We might not be professional astronauts, but NASA has opened to the gates for us to sign on – literally - for missions to the moon and to hunt for alien planets.

NASA is taking names from the public to send to the moon aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), an unmanned probe slated to launch this fall to map the lunar surface and hunt for future landing sites. The project is part of a cooperative effort between NASA’s LRO office, the Applied Physics Lab at the Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and the Planetary Society.

An illustration of NASA’s LRO spacecraft at the moon. Credit: NASA.

The LRO spacecraft will be on the vanguard of NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2020. It is slated to launch on Oct. 28 with a second probe, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) that will crash two vehicles into the moon on purpose.

You can send your name to the moon by entering it at this Johns Hopkins University Web site:

http://lro.jhuapl.edu/NameToMoon/index.php

Not only does your name go to the moon, but you’ll also get a lovely numbered certificate (I’m #618,963 if you’re wondering. So yeah, the nosebleed section of the moon trip). You can even go the eco route and just download it in a PDF form, file it away, then never look at it again until later when you’re sifting through old files wondering what delete and save.

The deadline is June 27, so you’ve got some time.

“Everyone who sends their name to the moon, like I’m doing, becomes part of the next wave of lunar explorers,” said Cathy Peddie, LRO deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in a statement. “The LRO mission is the first step in NASA’s plans to return humans to the moon by 2020, and your name can reach there first. How cool is that?”

An illustration of NASA’s Kepler telescope in space. Credit: NASA/GSFC.

And if Earth’s nearest neighbor isn’t enough for you, there’s always Kepler: a new space telescope that will hunt for alien planets similar to our terrestrial home.

Slated to launch in February 2009, Kepler will orbit the Sun – not Earth – and peer into the depths of space to scan for Earth-like planets circling their parent stars. The mission’s Name in Space project is part of a NASA cooperation with the International Year of Astronomy in 2009 and the 400th anniversary of Johannes Kepler’s publication of his first two laws of planetary motion.

True to its namesake’s research, the Kepler space telescope will be placed in an orbit that slowly drifts further and further from Earth.

Kepler engineers will be attaching a DVD to the new telescope carrying the names and thoughts of the public, which can be entered at the following Web site:

http://www.seti.org/kepler/names/

The deadline to enter your name is Nov. 1. Like the LRO program, you can enter your name and receive a digital certificate. But you can also add your two cents on where the Kepler mission’s importance lies in the current space exploration regime.

NASA plans to donate a copy of the DVD to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and post a video of the original’s installation on the Kepler telescope later this year.

“It’s a way for the public to participate in our space program,” explained David Koch, deputy principal investigator for Kepler’s mission, in a statement. “We’re looking for several million names…The only limitation is people’s interest.”

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• VIDEO: Moon 2.0: Join the Revolution
• The Top 10 Most Intriguing Extrasolar Planets

The Coalition for Space Exploration has a new digital look after giving their online home a makeover to better reach out to the public.

The coalition, a collaborative group of space advocacy and industry groups, overhauled its Web site to include lesson plans for educators, provide better access to industry experts and showcase new events and book releases on space-related issues, the group said.

“Our goal is to inspire our visitors about the wonder of space, educate them about the people and programs involved and equip them to share the benefits of space exploration,” Coalition chair Mary Engola said in a statement.

In addition to the spotlight on industry and education, the coalition also included sections on space-themed social networking, a look at the economic benefits of spaceflight and a special subsection for children.

And for you die-hard SPACE.com fans, you might just see a few familiar names tucked amid the coalition’s blog team, which includes SPACE.com special correspondent Leonard David and former Cape Canaveral bureau chief Jim Banke.

The Coalition’s new Web site can be found here: http://www.spacecoalition.com

Veteran cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko has closed the book on allegations he took a sip of alcohol while serving aboard the International Space Station, according to Russian news reports.

Russia’s Interfax News Agency reports that Malenchenko, who returned to Earth Saturday in an off-target Soyuz landing with NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and South Korean spaceflyer So-yeon Yi, scoffed at earlier media claims that he consumed alcohol during his six months in orbit.

“That’s nonsense,” Interfax quoted Malenchenko as saying in a Monday press conference. “We have never had alcohol onboard the ISS.”

Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko works with communication equipment on the ISS.

Apparently, Russian media outlets reported that Malechenko took a drink during his 46th birthday on Dec. 22. But those reports, Malenchenko said, were completely unfounded.

“We gave an interview shortly before the New Year and almost every Russian journalist asked what we would drink,” he said according to Interfax. “But we had nothing. We might have wished a drink but we did not have any.”

“So, that was a conjecture. People make many conjectures and that was one of them,” he said.

Malenchenko was Soyuz commander during the launch and landing for the station’s Expedition 16 crew and served as a flight engineer during the mission itself. He also commanded the space station during the Expedition 7 mission in 2003 and flew an earlier mission to Russia’s Space Station Mir.

Alcohol is not allowed aboard NASA shuttles, Soyuz and the International Space Station, though astronauts - like the rest of us - are free to consume it when they’re not on duty.

NASA battled allegations of inappropriate drinking among the astronaut corps in the final hours before flight last year after two anecdotal reports popped up during an audit of the agency’s health services. After months of investigation, however, the agency found no substance to the reports and officially adopted what had been until then an unofficial no-drinking policy for spaceflyers within 12 hours of liftoff.

A German student’s refinement of the space rock Apophis’ chances of smacking Earth in the next few decades has caused quite an international stir, even if he happens to be wrong.

Apophis, or Asteroid 99942, is a space rock between 690 and 1080 feet (210 and 330 meters) wide that scientists expect to make two close swings by Earth, first in 2029 and then again in 2036.

After careful analysis, NASA scientists have given the space rock a slim 1-in-45,000 chance of walloping Earth on its second pass, adding that the Apophis bears watching because perturbations in its path could require more calculations.

But when German student Nico Marquardt, 13, made his own calculations using telescopic observations from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam, he came up with a 1-in-450 chance the asteroid would collide with Earth if it ran into a manmade satellite in geosynchronous orbit some 22,300 miles (36,000 km) above the planet, according to the German newspaper Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten and the AFP wire service. He submitted the findings for his regional science competition with the title: ‘Apophis – The Killer Asteroid,’ and found confirmation from folks at NASA and the European Space Agency, the publications reported.

But another report, from a different news outlet – and later officially confirmed by NASA itself – laid down the law: A 1-in-45,000 of impact. And those are mighty good odds. One eagle-eyed reader alerted SPACE.com this morning that a simple percentage error may be at the heart of Marquardt’s findings.

“Contrary to recent press reports, NASA offices involved in near-Earth object research were not contacted and have had no correspondence with a young German student, who claims the Apophis impact probability is far higher than the current estimate,” NASA officials said.

Apophis seems to have an on again-off again relationship with the people of Earth. Despite NASA’s increasingly more refined observations suggesting it won’t whack us a good one in 2036, reports seem to trickle out through in the media every year about how it will.

And how awful! An 200 billion-ton impact in the Atlantic Ocean spawning tsunamis large enough to wipe out the U.S. East Coast and the western coast of Europe. Clouds of dust that blot out the sun for who knows how long, according to press reports.

But NASA says that, right now, that won’t happen.

Current estimates based on asteroid tracking by NASA’s Spaceguard project predict Apophis zip by Earth at a distance of about 18,300 miles (29,470 km) on its first pass in 2029, then swing further out at about 30 million miles (47.9 million km) in 2039. Its course will not bring it near the main belt of geosynchronous satellites, NASA said.

Perturbations in its orbit do bear watching to ensure that the odds of an Earth impact don’t increase, but they are holding steady at 1-in-45,000, the agency added.

