 The sheer scale of the new space race is beginning to look like a space revolution, much like the process of industrial revolution. There is an overwhelming interest in everything, asteroids, comets, planets, the moon, the sun, space dust, and even old debris. It is as if they are searching for something, but what is it they seek? Mike Pence has just announced that the Space Force will be mobilized by 2020 with world governments supporting this move and even being involved in collaborations and missions planned. It just sets off the sense that there is something more going on with all this activity. The Pentagon is now backing President Trump's plan to create a new military branch dedicated to fighting in space. Vice President Mike Pence and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis laid out a blueprint yesterday for the United States Space Force. David Martin is at the Pentagon with the latest. David, good morning. Good morning. Only Congress can create a new military service, and as yet there is no estimate for how much the Space Force would cost. But according to Vice President Pence, it could happen by 2020. Today, other nations are seeking to disrupt our space-based systems and challenge American supremacy in space as never before. Like the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, the new Space Force would prepare for war. A war in space against countries like Russia and China. The U.S. military depends on some 140 satellites, including this quarter-billion-dollar GPS satellite, for everything from communications to targeting the enemy. But Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson says many of those satellites were built at a time when there was no threat of attack. We built the glass houses before the invention of stones. The threat to U.S. satellites has been increasing since 2007 when China used a ground-based anti-satellite weapon to shoot down one of its old weather satellites 530 miles above the Earth. General Jay Raymond showed 60 minutes the results. This is about 3,000 pieces of debris just from that one event. That came just from that one collision? Just from that one collision. Defense Secretary James Mattis was originally opposed to the Space Force idea. Writing in a 2017 letter, it would add layers of bureaucracy. But his position seems to be changing. We are in complete alignment with the president's concern about protecting our assets in space. As the commander-in-chief continues to push the idea. Space Force! People love it! Currently about 18,000 men and women in uniform involved in space operations. Although President Trump says the Space Force would be separate and equal to the other branches, it would be by far the smallest of the military services. Glad? Alright David Martin, thank you very much. Anyway, welcome to Space News. This week, among other things, we are going to tell you about the stunning revelations that have been made in regards to an unknown intelligence onboard the Space Shuttle. Wait, can you hear this? It might sound like a plot to a Hollywood science fiction blockbuster, but an astronaut claims to have seen an organic alien-like creature on the Space Shuttle. NASA engineer Leland Melvin made the astonishing claims during a discussion on social media. The former NFL football player says he spotted the creature in the payload bay of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which was an orbit above the Earth at the time. When he told NASA about the sighting, space agency experts told Melvin the most likely explanation was ice had broken off away from the shuttle and it was the movement of these floating shards that caught his eye. You would think, however, that a trained astronaut in space would be able to tell the difference between ice and organic life. Would you not? The revelation was made during an exchange on social network Twitter held between Mr. Melvin54, who worked as an engineer aboard the Shuttle, and Scott C. Warring, who runs the site UFO Sightings Daily. Mr. Warring asks, what's your outlook about the existence of intelligent alien life living in our solar system? Have you ever witnessed a UFO? Mr. Melvin responded he had seen something translucent, curved, organic looking. When he was working with colleague Randy Bresnik, he joked, I was about to say Houston, we have a problem, but now everyone spins up when those words are uttered from a space vehicle. Now isn't it stunning that he was aware that radio operations on Earth could have intercepted such a transmission, and therefore he refrained from doing so at the time, but years later he is openly telling people that he saw something on board that should not have been there. Are former astronauts playing their part in alien disclosure? Are they being collectively told that now they can speak of their experiences in an effort to prepare us for an announcement that almost seems like it has happened already? Anyway, with all these incidents being reported by astronauts and government workers. According to Sky News, NASA are reportedly funding private space agencies in an apparent attempt to develop 10 high technologies to further space exploration. The investments come as the space agency partner with six U.S. companies on projects including deep space rockets, cryogenics and a lunar lander. NASA considers a technology at the tipping point if an investment in a ground or flight demonstration would result in significantly improving its design and helping the company bring the product to market. While these key technologies will support NASA's science and human exploration missions in the future, these awards are yet another example of NASA's commitment to our nation's growing commercial space industry today. Also leading to speculation suggesting this is an effort to develop technology for a much bigger overall venture into space. One which although we do not know what is going on, there is no doubt that there is something major unfolding before our very eyes on this planet. Also, if you guys are interested, the per se meteors are this weekend between the 11th and 13th. Around 60 fireballs should be visible per hour at the peak, so get out and have a look if you have clear skies. And while most of us were sleeping last night, NASA launched for the sun, literally. But how the hell is this mission going to work? Launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Parker Solar Probe will make his journey all the way to the sun's atmosphere, or corona, closer to the sun than any spacecraft in history. Nestle, atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy, one of the world's most powerful rockets, with a third stage added, Parker Solar Probe will blast off towards the sun with a whopping 55 times more energy than is required to reach Mars. About the size of a small car, it weighs a mere 1,400 pounds. That's a relatively light spacecraft, and it needs to be because it takes an immense amount of energy to get to its final orbit around the sun. Zooming through space in a highly elliptical orbit, Parker Solar Probe will reach speeds of up to 430,000 miles per hour. Fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington DC in one second, setting the record for the fastest spacecraft in history. During its normal mission lifetime of just under 7 years, Parker Solar Probe will complete 24 orbits of the sun reaching within 3.8 million miles of the sun's surface at closest approach. Earth being 93 million miles away, so pretty significant. It will be going where no spacecraft has dared go before within the corona of a star. With each orbit, we'll be seeing new regions of the sun's atmosphere and learning things about stellar mechanics that have never been explored before. But getting so close to the sun requires slowing down, for which Parker will use the gravity of our neighbor planet Venus. Parker Solar Probe uses Venus to adjust its course and slow down in orbit to put the spacecraft on the best trajectory. It will fly by Venus 7 times throughout the mission, each time it flies by it will get closer and closer to the sun. In an orbit this close to the sun, the real challenge is to keep the spacecraft from burning up. NASA was planning to send a mission to the solar corona for decades, however they did not have the technology that could protect a spacecraft and its instruments from the heat. Recent advances in materials science gave us the material to fashion a heat shield in front of the spacecraft, not only to withstand the extreme heat of the sun, but to remain cool on the backside. Parker Solar Probe is also the first NASA mission to be named after a living individual, Dr. Eugene Parker. Famed solar physicist who in 1958 first predicted the existence of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles and magnetic fields that flow continuously from the sun, bathing Earth. The spacecraft's path through the corona allows it to observe the acceleration of the very solar wind that Parker predicted, right as it makes a critical transition from slower than the speed of sound to faster than it. The corona is also where the solar material is heated to millions of degrees and where the most extreme events of the sun occur, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections accelerating particles to a fraction of the speed of light. These explosions create space weather events that can pummel Earth with high energy particles, endangering astronauts interfering with GPS and communication satellites and, at their worst, disrupting our power grid. This will be the first time that solar scientists can see the objects of their study up close and personal. We can expect data in December this year as the first close approach is sure to cause a buzz back here on Earth. That's it for this week guys, just a bit of space news as requested. We will of course keep you up to date with strange and interesting events that are sure to take place in the coming weeks and months. Comments below guys and as always thank you for watching.