Actor Brock Peters, best known for his breakout role of a man wrongly accused of rape in the film To Be A Mockingbird, died from complications from pancreatic cancer on August 23rd. A veteran of stage, film, TV and voice work for animation, he may be best known to SF fans as Admiral Cartwright from Star Trek IV and Star Trek VI, or the voice of Darth Vader in NPR’s radio adaptation of the original Star Wars trilogy, or as Captain Sisko’s father Joseph in several episodes in the fifth, sixth and seventh seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He also appeared in Soylent Green and numerous other films, and lent his voice to such projects as the animated series Challenge Of The GoBots, The Pirates Of Darkwater, and the computer game Star Trek: Starfleet Command III. Mr. Peters was 78.
Sources: Associated Press, IMDb

After years of wrangling between the family of one of the original Mercury astronauts and NASA officials, a 15-year-old Connecticut high school student has proposed a solution to the dispute. The family of the late Gus Grissom, a veteran of the Mercury and Gemini programs who was one of three astronauts killed on the launch pad in the Apollo 1 capsule fire in 1967, loaned his Mercury space suit to the Astronaut Hall Of Fame in 1989. But between 1989 and the construction of the Grissom Memorial in his hometown of Mitchell, Indiana, the Hall Of Fame – originally privately operated – was taken over by NASA, and the space agency now says the suit is government property and must remain with the Hall Of Fame. Student Amanda Meyer is proposing an extended loan that would allow the Grissom Memorial to display the suit, though NASA officials say that the Grissom Memorial has yet to officially request the suit. If you want to see what the fuss is all about, you can visit Meyer’s “Save The Suit” petition site at the link below.

Save The Suit Campaign

If the new Doctor Who doesn’t feel like authentic Who to you yet, maybe the latest “casting” announcement from the BBC will tip the scales. In an upcoming second season episode, the robotic mutt K-9, voiced by John Leeson (who provided the dog’s voice during the Tom Baker years and in the one-off 1981 spinoff pilot K-9 & Company), will be making a return appearance. Appropriately enough, it’ll be in the same episode that features former Who regular Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith; in the aforementioned K-9 & Company, the Doctor gave a K-9 to Sarah as a gift, and both dog and owner were next (and last) seen together in 1983′s The Five Doctors. The episode also guest stars Buffy alumnus Anthony Stewart Head, and will air in spring 2006.
Source and photo courtesy: BBC

Right Stuf International announced plans at this year’s Otakon convention to release the classic Osamu Tezuka animè series Astro Boy and Kimba The White Lion on DVD. Kimba is due in November of this year, and Astro Boy has been slated for a 2006 release, but there’s one catch: while Right Stuf is already working remastering the material available to them, they’re looking for anyone who has better copies of both of these series. Current plans are to release both shows in uncut form with the ability to hear the original Japanese dialogue.
Source: Anime News Network

But who’s turning faster here? According to a study published in the journal Science, Earth may need a little bit of spin control. The scientists behind this new study believe that Earth’s core is spinning up to half a degree faster than the planet’s surface. This doesn’t appear to be cause for any major concern, though the core is vital to the generation of Earth’s magnetic field; the study states that “magnetic interaction” could be why there’s a difference in speed. There’s no word on whether subsequent studies will focus on how many licks it takes to reach the center of the Earth.
Source: Associated Press

If you’re sitting here thinking “Hey, that’s great that K-9 will be back on Doctor Who – now how do I see this without emigrating to Canada?”, the BBC may, for once, be a few steps ahead of you. Despite the fact that Doctor Who still has yet to secure a U.S. broadcast outlet, the BBC is looking into a system that would allow for online delivery of their programming up to a week after the original broadcast. Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, says that the system, currently dubbed MyBBCplayer, could be up and running by 2006 (or, in other words, in time for the second season of Doctor Who). What hasn’t been revealed is whether or not viewers, either inside or outside the U.K., will have to pay for the service. The BBC has also struck a deal with U.K. mobile phone provider ROK Entertainment that will allow the company to offer existing episodes of Doctor Who and Red Dwarf on tiny multimedia cards that will play the full episodes on select models of cell phones; there’s no word yet on if this service will extend beyond British borders.
Source: BBC

NASA has announced that safety concerns about the troublesome external tank and its insulating foam will keep space shuttle Atlantis grounded for the rest of this year – and beyond. Despite efforts to correct the problem following the final mission of Columbia, the problem of foam detaching itself from the external tank still posed a hazard on Discovery’s recent mission, forcing engineers to go back to square one. Also, new flight rules requiring video and photography of the tank during launch ruled out a launch between November and February due to the angle of sunlight at that time of year. Additionally, since there’ll be more prep time between missions, Discovery has replaced Atlantis in the rotation, though Atlantis is slated for the next mission after that. Discovery’s mission, which will take it back to the International Space Station, won’t launch until March 2006 at the earliest.
Source: NASA

Genre shows are looking for a bit of star power this fall, if recent casting announcements are anything to go by. According to Stargate uber-fansite Gateworld.net, Star Trek: Enterprise‘s Connor Trinneer will play an important guest role in an upcoming installment of Stargate Atlantis, while over at Smallville, the Daily Planet’s new Editor-in-Chief isn’t likely to talk about news decisions in committee, as the role is being played by Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame. And as has already been reported by many sites, Battlestar Galactica will be meeting up with a second surviving Battlestar, commanded by Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Michelle Forbes (a.k.a. Ensign Ro) in an upcoming two-parter based, at least partially, on the original series two-parter The Living Legend.

