Last updated on December 11, 2013 at 1:21 EST  Creating
Artificial Gravity on the Space Station  April 18, 2010
Although President Obama’s vision for NASA’s future calls for
canceling the Constellation program that was intended to send
humans to the moon by 2020, his proposed budget for the agency
still holds opportunities for future space research and urges
NASA to develop the technology to enable human spaceflight to
locations like Mars that are beyond low-Earth orbit.  Several
MIT researchers have been intrigued by one item in the proposal
that they hope Obama will elaborate on during today’s policy
speech at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida: extending
operations of the International Space Station (ISS) past its
planned retirement in 2016.  According to Obama’s proposal,
keeping the ISS operational would allow NASA and other nations’
space agencies to deploy new research facilities there, such as
a centrifuge, which simulates the effects of gravity by
spinning. Equipping the space station with a centri