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• IMAGES: Asteroid Gallery

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have opened the hatch to Europe’s Jules Verne cargo ship and begun converting it into an orbital pantry.

Station commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Garrett Reisman opened the cargo ship’s hatch at 6:15 a.m. EDT (1015 GMT), about 45 minutes later than planned, and set up an air scrubbing device to clean the space freighter’s atmosphere, NASA spokesperson Josh Byerly told SPACE.com.

The air scrubbing process, a day-long affair, will make Jules Verne habitable for its planned six-month stay at the ISS. Whitson and her crew are expected to officially enter the 32-foot (10-meter) long spacecraft’s 15-foot (4.5-meter) wide pressurized compartment early Saturday and begin unloading its nearly 8 tons of cargo on Monday, NASA has said.

A camera outside the International Space Station caught this view of the arriving European cargo ship Jules Verne during its docking on April 3, 2008. Credit: NASA TV.

Jules Verne, the first of Europe’s new class of Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV), arrived at the space station early Thursday after a 26-day flight to test its novel video and laser-based guidance system and await the end of NASA’s recent March shuttle mission. The massive, 21-ton spacecraft successfully docked at 10:45 a.m. EDT (1445 GMT) at a port on the aft end of the station’s Russian-built Zvezda service module.

The European Space Agency (ESA) spent about 1.3 billion Euros ($1.9 billion) developing and launching the first ATV spacecraft. It plans to launch at least five, and possibly seven overall, such spacecraft to the space station in return for European astronaut slots on future crews.

Named after the famed 19th century science fiction writer Jules Verne, the inaugural ATV launched late March 8 (ET) atop an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s South American spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have a St. Patrick’s Day hunt on their hands as they zip through space more than 200 miles above Earth.

While shuttle Endeavour spacewalkers Rick Linnehan and Robert Behnken add a tool belt to a massive robotic handyman outside the station tonight, another hulking robot – the European Space Agency’s unmanned cargo ship Jules Verne – is hovering just above the Earth’s horizon some 1,200 miles (2,000 km) away from the ISS. The spacecraft is Europe’s first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).

“Got the feeling that you’re being followed?” Mission Control asked the Endeavour crew in their morning mail this afternoon. “There may be something to that. ATV has been steadily chasing you around the globe and sometime today should be above the horizon off the station’s nose (opposite the velocity vector) today.

“A free green beverage, of your choice from the galley, to the first to identify the bright star rising in the west. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.”

An illustration of Europe’s first ATV cargo ship Jules Verne. Credit: ESA/D.Ducros

Europe’s Jules Verne ATV is a massive 21-ton cargo ship that launched March 8 on a weeks-long shakedown crew to test its automated flight systems.

The spacecraft launched atop a modified Ariane 5 rocket and is designed to haul three times the cargo of Russia’s unmanned Progress freighters to the ISS. Like Progress, Jules Verne is designed to dock at the station’s Russian-built berths and be discarded after about six months. But the solar powered space truck is immense and about the size of London double decker bus.

Click here for live space shuttle mission coverage.

• VIDEO: Part 1: Europe’s First ISS Cargo Ship
• VIDEO: Part 2: Jules Verne, Europe’s First ISS Cargo Tug
• NEW GALLERY: Launch Day for Shuttle Endeavour

The countdown is NASA’s planned a predawn launch of the shuttle Endeavour toward the International Space Station, but how do astronauts handle a 2:28 a.m. liftoff?

“The main strategy is that we’re going to all drink a lot of coffee just before we go out to the launch pad,” joked Endeavour astronaut Garrett Reisman before shifting his body’s internal clock to meet the demands of a predawn launch.

The shuttle Endeavour stands poised for launch on Pad 39A. Credit: NASA/Amanda Diller.

But to prepare for Tuesday’s super-early launch, Reisman and his fellow STS-123 crewmates each had to force their body to change its circadian rhythm, the internal clock that tells you when to sleep and when to work.

