cosmic rays hitting the electronics panel. In the meantime, it continues to function and engineers hope to have it functioning normally again by early next week.
The Chandra X-ray Observatory has found the oldest pulsar ever observed. Despite its age (about 200 million years old), it's surprisingly active. It's also one of the nearest pulsars to us, at a mere 770 light years from Earth.
Finally, we'll end with the most controversial story of the week, the inclusion of $2 million for "the promotion of astronomy" in Hawaii at the Imiloa Science Center as part of the Omnibus spending bill. While certainly not one of the bigger ticket items, conservatives like John McCain have criticized this as pork. In fact, Sen. McCain went as far as to label it the #2 Porkiest Porkiest Project in a recent tweet. He says, "...because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy." This isn't the first time McCain has expressed displeasure at spending in astronomical arenas. Towards the end of his campaign, he made frequent disparaging remarks about then-Senator Obama's proposed $3 million for renovations at America's first planetarium, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago; unfortunately, McCain repeatedly referred the the planetarium as an "overhead projector." The astronomy community is once again abuzz with discussion of the importance (or lack thereof) of astronomy education in our country.