NASA Chief Administrator Sean O’Keefe, who has overseen the agency through the very difficult period following the Columbia disaster, announced his resignation on Monday to take a position as the chancellor of Louisiana State University (in O’Keefe’s home state). Prior to becoming a government employee, O’Keefe had already held a higher education position as a professor of business and public policy at Syracuse, later joining NASA in 2001 in a job that he was expected to fill only until NASA’s budget problems could be worked out. His successor has not been selected at this time, and whoever is nominated will have to undergo a Senate confirmation. O’Keefe is scheduled to leave NASA for his new job in February 2005.
Sources: NASA, Associated Press

With Stargate SG-1 preparing to go into production on its ninth season, it appears that big changes are happening among the cast. Farscape star Ben Browder is joining the show as a full-time regular, while it appears that Richard Dean Anderson, Stargate’s leading man since it became a series on Showtime in 1997, may be making O’Neill’s retirement permanent this time. The Sci-Fi Channel hasn’t spilled any beans about Browder’s character, only that he’ll be joining the show full-time. You may begin counting down to overwrought fans referring to this move as “Fargate”…now.
Source: Sci-Fi Channel

If you missed the miniseries kick-off of the new Battlestar Galactica, fear not – it’s going mainstream. Edited down to just three hours (there’s no word on which material will wind up on the cutting room floor), the new Galactica will be aired by NBC – Sci-Fi Channel’s sister network under the Universal Studios banner – on Saturday, January 8th at 7pm central. Coincidentally enough, the DVD of that miniseries will also be out at about the same time, with all of the original scenes intact, and the series itself – which has already aired in the U.K. to rave reviews – begins on January 14th. (If you’re looking for the DVD, you can always check out theLogBook.com’s Battlestar Galactica Store.)
Source: Sci-Fi Channel

Big Finish Productions’ hugely successful Doctor Who Unbound series continues with a one-off audio adventure starring one of the most popular Doctors from that 40th anniversary “alternate universe” series. Geoffrey Bayldon returns as an alternate version of the first (?) Doctor in A Storm Of Angels, co-starring Carole Ann Ford (who continues the role of Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter, that she originated on TV in 1963). Originally slated for a late November release, the story’s unique post-production requirements – said by Big Finish to be three times what’s normally needed for a regular double CD Doctor Who audio release – have delayed it until January. You can still preorder A Storm Of Angels now from theLogBook.com Store.

NASA has ordered the crew of the International Space Station to cut back on meals. Without the space shuttle delivering supplies to the station, resupply missions have been flown only by Russia’s much smaller unmanned Progress capsules, but the station was never designed to be restocked by Progress alone. Astronaut Leroy Chiao and cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov have been ordered to cut back on calories – with a reduction in workload to match – until more food arrives on a Progress capsule scheduled for liftoff on Christmas Eve. If that launch goes according to plan, new supplies will arrive on December 26th, but a failure of that flight would lead to an order to abandon the station.
Sources: NASA, Associated Press

The Hubble Space Telescope has peered across the universe and across billions of light-years into the distant past, but scientists are excited at something Hubble has photographed that’s far, far newer than that. The orbiting telescope seems to have captured the birth of a relatively new galaxy – new enough that there was already complex life on Earth when that galaxy’s light originated. At a relatively near 45,000,000 light years, galaxy I Zwicky 18 has only been in the business of forming stars for about 500,000,000 years. (Compare that to the estimated age of 12,000,000,000 years for the Milky Way galaxy of which Earth’s solar system is but a small part.) The new galaxy’s youngest stars may be as fresh as 4,000,000 years old. What’s puzzling astronomers is why this development took so long: the universe itself as we know it is estimated to be around 13,000,000,000 years old. Interaction with a nearby galaxy may be the most likely explanation, but study – and speculation – are ongoing. I Zwicky 18 was discovered in the 1930s by Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who catalogued around 30,000 galaxies visible in the skies of Earth’s northern hemisphere.
Source: BBC News

A veteran of the Gemini, Apollo and shuttle programs, astronaut John Young is retiring from NASA at the end of this year, capping off a 42-year career with the space agency. Young joined NASA in 1962 after hearing President Kennedy’s historic directive to launch a manned mission to the moon, and only three years later Young flew with Mercury veteran Gus Grissom on Gemini 3, the first manned two-person NASA mission. Young commanded Gemini 10 in 1966, and was the command module pilot for Apollo 10, a mission considered a “dress rehearsal” for the first moon landing, taking both the Apollo command/service module and the lunar lander into orbit of the moon without touching down on the surface. In 1972, Young commanded Apollo 16, landing in the moon’s mountainous Descartes region. Young commanded the first space shuttle mission, the maiden flight of Columbia in 1981, and commanded the ninth shuttle flight in 1983, returning Columbia to space with the SpaceLab experiment module on board. Young had also served as the Chief Astronaut, determining crew assignments and making personnel decisions, since Deke Slayton retired from that post in 1974. He was scheduled to captain the mission to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope in 1986, but that mission, and every other flight scheduled for that year, was scrubbed after the Challenger accident. Following that tragedy, Young became one of NASA’s most outspoken critics, and was reassigned to the position of special assistant for engineering, operations and safety – a move he regarded as a political one. Young is retiring at NASA at the age of 74, but still maintains a keen interest in space exploration.
Sources: NASA, Associated Press

Production Weekly has reported an April 2005 start date for filming of a Babylon 5 theatrical feature, Babylon 5: The Memory Of Shadows, in England. Though no casting is announced, the plot synopsis given seems to combine elements of both Babylon 5 and the short-lived spinoff/sequel Crusade, as the character of Galen is said to feature heavily. There’s no word yet on whether or not Peter Woodward will be reprising that role. Reportedly, the movie’s script was written by J. Michael Straczynski, and it will be directed by Steven Beck. No other behind-the-scenes personnel have been announced. It’s important to note that Straczynski has offered no confirmation, denial or comment of any kind on this supposed leak of information (despite having made very recent comments on such items as the Crusade DVD box set), other than to mention that a Babylon 5 production office has opened in England, so all of the above news should be regarded as rumor until confirmed by someone involved with the production.
Source: Production Weekly

In another indication of the budget cuts that the producers of Star Trek: Enterprise accepted to keep the series on the air for the fourth season, the series has begun making use of completely synthesized music for the first time since some of Ron Jones’ earliest scores for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Roughly half of this season’s music will be handled without any orchestral or acoustic elements whatsoever. There’s no word if any further soundtrack releases are forthcoming from Enterprise or another other “generation” of the Star Trek franchise, synthesized or otherwise.
Source: StarTrekSoundtracks.com

The music composer for all 13 episodes of the new series of Doctor Who has been announced, and his name probably won’t surprise many people who have watched producer Russell T. Davies gather a retinue of veterans from his previous productions for this project. Murray Gold worked with Davies on the original UK version of Queer As Folk, as well as his ITV miniseries The Second Coming (which starred future Who regulars Chris Eccleston and Mark Benton). (Ironically, Murray Gold also handled the musical duties for the BBC’s modern-day adaptation of The Canterbury Tales: The Miller’s Tale, which starred future Who companion Billie Piper.) There’s no word on whether or not a soundtrack CD from the new series is in the planning, but since the BBC is planning a merchandising blitz in other media, it seems like a fairly safe bet.
Source: Outpost Gallifrey

Paramount didn’t really plan on it being revealed this way, but the first glimpse of the Star Trek: Enterprise DVDs has been revealed. The sets will be packaged in plastic cases resembling a 22nd century version of the Original Series DVDs, with the inner cases appearing to strongly resemble – rather unfortunately – the flimsy trays of the Star Trek: Voyager DVDs. The first season will be released in May 2005, and releases will continue through the remainder of the year with the current season (which, by the way, has been startlingly good) tentatively scheduled for a November 2005 release.
Source: The Digital Bits

Big Finish Productions veterans Nicholas Briggs, John Ainsworth and Steve Foxon have started their own company devoted to producing and marketing audio dramas, while still performing their Big Finish duties (what do they do in their spare time?). Briggs, creator of the Dalek Empire audio series, and Ainsworth, who was the guiding force behind Doctor Who Unbound, have already announced their first product range and release: their new company, Noise Monster, has secured a license to produce audio dramas based on the cult hit role playing game Space: 1889, billed as a space-travel-in-Victorian-times “scientific romance.” The first single-CD “episode,” Red Devils, stars a voice familiar to millions in the form of Anthony Daniels, who portrayed C-3PO in all six of the Star Wars films as well as the radio dramas based upon them. Daniels is a special guest star in the first installment, while the series will be led by Ivor Danvers and Simon Williams. Red Devils arrives in January 2005, with another Space: 1889 adventure, The Steppes Of Thoth, scheduled for the following month.
Source: Noise Monster Productions