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A group of citizen scientists can take over a 36-year-old decommissioned robotic space probe that will fly by the Earth in August, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on Wednesday. Launched in 1978, the International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) spacecraft studied how the stream of charged particles flowing from the sun, the so-called solar wind, interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. After completing its primary mission, the probe was given a new name, the International Comet Explorer, and new targets to study, including the famed Comet Halley as it passed by Earth in March 1986. A third assignment to investigate powerful solar storms, known as coronal mass ejections, followed until 1997, when NASA deactivated the spacecraft. In August, the satellite’s graveyard orbit around the sun will bring it back by Earth, a feat of physics that caught the eye of an ad hoc group of citizen scientists. Last month, the team launched a successful crowd-funding project to r

U.S. Republicans claimed victory on Thursday after the Internal Revenue Service said it will delay and rewrite proposed rules for tax-exempt, social welfare groups that were at the heart of the agency's a political controversy last year. _0"> "This proposed rule was wrong from the start," said Republican Representative Dave Camp, chairman of the tax-writing committee in the House of Representatives. "Hopefully the IRS and the Obama Administration will think twice before ever trying to go down this path again," he said in a statement. Since the rules were introduced in November 2013, Republicans have tried to stop them from being finalized. The proposed rules would limit the political activities of social welfare groups that fall under Section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code. The IRS had not been expected to finalize the rules this year. The IRS has been inundated with a historic number of demands for changes to the rules, prompting the need to over

Lawmakers in Congress headed toward a showdown over Pentagon spending on Thursday after the House and Senate advanced competing versions of the annual defense policy bill that differ on everything from spending priorities to closing Guantanamo. The House of Representatives voted 325-98 to pass a 2015 National Defense Authorization Act that rejected the Pentagon's bid to cut long-term costs by reducing military pay raises and eliminating planes, ships and bases. Hours later the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled its version of the same legislation, approving a Pentagon proposal to offer smaller military pay hikes, lay up 11 Navy cruisers for long-term maintenance and reorganize the Army helicopter fleet. The Senate and House plans differed on how to pay for proposed changes to the Pentagon budget, with the House reducing funds for keeping the military combat-ready while the Senate panel sought to avoid that. "We didn't fund programs by cutting into readiness, as

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday approved a plan that would add $100 million to the U.S. military budget to start work on a new U.S. rocket engine and eliminate reliance on a Russian-made engine used to lift big government satellites into orbit. _0"> The House Armed Services Committee included a similar provision in its defense authorization bill earlier this month. Tensions with class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Russia have sparked growing concerns about the use of Russian-made RD-180 engines by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Boeing Co and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Lockheed Martin Corp that is responsible for launching U.S. military and spy satellites into space.   true       ULA uses the Russian-made engines in one type of rocket, the Atlas, but not in another, the Delta. A high-ranking Russian official recently threatened to end sales of the Russian rocket engines for

The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed the nomination of David Barron as a federal appeals court judge following controversy over a memorandum he wrote for the Obama administration authorizing drone strikes against U.S. citizens. _0"> Barron's nomination was approved by 53-45 the day after senators cleared an important procedural hurdle and voted to limit debate on his nomination for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reviews cases from lower federal courts in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico. Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky failed on Wednesday to get the chamber to delay votes until the Obama administration releases a memo Barron wrote in 2010 laying the groundwork for a 2011 drone attack in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was an al Qaeda leader. The Justice Department is expected to make the memo public after classified information is redacted. White Hou

President class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Barack Obama on Thursday urged Democrats to vote in November elections, saying the chance to pass immigration reform is at risk if Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress. _0"> "We have a congenital defect to not vote in midterm elections," he said at a fundraising reception for Democratic Senate candidates. "The midterm comes and we fall asleep." Democrats hold a 55-45 seat majority in the Senate, but many analysts give the Republicans an even chance of picking up the six seats they would need to seize control of the chamber. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is not considered to be in play. Obama was using an overnight stop in his adopted hometown to attend two fundraisers organized by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Tickets for the events, where he was joined by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, the DSCC chairman, cost b

President class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Barack Obama will shuffle his cabinet on Friday, nominating San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro as secretary of housing and urban development and naming outgoing HUD chief Shaun Donovan as his new budget director, a White House official said on Thursday night. The switch brings a high-profile Latino leader who is a rising star in Democratic politics into the Obama administration and moves a long-serving Cabinet member into the president's inner circle at the Office of Management and Budget. Obama was set to make the announcement at 3:35 p.m. ET at the White House, flanked by Castro and Donovan, the White House official said.   true       "The President is thrilled that Secretary Donovan will take on this next role and believes that Mayor Castro is the right person to build on his critical work at HUD based on his work in San Antonio," the White House official said in a statement. Donovan will take over from Sylvia Math