The organizers of the annual Classic Gaming Expo have announced that the retrogaming community’s premiere event will be put on pause for 2006. Real life has caught up with the show’s organizers, but they reassure gamers that CGE will return for a tenth-anniversary spectacular in 2007. (Contrary to some sites’ reports, the annual general admission show has not been permanently mothballed in favor of the History Of Video Games exhibit that the CGE organizers hold at the annual industry-only E3 convention.) CGE 2005 was held this past weekend, and you can expect a report from the show soon on theLogBook.com.
Source: Classic Gaming Expo

New Zealand musicians Tim and Neil Finn, ex-Split Enz and Crowded House, do, in fact have sisters, and those sisters have, in fact, sung backup from time to time. But that’s not what this is about. September will see the release of the aptly titled She Will Have Her Way, an all-female tribute to the music of the Finn Brothers, featuring such NZ and Australian artists as Boh Runga, Missy Higgins and Sarah Blasko, among others. There’s no word yet on which Finn songs will be covered, or if they stretch back to include music from the Enz and Crowded House years.
Source: New Zealand Herald

In the latest Doctor Who audio adventure, the fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem find themselves in Earth’s past once more, witnessing the first great church council of the Roman Empire, records of which remain vague enough that the Doctor wants to see for himself. But events naturally conspire to make it impossible for the Doctor to merely observe. Starring Peter Davison, Nicola Bryant and Caroline Morris, The Council Of Nicaea is now available in theLogBook.com’s Doctor Who Store.

In the final story of the current “season” of the Doctor Who audio spinoff series Gallifrey, the strings of time and destiny are drawing tighter, and this time, there’s nothing Romana can do. And when she reluctantly heads down the path that will lead her to the warlike, totalitarian future of Gallifrey that she has forseen and tried to avoid, there’s nothing Leela or K-9 can do to stop her. Imperiatrix, starring Lalla Ward, Louise Jameson and John Leeson, is now available in theLogBook.com’s Doctor Who Store.

Prolific film and TV composer Joe Harnell, whose memorable themes introduced audiences to such shows as The Incredible Hulk, the original V miniseries and The Bionic Woman, died July 14th of heart failure. Before breaking into film music, he toured America and Europe with the Glenn Miller Air Force Band, and then landed numerous gigs as a musical director for such legendary talents as Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Beverly Sills, Judy Garland and Lena Horne. He also released over a dozen albums of his own piano compositions. A three-time Emmy nominee for Best Dramatic Score, his atypical choice of a somber solo piano for the main titles of The Incredible Hulk was the beginning of a long partnership with writer/producer Kenneth Johnson, who also utilized his talents in V and Alien Nation, among other shows. He was also a film scoring lecturer and teacher in residence at the University of Southern California. Mr. Harnell was 80.
Source: Film Music Magazine

After a Florida landing was scrubbed on Monday morning last week and then again on Tuesday due to weather conditions, space shuttle Discovery was given the go-ahead for a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. After inspecting the vehicle on the ground, NASA engineers found no significant damage from re-entry. In the meantime, engineering task groups have been formed to find the cause of the persistent falling foam that is believed to have led to the destruction of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, and occurred again during Discovery’s launch without harming the shuttle. Atlantis, originally slated for a September launch, will have to wait until engineers are satisfied that they’ve found and eliminated the problem; mission managers say that the Atlantis flight could still happen late this year if the problems are solved by late November.
Source: NASA

Remember the good old 1960s, when things were so uncomplicated? Do you wish you could go back there again* – and by “there,” you mean “the moon”? Space Adventures, a company that has already sent two “private space explorers” (i.e. paying customers with deep pockets) to the International Space Station, is now advertising seats on a proposed lunar flight aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft as early as 2008. The price? A mere drop in the bucket at $100 million per seat. Rather than landing, the Soyuz vehicle would ride what the company says is a “flight-proven” booster rocket called Block DM out of Earth’s orbit for a single swing around the moon and then back to Earth; the company’s web site says that this is essentially an uprated version of the same technology that launched the unmanned “Zond” missions – unmanned, remote-controlled Soyuz capsules – to lunar orbit in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A “direct staging” package is offered, with a nine-day voyage to and back from the moon, with a deluxe “ISS staged” flight that adds a two week stay at the luxurious International Space Station. The Soyuz capsule would zip around the moon at an altitude of only 62 miles from the surface. The benefits? According to Space Adventures, the first paying customer would “become only the 28th person in human history to orbit the moon,” and “one of the first people to orbit the moon in more than 33 years.” There seems to be no official word of the Russian space program attempting to develop this technology for anything other than Space Adventures’ private flights. For more information, take a deep breath, check your bank balance, and click the link below.

Deep Space Expeditions

NASA’s Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, the latest mission to the red planet, got off to a picture-perfect start on Friday, launching aboard an Atlas V booster and unfolding its solar panels and high-gain antenna without incident. After a seven month journey, MRO is scheduled to begin an orbital survey of the surface of Mars with high-resolution cameras that can spot an object as small as a dishwasher from orbit. But MRO isn’t looking for kitchen appliances; it’s looking for mineral deposits and erosion features that may point to the past – or present – existence of water, above or below the surface. MRO will also be the first application of Ka-band radio aboard a spacecraft, allowing greater information bandwidth with less power usage.
Source: NASA / JPL