Last weekend, the New Mexico Department of Transportation initiated the bid process for road improvements to the state’s Spaceport America.

Bids are currently being accepted and will be opened on July 18, with the winning “bidee” to start initial work on that piece of infrastructure on or around September 2008 - depending on weather and other factors.

Once that improved road — now a distinct but dusty and winding trail — is completed, construction of the spaceport can move forward more swiftly. The project will involve improving the road and applying a temporary chip and seal road surface. The hope is to have that work completed by year’s end.

According to the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, the current projection for completion of Spaceport America’s terminal and hangar facility should be wrapped up by 2010.

Keeping an eye on all of this are early adopters of Spaceport America’s promise as the nation’s first purpose-built commercial space facility: Virgin Galactic, Lockheed Martin, as well as Up Aerospace.

There’s a lot of funding fallout streaming out of discussions by space scientists at this week’s Planetary Science Subcommittee meeting held at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Tight budgets may well mean slipping an outer planet flagship mission to Jupiter or Saturn beyond 2016 to perhaps 2020. Some good news is that such a mission may get a financial boost from $2.1 billion to $3 billion.

Then there’s the ongoing saga of the budget-busting Mars Science Laboratory - powerpointed to be still on track for a September 2009 launch - but not out of the woods as yet.

There’s been roughly a $190 million cost overrun on Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) over two fiscal years. The current cost-to-complete estimate is now pegged at $1.9 billion in rounded-off dollars. Meanwhile, the folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are in hyper-drive piecing together the mega-rover. They are in double-shifts to achieve assemble, test and launch operations milestones - but also face supplier delivery delays.

One space scientist told me that the planetary science budget is “very uncertain” until (a) new administration, (b) MSL with lots of luck blasts off on time next September - and hopefully not needing any more money and (c) the Mars program gets its act together and comes up with a realistic plan - a plan that is now characterized by my contact as in “serious disarray”.

Also, NASA remains keen on looking at a Mars Sample Return mission. However, the cost for that effort is deemed ultra-high, even with international cooperation. To make that project happen, say in a 2018-2020 time frame, it will require skipping opportunities at Mars, even with significant international partnership.

It’s all money, money, money.

Good luck to Ed Weiler, NASA’s top space science guru, in locating that printing press to create fresh money - it must be behind some door at space agency headquarters, no?

There’s been lots of powerpoint talk and back of the envelop calculation regarding use of a “gravity tractor” to deflect an asteroid that might endanger Earth.

The physics behind the idea is that a spacecraft would position itself near a menacing asteroid and ever-so-slightly pull it off course thanks to the gravitational attraction between the two bodies.

But now a detailed study of the gravity tractor is underway, making use of an expert team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and CalTech. That’s the word from former Apollo astronaut, Rusty Schweickart - now Chairman of the Board and Founder of the B612 Foundation which is dedicated to detecting, tracking and deflecting near Earth objects (NEOs).

Schweickart spotlighted that fact in a June 15 briefing to the Secure World Foundation (SWF) in Boulder, Colorado. Full-disclosure here from this writer as I’m a research associate with SWF, but also afraid of getting knocked in the planetary noggin by a falling space rock.

The B612 Foundation has inked a $50,000 contract for the work to be done - a detailed performance analysis on the gravity tractor idea. Details of this work-in-progress will be given during the upcoming 10th Asteroids, Comets, Meteors meeting to be held mid-July in Baltimore, Maryland, Schweickart told me.

The assessment is looking into numerous aspects of the gravity tractor, in terms of stability required, maneuvering capability needed and how much fuel is necessary….and just how close can you saunter up to a rotating, odd-shaped body and still maintain spacecraft control.

The Odyssey Moon effort — one of the private groups vying for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize — is announcing today that former NASA Associate Administrator, Alan Stern, has accepted a role with the Isle of Man-based private lunar enterprise. Stern is a former chief of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Stern has joined the Odyssey Moon executive team on an exclusive part-time consulting basis as the company’s Science Mission Director, keen on public-private partnerships and building bridges to new markets - according to a media release from Odyssey Moon Limited.

The private commercial lunar enterprise is headquartered in the Isle of Man and involves partners in several nations. The group was the first official contender in the Google Lunar X Prize competition.

The Google space initiative (one of many the firm is engaged with) is a robotic race to the Moon to win the prize purse. Private firms from around planet Earth are competing to land a privately-funded rover on the Moon that is capable of completing several mission objectives - which can be read here at:

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/lunar/about-the-prize

Call it NASA’s X files if you must, but investigative reporter, Leslie Kean, is hot on the trail of what in the world (or out of it) took place in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in December 1965.

It took the winning of a lawsuit against NASA in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, but now the investigator has her hands on a load of files that may — or may not — offer new clues about the Kecksburg incident.

For years, Kean has been seeking documents about the purported crash of an unknown object in that locale over forty years ago. Witnesses described seeing a fireball in the evening sky, some sort of a controlled landing, followed by a military recovery of a spacecraft-like object. As reported by local radio and newspapers, U.S. military personnel cordoned off the area, investigated the site, and left without ever providing a full report of the incident - other than to dismiss is as a meteor.

Since the settlement of the lawsuit in October, Kean has been following the steps laid out in the settlement agreement. Both sides needed extensions at various times due to the volume of work selecting which files to pull, and then for NASA to conduct the search, the investigative journalist explained to me.

Helping to open this case, Kean has been working with the Coalition for Freedom of Information.

In her on-going research campaign, Kean culled through 689 detailed pages of file-inventory lists.

The documents just arrived over last weekend, Kean told me, “so I haven’t yet had a chance to go through them…and don’t yet know what I’ll find.”

NASA searched 297 boxes of files, Kean said via email. A sampling of a few of the more interesting files from these boxes, which she requested — and which could shed light on one or more of the many facets of the Kecksburg event — gives a flavor of what the files contain.

The data haul includes files on Navy and NASA Recovery Operations - Trajectory and Orbits Panel; Russian Vehicle and Launch - 1962-1965; Department of Defense (DOD)-NASA relationships; Recovery Sites - NASA/DOD FY 65 Facilities; and a series of files on orbital debris and fragments.

“Even if not specific to Kecksburg, they will very likely inform us about interesting aspects of NASA’s space program related to the retrieval of unidentified objects during this time period,” Kean said.

China’s next human spaceflight of Taikonauts is slated for this October, with the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft to depart from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwestern province of Gansu.

The Shenzhou spacecraft is reportedly in tip-top shape for the trek - a voyage that will carry a crew of three into Earth orbit. According to China news reports, a set of six Taikonauts has been in training for the flight, three of which will be selected for the mission.

Two of those that will fly in October are practicing for China’s first spacewalk - a critical step for China to establish a space laboratory or station, according to the Xinhua news service.

A date for the Shenzhou mission launch in October is forthcoming, according to a spokesperson at the China manned space engineering office.

China has taken a step-by-step approach in flying their Taikonauts: A single person flight in 2003 of 14 orbits; a two person cruise in 2005 lasting 5 days; and now a trio of space travelers - all akin to a U.S. Mercury (single-seat), Gemini (two-person), and now Apollo crew size profile (a three-person capsule).

Not bad for a hop, skip, and now a jump to a trio of space travelers.

In the U.S., the first human-carrying orbital flight of Mercury was in 1962; Gemini in 1965; and Apollo in 1968.

So if this next mission is successful in attaining orbit, China will have taken something like a year less time to move from single-seat orbital flight to Apollo three-seat space travel - contrasted to U.S. human spaceflight progress in Earth orbit.

There’s a lot riding on the next flight of the Falcon 1 rocket, built by the private rocketeers at Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX).

The earliest possible time for the first countdown attempt of Falcon 1 (not necessarily launch) is projected to occur sometime between June 26 and July 7 at liftoff central from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. That’s the same departure site for two previous rocket shots of the vehicle that failed to showcase an orbital capability.

“However, until we complete the static fire and have a chance to analyze data, please assume that there is not even an official launch date range,” Elon Musk, chief of SpaceX told me today via email. He said that the launch date for the Falcon 1’s third flight is not known at this time.

This next rocket flight is loaded with payloads, including a mission of the U.S. Department of Defense Operationally Responsive Space Office (ORS), dubbed Jumpstart - SpaceDev’s Trailblazer spacecraft bus.