NASA calls the adaptation process “sleep shifting” and it basically means changing an astronaut’s daily pattern over time, such as steadily going to sleep later at night and waking up later and later into the next day. For example, for tomorrow’s 2:28 a.m. EDT (0628 GMT) launch, the astronauts awoke late Monday at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT).

“We have all kinds of advantages,” said Reisman. “We have special lighting in the crew quarters that helps you change you’re circadian rhythm and we’ll have that at the Kennedy Space Center too.”

Reisman said he and his crewmates began their sleep shifting in earnest on March 4 for their early morning launch tomorrow.

Endeavour’s STS-123 crew is on track for a 2:28 a.m. EDT (0628 GMT) launch toward the ISS. Commanded by veteran spaceflyer Dominic Gorie, the STS-123 astronauts will deliver Japan’s first module for its massive Kibo space station lab, a Canadian-built maintenance robot named Dextre and perform five spacewalks during the 16-day flight to the orbiting laboratory.

Click here for SPACE.com’s live coverage and a link to the live NASA TV broadcast of tonight’s rare night launch.

When my laptop goes kaput, my first instinct is to chuck it out the window, but astronauts in space don’t have such luxuries.

Consider this: Yuri Malenchenko, a veteran cosmonaut and flight engineer aboard the International Space Station, had the unenviable job this week of wrestling with a glitchy computer laptop in the outpost’s Russian segment.

While I can call tech support, my computer programmer brother-in-law, or just pay someone to take it out of my sight until it’s fixed, Yuri and his Expedition 16 crewmates have to keep those space laptops running or the $100 billion station doesn’t work.

“It says software license warning,” Yuri told Mission Control in Korolev, Russia, just outside of Moscow on Wednesday during NASA’s daily hour of live video from the space station.

Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko works with communication equipment on the ISS.

Flight controllers and engineers there were talking Yuri, who has commanded the station in the past, through the steps to reinstall programs from a software DVD. They were speaking Russian, with a handy English translator, but frustration knows no language.

“[It says] the computer cannot copy the file, and data error,” said Yuri, as he and Mission Control hammered through their troubleshooting.

I may not be a spaceman, but I know how it feels to have that blue screen of death standing between me and my files. At least I only have to face off against one computer at a time, but it’s a different story for station astronauts.

According to the folks at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas – home of the U.S. astronaut corps and shuttle/space station Mission Controls – there are no less than 69 laptop computers watching over the International Space Station right this minute. Here’s a breakdown:

• 50 computers govern all NASA core functions on the station, including operations and many of the payloads.
• 5 of those 50 NASA machines are directly linked to the station’s core avionics computers to send commands and receive telemetry
• 12 laptop computers support all of the station’s Russian core functions, operations and payloads
• 7 new laptops watch over the new, European-built Columbus laboratory for the European Space Agency.

And there’s more coming, I’m sure. On March 11, NASA’s shuttle Endeavour will launch with the first segment of Japan’s massive Kibo laboratory – the station’s largest research module – along with a Canadian-built, two-armed robot called Dextre that will be mounted outside. Kibo will likely need its own laptop computers.

Luckily, flight controllers in Russia and the U.S. have extensive – if not altogether desired – experience working through minor and major computer glitches aboard the ISS. Just last summer, the station’s primary Russian command and navigation computers crashed due to a faulty circuit. Cosmonauts jerry rigged a workaround until the computers could be replaced later.

The station’s main U.S. computers inside NASA’s Destiny lab have also experience their own growing pains, including a major crash back in April 2001.

The folks with NASA’s computer resources and architecture department say that space station computers receive new software updates for different applications several times a year to support new requirements, interfaces and new arrivals of modules and other hardware as the orbital laboratory’s construction continues.

Two astronauts swapped seats between the shuttle Atlantis and International Space Station (ISS) for good today, though Mission Control sent them a gentle reminder to be sure they got it right.

