S.H.O.D.A.N. (Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network), later referred to as SHODAN is an Artificial Intelligence and the main antagonist of the System Shock series. She is voiced by game writer and designer Terri Brosius. SHODAN was created on Earth to serve as the Artificial Intelligence of the TriOptimum Corporation's research and mining Citadel Station. The head of her programmers was Morris Brocail, who designed SHODAN as a semi-intelligent self-sufficient data network, which could carry out routine duties aboard space stations, guided by an intricate series of logic and moral programs, and a personality that would allow her to challenge station decisions that affected her functions. The guidance software had security platforms so that SHODAN's own programming protected her self-governing capabilities.

This week, Americans celebrated the successful delivery of NASA's Perseverance rover to its destination on the Martian surface, marking the dawn of a new era of interplanetary exploration. However, when it comes to searching the solar system around us, the US has not always led from the front. During the Reagan administration, for example, the agency saw its budget pared down in favor of building up arms ahead of an anticipated Cold War faceoff with the Soviet Union, as we see in this excerpt from David W Brown's latest work, The Mission. Excerpted from the book THE MISSION: or: How a Disciple of Carl Sagan, an Ex-Motocross Racer, a Texas Tea Party Congressman, the World's Worst Typewriter Saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an Anonymous NASA Functionary Went to War with Mars, Survived an Insurgency at Saturn, Traded Blows with Washington, and Stole a Ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to Send a Space Robot to Jupiter in Search of the Second Garden of Eden at the Bottom of an Alien Ocean Inside of an Ice World Called Europa (A True Story) 2021 by David W. Brown. For planetary scientists, the Jimmy Carter–Ronald Reagan years were in retrospect like the Dark Ages, and they, the monks tending in enclaves to the embers of civilization.

It is an idea first conceived 50 years ago by the ex-Nazi ballistic missile engineer credited with inventing the V-2 rocket and revolutionising the American space programme. Now, Lockheed Martin has revealed its version of the system that could one day take man to Mars. The team will build a full-scale habitat prototype in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and a next-generation deep space avionics integration lab near Johnson Space Center. A full-scale prototype of the deep space habitat will be built by refurbishing the Donatello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) flown in the space shuttle payload bay and used to transfer cargo to the International Space Station. The recycled rocket programme was originally put forward by German aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun.