Forget Maui, get hitched in space! That’s the message of one Japanese firm that is teaming up with an American private spaceflight group to offer suborbital weddings for just over $2 million a pop.

The Japanese firm First Advantage and the U.S.-based private spaceflight firm Rocketplane Global, Inc., are apparently planning to host weddings in space for about $2.3 million (240 million yen), according to media reports and both firms’ Japanese Web sites.

An illustration advertising space weddings from Japan’s First Advantage and the U.S. firm Rocketplane Global. Credit: First Advantage/Rocketplane Global/http://www.spacewedding.jp.

A translation of First Advantage’s Space Wedding site suggests a four-day training regime that would culminate in a wedding ceremony that would start on the ground and be completed during a one-hour flight into suborbital space about 60 miles (100 km) above Earth, according to the AFP news service.

An artist’s illustration advertising space weddings by Japan’s First Advantage and the U.S. firm Rocketplane Global. Credit: （C）2008 eraliy/Misuzu Onuki/Rocketplane Global, Japan.

Such a ceremony could include a space wedding photo album, marriage certificate, as well as the capability to broadcast the cosmic union live in some way, read First Advantage’s site. Apparently, the couple could take up to three guests – assumedly a priest and two witnesses – along for the near-space nuptials, reported Russia’s RIA Novosti, adding that the first flight could be in 2011.

According to the AFP, First Advantage spokesperson Taro Katsura said his firm expects the main customers for its space weddings to come from China or the Arab gulf region.

This is a good point to note, by the way, that there is a precedent for space weddings. In 2003, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko wed his bride - then Ekaterina Dmitriev - while flying 240 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station. His wife, of course, was on Earth with the rest of the wedding party next to a cardboard cutout of her groom.

Based in Oklahoma City, Okla., Rocketplane Global is developing the XP Spaceplane for private suborbital spaceflights. The four-seat spaceship is slated to be about the size of a fighter jet and designed to carry two jet engines and a rocket engine to reach space.

Initially, the spacecraft is expected to fly missions based out of the Oklahoma Spaceport and give passengers about four minutes of weightlessness during their short trip. Basic space tourism seats, not a full-up space wedding charter, carried ticket prices ranging from the base $200,000 to $250,000 for a premium view up front with the pilot, Rocketplane officials have said.

So that’s the lowdown on Rocketplane Global and Japan’s First Advantage space weddings of the future. If you’re counting down, another space tourism firm – Virgin Galactic – will roll out the WhiteKnightTwo mothership of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceliners on July 28.

The only problem I can think is: once you get married in space, where do you go for a honeymoon?

You know, Space Adventures in Virginia is offering $100 million trips around the moon aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft. So, there’s an idea.

• Video: Rocketplane’s XP Spaceplane
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More space wedding information: http://spacewedding.jp/ (in Japanese)

More Rocketplane Global, Japan info: http://rocketplane.jp/index.html (in Japanese)

It’s a banner day today for NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, which hit the 30-day mark of its initial three-month mission to study the bleak Martian arctic for buried water ice.

Not only is today Sol 30 (a sol is a Martian day) for Phoenix, but it’s also the summer solstice on Mars, where the sun hits the northernmost point of its path across the sky. Earth’s own summer solstice was last Saturday, June 21.

Phoenix is poised to “taste” Martian soil in this image taken on June 24, 2008. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A & M.

So what do we know about the Martian arctic at the one-third mark of Phoenix’s initial mission?

Well, there’s apparently ice in them thar trenches for sure. In a coup for Phoenix, images of the probe’s robotic arm-dug trenches caught ice evaporation in action over the course of a few days last week. Scientists hailed it as a major milestone showing that Phoenix’s can in fact reach local ice stores buried beneath the dirt covered surface.

It’s also cold, like super-frigid cold. Even in the eternally day arctic summer, where the sun strays close but never below the Martian horizon, the temperatures tend to range between minus 20 and minus 120 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 30 to minus 85 degrees Celsius).

Scientists now know that the Martian arctic soil tends to be a bit clumpy, with the first sample clogging one of Phoenix’s eight small ovens before the probe managed to shake some dirt inside.

The focus of today’s work on Mars for Phoenix was aimed at delivering a sample of Martian dirt into the probe’s wet chemistry laboratory, suite of teacup-sized beakers designed to serve as “electronic tongues” to taste the stuff and determine its composition, NASA officials.

Mission managers even hope to run Phoenix at least one extra month beyond its initial three-month mission, so long as the $420 million probe is still healthy and able to do science. Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25, 2008 and is designed to hunt for buried water ice to learn if the Martian arctic could have once been habitable for primitive life.

Editor’s note: If you want to be nitpicky, today is actually Phoenix’s 31st day on Mars. On landing day, mission scientists opted to start at Sol 0, not Sol 1.

Editor’s note 2: And if you REALLY want to get technical, you’d have to factor in the fact that days on Mars are longer than they are on Earth, with on Martian day running about 40 minutes or so longer that their Earthly counterparts. This space reporter is not getting that technical.

It’s Father’s Day on Earth, and just in time for the seven-astronaut crew of NASA’s shuttle Discovery, which landed yesterday in Florida after a two-week flight to the International Space Station.

Discovery’s commander Mark Kelly and his crew are returning home to Houston, Texas today to wrap up their successful flight and reunite with their families and children on a day normally reserved for dads.

Of Discovery’s returning six-man, one-woman crew, four are parents and today’s Father’s Day return is a timely bookend of sorts for Kelly, himself a father and the identical twin brother of fellow astronaut Scott Kelly. Discovery’s May 31 launch, it turns out, occurred on the 68th birthday of his father Richard.

Meanwhile, up in orbit aboard the International Space Station, three fathers are spending today’s Day of Dads resting up after a busy docked mission with Discovery’s crew.

New station crewmember Gregory Chamitoff of NASA, who arrived aboard Discovery, has three-year-old fraternal twins Natasha and Dmitri, and had to take some extra time explaining that his son couldn’t join him on his six-month mission.

The space station’s cosmonaut commander Sergei Volkov is a father too, with a seven-year-old son. But he is also the world’s first second-generation spaceflyer to reach orbit. His own father is Alexander Volkov, a veteran cosmonaut who logged up 391 days in space on three separate space missions in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The station’s third crewmember is Oleg Kononenko, a flight engineer with four-year-old fraternal twins Alisa and Andrey. (This is a good time to mention that Discovery astronaut Ron Garan has three sons, two of them twins too!)

“I think I’m going to call them,” Kononenko told me before flight about staying in touch with his kids, adding that he tried to prepare Alisa for his six-month flight before launching into space in April. “And I told her, your dad is going to go into space for quite awhile and so I will be gone and you will be okay. Her question was, ‘Are you going to bring us any presents?’ I told her that there are no stores in space and I’m probably not going to be able to bring her anything and she seemed pretty upset by that.”

Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide may flying in space, but his orbital menu can be found right here on Earth.

Hoshide took packages of curry noodles, veggie pancakes and skewered chicken as part of his daily menu aboard the shuttle Discovery and International Space Station. To give us an idea of his food, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency passed some out to the press pool here at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“Everybody likes the noodles,” JAXA spokesperson Kumiko Tanabe told me as we chowed down.

JAXA’s three dishes for Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide’s menu during the June 2008 flight of Discovery’s STS-124 mission. Credit: SPACE.com/T. Malik.

The food is provided by Nissin Food Products, Co., Ltd., in Japan under a collaboration with JAXA and its astronauts. Some of them also flew in March with Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, Tanabe said.

Each of the different meals come dehydrated, and need to be pumped up with hot water for about five minutes.

The Space Noodles come with a drippy curry sauce, while the Space Negima, the skewered chicken, comes complete with green onions and sauce. There’s also Space Okonomi, a sort of vegetable pancake soaked in a sweet fruit-based sauce.

Asking around, the Space Noodles were in fact a hit, especially among the Japanese reporters. Some of the space center folks, though, enjoyed the chicken most all. This space reporter, however, confesses that the Space Okonomi was the tastiest.

Versions of JAXA’s current food selection, plus others like green tea drinks and salmon rice balls, will accompany Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata when he launches to the station as Japan’s first long-duration astronaut next year during the Expedition 18 mission.

Click here for SPACE.com’s ongoing coverage of NASA’s STS-124 mission to deliver Japan’s $1 billion Kibo laboratory and NASA astroanut Greg Chamitoff to the International Space Station.

Click here for more images of JAXA’s Japanese space food.

And in case you want to see what eating space food on Earth looks like…

JAXA’s Space Negima in action. Credit: Robert Pearlman/collectSPACE.com.

He may be made of plastic and just 12 inches tall, but Disney’s Buzz Lightyear is really flying in space.

Buzz, a space ranger from the animated 1995 film “Toy Story,” launched to the International Space Station (ISS) last week aboard NASA’s shuttle Discovery as part of an educational campaign to encourage interest in science and math among schoolchildren. He’ll stay aboard the station for about six months alongside NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff.

Disney’s Buzz Lightyear takes a tour of the International Space Station in video beamed to Earth on June 5, 2008. Credit: NASA TV.

“Buzz! Welcome to dinner!” said astronaut Mike Fossum, a real flesh-and-blood spaceflyer, late Thursday as Buzz made an appearance in the space station’s Russian-built Zvezda service module where the 10-person crew of the shuttle Discovery and ISS gathered for a joint meal.

“Feed him some borscht,” joked shuttle commander Mark Kelly, who referred to Buzz earlier in the evening as the”green payload.”

Shuttle astronaut Mike Fossum (center) holds a 12-inch-tall Buzz Lightyear toy from Disney during a June 5, 2008 dinner aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV.

In video beamed down from Discovery, astronauts were shown playing with Buzz, popping out his extendable wings and giving him a weightless tour of the space station, where shuttle spaceflyers have delivered a new tour bus-sized Japanese laboratory called Kibo.

Buzz’s appearance in orbit is part of a joint project between Disney and NASA to develop the “Space Ranger Education Series” of educational games for students and materials for educators that can be downloaded and used in the classroom. It is also part of NASA’s ongoing Toys in Space program. You can see a video of Buzz on the station here.

Click here to see a video preview of the Space Ranger Education Series games.

The name of Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong is etched into U.S. history books as the first human to walk on the moon, and it may be set for an encore.

A new bill, the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 (H.R. 6063), that cleared the House Science and Technology space and aeronautics subcommittee on Monday carries an interesting caveat. If passed into law, NASA apparently MUST name its first lunar outpost after Armstrong – the first human to set foot on another world during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969.

An artist’s concept of an early Moon base under development. Credit: NASA/GRC.

So what do you call it? Well, there’s Moonbase Armstrong and Armstrong Base. Or NASA could take a page from the science fiction film “Star Trek: First Contact” and call it Lake Armstrong, though of course they’d have to build the lake indoors. Feel free to chime in with your suggestions with comments below.

NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 under the agency’s Vision for Space Exploration, which includes completing construction of the International Space Station by 2010, retiring the three remaining U.S. space shuttles and replacing them with new Orion capsules that will launch atop Ares I rockets.

If ultimately passed, the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 calls for a $19.2 billion budget for NASA for 2009 - $1.6 billion more than the White House has requested. It would also give NASA an extra $1 billion to speed up Orion and Ares I development since they aren’t set to begin operational crewed flights until March 2015, well after the shuttle fleet retires. The bill also requires NASA to design a lunar outpost capable of operating unmanned for periods of time.

NASA has been looking for attractive lunar locales for a future moonbase, with one front-running contender being Shackleton Crater near the moon’s south pole, where water ice may hide in the constant shadows.

I wonder if Armstrong himself might be on hand for the ground breaking (or landing, as it were), if only via Earth-to-moon video.

• Mooncrash! The Greatest Lunar Impacts Ever
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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.”

• Mooncrash! The Greatest Lunar Impacts Ever
• VIDEO: Moon 2.0: Join the Revolution
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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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