Mars

(CNN) -- NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin joined first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and other officials at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum on Thursday to challenge students across the United States to design a community on Mars.

The Mars Millennium Project is an interdisciplinary learning project designed to engage kindergarten-through-high school students in classrooms and youth groups throughout the United States, officials said.

The project is an official White House Millennium Council Youth Initiative.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Moscow could lose some $280 million this year if the United States does not allow its firms to expand the number of satellite launches from Russia because of a quarrel over missile technology to Iran, an official said Thursday.

Russia had hoped that Washington would allow it to launch four more satellites than originally agreed upon, with each launch costing between $65 million and $75 million, said Konstantin Lantratov, a spokesman for the Khrunichev Space Center.

The United States told Russia on Wednesday that it must stop cooperating with Iran's nuclear and missile programs or face curbs on its lucrative space launches of U.S. satellites.

"We had expected the quota would be changed this year," said Lantratov, whose enterprise builds the boosters that launch satellites into orbit.

U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin said Wednesday the United States might use the quota as a lever to force Russian cooperation on the Iran issue.

(CNN) -- Computer software developed for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will soon help operate a worldwide, satellite-based phone system called GlobalstarTM. This software is a key feature of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's "Vision 2000," a forward-looking effort to optimize the ground system operations and control of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The "Vision 2000" software allows scientists and engineers to access and display Hubble spacecraft- and ground-systems data through the Internet. Engineers can log on from home or other remote locations via their personal computers.

This Hubble spinoff will provide Globalstar LP of San Jose, California, with the technology to aid in delivering voice, data, fax and other telecommunications services to users worldwide, NASA said in a statement.