It seems like only yesterday that we were hearing about Paragon's designs for greenhouses on the lunar surface (but that's because it was yesterday). Now we've been hepped to the fact that the company is teaming up with Oceaneering International to overhaul NASA's space suit. The last that we heard, the project had been scuttled altogether, but you know how quickly things can be unscuttled when the White House changes hands. The Constellation Space Suit System (CSSS) will be designed in a modular fashion, so that the same suit can be used by the astronaut for all the different aspects of his / her mission. You can look forward to the stylish debut of these bad boys on the new Orion spaceship, currently planned to launch in 2015. According to Engineering TV, this will be the first major space suit redesign in over forty years. Can we make a suggestion? Please don't do anything to that iconic NASA logo -- some things never go out of style. Video after the break.

The Google Lunar X Prize obviously hasn't drawn quite the same number of competitors as some of the more Earthbound X Prizes, but it looks like things are starting to heat up a little bit, with Paragon Space Development recently teaming up with Odyssey Moon in an effort to deploy the first greenhouse on the surface of moon. Specifically, the team is hoping to grow a Brassica plant (a member of the mustard family) in a pressurized greenhouse like the one picture above, and possibly even see the plant re-seed itself within a single Lunar day (or 14 Earth days), which just so happens to coincide with the average growth period for the plant on Earth. Of course, that would only be one small part of the X Prize mission, which first and foremost requires teams to safely land a craft, send some live video back to Earth, travel at least 500 meters, send some more video, and carry a payload. So, still a little ways off, but don't let that stop you from checking out the (autoplaying) video after the break, in which Paragon's Taber MacCallum (a Biosphere veteran himself) explains the project to the folks at Engineering TV.

After JAXA's announcement of space-based solar power for Japan, we've been keeping our eyes peeled for some news of similar projects Stateside. Lo and behold, California's largest energy utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, has agreed to do just that, inking a deal with solar power startup Solaren Corp. The agreement calls for the utility to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity once the company starts beaming power down from Earth orbit beginning in 2016. A solar-power satellite would consist of mirror arrays -- perhaps measuring up to several miles wide -- which would focus sunlight onto photoelectric cells. From there, the electrical power is converted into a microwave beam that is directed downward toward Earth, where it's converted back into electricity and then fed into the grid. According to the company, the system could generate roughly 1.2 to 4.8 gigawatts of power, at a price comparable to that of other renewable energy sources. When asked for a comment, legendary sci-fi jazz composer Sun Ra was more than enthusiastic. "Space is the place," he said.

[Via Fresno Bee]

The closest most of us 'round here will ever get to outer space is blogging about the Lunar X Prize, so our inner astronauts get rather giddy any time an amateur makes it to the cusp of the gravity well. The above photos were taken by the Meteotek team, a teacher and his four students from the IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia, Spain. The group designed and launched a balloon kitted out with a Nikon Coolpix and custom built electronics, intending to get some shots at 30,000 feet. Well exceeding their expectations, the $80 digicam (held aloft by a $60 latex balloon) reached over 100,000 feet, at which point it lost inflation and fell to the earth. As the balloon rose, the team was able to map its progress using Google Earth via the craft's on-board radio receiver. After it fell back to earth, the group "travelled 10km to find the sensors and photographic card," said one of the students, "which was still emitting its signal, even though it had been exposed to the most extreme conditions."

[Via Switched]

NASA's just declared its Kepler spacecraft "ready to launch." In case you're not already in the know on this one, the Kepler's mission will be to jaunt out into space, then watch a massive patch of it for 3.5 years to see if there are any signs of habitable planets similar to Earth. The craft will be looking mostly for planets that revolve around stars similar to the Sun, and it will be able to watch about 100,000 of them continuously, unlike the beleaguered but awesome Hubble telescope. The Kepler has a 0.95-meter diameter telescope, and the project has been in the works for about 25 years. It will finally launch tonight, on a Delta 2 rocket. Check out a few images of the Kepler after the break, hit up NASA's Kepler site for the full details of the mission.

[Thanks, Matthew]

A US Iridium satellite has hit a defunct Russian satellite in an unprecedented space collision. The crash occurred some 790km (491 miles) over Siberia on Tuesday, according to NASA, and produced a "massive" cloud of debris. About 600 pieces are being tracked from the debris field in hopes of understanding the risk they present to other satellites and the international space station. The Russian craft was identified as the 950kg (2,094 pound) Cosmos 2251, a communications relay station launched in 1993 and believed to have been non-operational for the last 10 years or so. The Iridium telecommunications satellite was estimated to weigh about 560kg (1,234 pounds). Unsurprisingly, its loss is expected to have "minimal impact on Iridium's service," according to a statement made by the company. When asked who was at fault, NASA responded dryly: