Obama announces 2 billion dollars in funding for solar power

WASHINGTON, July 3, 2010 (Xinhua) --

President Barack Obama announced Saturday the awarding of nearly 2 billion U.S. dollars to two solar energy companies as an effort to boost employment and solar power in the United States.

"We're going to keep competing aggressively to make sure the jobs and industries of the future are taking root right here in America," Obama said in his weekly radio and online address.

The energy companies, Abengoa Solar and Abound Solar Manufacturing, will receive the funds from 862 billion dollars in economic stimulus.

Abengoa will build the "world's largest solar plant" in Arizona, which will create about 1,600 construction jobs.

The 280-megawatt Solana generating station will supply electric power to approximately 70,000 homes while avoiding more than 475,000 tons of greenhouse gases, Abengoa said.

It estimated that the plant could sell 4 billion dollars worth of energy over 30 years. The power generated will be purchased by Arizona Public Service.

Abound Solar is to build two new plants in Colorado and Indiana that will create more than 2,000 construction jobs and over 1,500 permanent jobs.

"These are just two of the many clean energy investments in the Recovery Act. Already, I've seen the payoff from these investments. I've seen once-shuttered factories humming with new workers who are building solar panels and wind turbines; rolling up their sleeves to help America win the race for the clean energy economy," Obama said.

The president said that after years of watching companies build things and create jobs overseas, it's "good news" to have attracted a company to build a plant and create jobs in America.

"What's more, over 70 percent of the components and products used in construction will be manufactured in the U.S.A., boosting jobs and communities in states up and down the supply chain," Obama said. "Once completed, this plant will be the first large-scale solar plant in the U.S. to actually store the energy it generates for later use -- even at night."

Editor: Yang Lina

Obama unveils new U.S. space policy

WASHINGTON, June 28, 2010 (Xinhua) --

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday unveiled a new U.S. space policy, calling for more international and private sector cooperation on space exploration, and reiterating plans to send Americans to visit an asteroid by 2025.

International cooperation is key on all fronts included in the 14-page new space policy, which also touched on future needs for Earth observation, space debris and space security.

"No longer are we racing against an adversary -- in fact, one of our central goals is to promote peaceful cooperation and collaboration in space, which not only will ward off conflict, but will help to expand our capacity to operate in orbit and beyond," Obama said in a statement.

"We are releasing a new national space policy, designed to strengthen America's leadership in space while fostering untold rewards here on Earth," Obama said. "For even as we continue our relentless focus on the serious challenges we face at home and abroad, our long-term success and leadership as a nation demands that we do not lose sight of the promise of the future."

The new national space policy restated the administration's strategy of seeking partnerships with commercial spaceflight organizations to transport crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station, and to begin manned flights to "new destinations" by 2025. It also reiterates Obama's proposed new direction for NASA, which calls on the space agency to target missions beyond low-Earth orbit -- such as to an asteroid -- by 2025 with the goal of sending astronauts to Mars in the mid-2030s.

"We set ambitious goals for NASA: ramping up robotic and human space exploration, with our sights set on Mars and beyond, to improve the capacity of human beings to learn and work safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time," Obama said.

Most of the civilian side of the new policy was already announced by Obama in February and April. On April 15, Obama outlined his administration's new space exploration plan, vowing to increase NASA's budget by six billion dollars over the next five years.

Editor: yan

U.S. launches new solar observatory

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 11, 2010 (Xinhua) --

U.S. space agency NASA on Thursday launched a new observatory that is designed to evaluate the complex mechanisms of the sun.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Florida's Atlantic Coast at 10:23 a. m. EST (1523 GMT), NASA said in a statement.

The SOD is billed as the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun and its dynamic behavior.

It has a five-year science mission and carries enough fuel to operate for an additional five years. Total cost of the SDO project is reported to be at 856 million U.S. dollars.

NASA said the SDO will provide better quality, more comprehensive science data faster than any of the space agency's spacecraft currently studying the sun and its processes.

Research by the new observatory is expected to reveal the sun's inner workings by constantly taking high resolution images of the sun, collecting readings from inside the sun and measuring its magnetic field activity.

According to NASA, the SDO will take images of the sun every 0. 75 seconds and daily send back about 1.5 terabytes of data to Earth -- the equivalent of streaming 380 full-length movies.

"SDO is going to make a huge step forward in our understanding of the sun and its effects on life and society," Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement.

Data from the observatory will help researchers predict solar storms and other activity on the sun that can affect spacecraft in orbit, astronauts on the International Space Station and electronic and other systems on earth, NASA said.

Editor: yan

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