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.

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
• Future of Flight: Space Tourism, Investment and Technology
• Video: SpaceShipTwo Revealed

More space wedding information: http://spacewedding.jp/ (in Japanese)

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

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?

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.

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.

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.”

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.

One of the people on my list to call for today’s rendition of the ongoing Pluto fiasco was Alan Stern, recently departed NASA space sciences chief, principal investigator the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and an outspoken “Pluto is a planet” proponent.

I knew he’d have an opinion about the IAU reclassification of Pluto.

Well, I never got around to calling him (he was busy, I knew, in the same big Pluto mission meeting today as Hal Weaver…), but here’s what Stern told AP: “It’s just some people in a smoke-filled room who dreamed it up,” Stern said. “Plutoids or hemorrhoids, whatever they call it. This is irrelevant.” Stern, now in the running for my first annual Cosmic Quote of the Year award, suggested a rival group to the IAU might get formed. Stay tuned…