Also onboard is other gear, such as NASA and Cornell University hardware, as well as 208 memorial spaceflight participants, the largest number of “cremains” carried spaceward as part of the Celestis Explorers Flight program.

While the Phoenix Mars lander is the new kid on the block (of ice, salt, or whatever it is), don’t forget those two long-lived rovers: NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity.

I asked Steve Squyres, the principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover mission, to provide an update on the overall health of the dynamic duo.

“Both are doing well,” Squyres responded. “Opportunity has plenty of power and is very busy driving and doing science. Spirit is very low on power (the winter solstice is just a few weeks away), but is hanging in there just fine,” he added.

Regarding Spirit, rover scientists and engineers feel very confident about the robot’s health through the winter. There’s even a decent chance that Spirit can make it through without having to disable a survival heater on the rover’s Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer - known in Mars jargon as Mini-TES.

“That’d be good news if it happens, because we want Mini-TES to be healthy when spring comes. We’ve been fortunate this winter, in that skies at the Spirit site have been clearer than we anticipated.”

Around the planet, at the Opportunity rover site, that Mars machinery has a new problem with a shoulder joint that swings the robot’s arm left and right.

“We have managed to get it to move, however, and we used it to put the arm out in front of the vehicle. What we’ve then done is a lot of analysis and testing on the ground to convince ourselves that we can safely drive the vehicle with the arm unstowed,” Squyres told me.

The rover wasn’t designed for that, but by keeping the arm unstowed, rover operators protect themselves against a possible future failure of that particular shoulder joint.

“If the joint were to fail permanently with the arm stowed we would never be able to deploy the arm again. Keep it unstowed…and it’s always ready to go,” Squyres said.

So now Opportunity is driving with the arm out. What happens when it comes time to make use of the robot’s arm? If that particular shoulder joint works again, then that’s good news. But if it doesn’t, it’s still okay, Squyres noted.

“We’ve still got four good joints, and those allow us to contact the surface with all the instruments and do the things we normally do. If we do need any side-to-side motion and that joint doesn’t cooperate…all we have to do is turn the rover,” Squyres observed.

BTW: A trip down Mars memory lane - Those two robots have been at work on Mars since January 2004.

NASA officials are wrestling with why the Phoenix Mars lander wound up shooting long within a pre-designated landing ellipse.

A better understanding of why Phoenix and several other Mars landings have made less than bulls-eye touchdowns is being flagged by NASA space science chief, Ed Weiler. It’s an issue that needs to be resolved, particularly given the accuracy needed for the NASA’s next Mars lander - the super expensive mega-rover, the Mars Science Laboratory.

Mars exploration program officials, for example, are curious whether or not Mars atmospheric models are accurate - or is something else at work in the entry, descent and landing profiles of Mars probes that’s not up to snuff.

In a related development, NASA is preparing a formal request to the European Space Agency to request that ESA’s Mars Express orbiter be used as standby to support Phoenix lander operations.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is experiencing on-going glitches in using its UHF link to Phoenix. That intermittent problem means more reliance on Odyssey, NASA’s other Mars orbiter.

ESA’s Mars Express is viewed as added assurance beyond Odyssey that the Phoenix Mars lander can fulfill its scientific duties over the months to come.

Rumbling rumors out there regarding the overall status and health of the X Prize Cup - the rocket expo for personal spaceflight.

For months, lots of gossip filtering through my email about whether or not the X Prize Cup will be held this year.

The good news on this comes from Becky Ramsey, spokeswoman for the X Prize Cup: “Per our agreement with the NASA Centennial Challenges Program, we are planning to conduct a 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge,” Ramsey told me. “We are finalizing details right now, but we expect the Challenge to take place in New Mexico in the fall,” she explained to me this morning.

Still, loads of back chatter in my ear via the phone or at conferences - about where the overall X Prize Cup may wind up - or even if it is to be held this year. I’ve heard lots of talk about Florida being a new site for the Cup, even a whisper or two about Mojave, California…or if dollars are found, having the full Cup back in New Mexico, but tied to the construction of Spaceport America in that state.

So you pick.

My guess is that all will become clear in the weeks to come.