“Just a friendly reminder – be sure to call roll call on both sides of the hatch before closing it!” said Mission Control here at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in a message sent with the shuttle crew’s morning mail.

When the hatches between Atlantis and the ISS shut at 1:03 p.m. (1803 GMT) today to prepare for Monday’s undocking, U.S. astronaut Dan Tani, formerly an station crewmember, stay aboard the shuttle while his replacement – European Space Agency astronaut Leopold Eyharts of France – joined the station’s Expedition 16 crew.

“It is a great day for me,” Tani said during an emotional farewell, in which he recalled the loss of his mother Rose during his spaceflight and his eagerness to see his wife Jane and two daughters. “Jane is the love of my life and she had the hard work while I was having fun. So I can’t wait to get back to Earth and my two little girls.”

STS-122 and Expedition 16 crews say farewell on Feb. 17, 2008. Credit: NASA TV.

And if that weren’t enough, Mission Control quantified the two spaceflyers in the Atlantis crew’s cargo manifest in today’s Flight Day 11 execute package – which is basically the day’s activity list for astronauts in space.

Eyharts is Transfer Item 809, while Tani is Transfer Item 810.

Mission Control reminded the astronauts to check with the station’s Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson before making the crew change.

“If Peggy can spare this return, we’d like to swap items 809 and 810,” they wrote in the morning mail.

Tani is currently in his 118th day in space and will have about 121 orbital days by the time Atlantis lands on Wednesday. Delays to Atlantis’ planned December launch extended his mission by two extra months.

The shuttle is set to land on Feb. 20 in Florida at 9:06 a.m. EST (1406 GMT) after a 13-day mission to deliver the ESA’s Columbus lab module to the ISS. It will undock from the space station on Monday at 4:26 a.m. EST (0926 GMT).

NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis may still be in orbit, but the agency is already planning ahead with new launch dates for three missions set to lift off this fall.

Three of NASA’s six planned shuttle flights of 2008 have shifted to slightly later in the year due to the two-month delay that plagued Atlantis’ current STS-122 mission to deliver Europe’s Columbus lab and a new crewmember to the International Space Station (ISS). Here’s a rundown of the new launch targets:

Aug. 28 – STS-125 aboard Atlantis to fly the final mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (delayed from Aug. 7)

Oct. 16 - STS-126 aboard Endeavour to haul new equipment and supplies to the ISS (delayed from Sept. 18)

Dec. 4 – STS-119 aboard Discovery to deliver the final set of U.S. solar arrays to the ISS (finally, an official date!)

No official new launch dates have been set for NASA next two shuttle missions to fly after Atlantis. NASA officials said Thursday that any changes to those flights will be finalized once Atlantis lands back on Earth next week,

If you’re keeping track, those two missions are currently set to fly on the following dates:

March 11 – STS-123 aboard Endeavour to deliver Japan’s Experiment Logistics Module (a sort of float-in closet for space science) for the Kibo lab and Canada’s DEXTRE robotic arm addition to the ISS. The shuttle will roll out to its seaside launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Monday.

April 24 – STS-124 aboard Discovery to deliver to haul the massive Pressurized Module for Japan’s Kibo lab, the largest single laboratory to be attached to the ISS. It comes with its own robotic arm, too. Bonus!

The tricky part is that the European Space Agency plans to launch its first Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ship to the ISS on March 7 and Russia’s Federal Space Agency will be launching Soyuz rocket carrying the Expedition 17 crew to the space station on April 8. So it’s a busy time in space to be sure.

Meanwhile, Atlantis’ STS-122 crew is scheduled to land SOMEWHERE on Feb. 20. NASA announced plans to call up a backup landing site in California on landing in order to return the orbiter for sure on Wednesday and clear the way for the U.S. military to shoot down a dead spy satellite before it crashes into the Earth.

If NASA launches all six shuttle missions this year, or even if the agency launches four, it will mark the most to fly in a single year since the agency resumed flights in 2005 following the Columbia accident.