A space elevator is a proposed type of space transportation system. 

Its main component is a ribbon-like cable (also called a tether) anchored to the surface and extending into space. It is designed to permit vehicle transport along the cable from a planetary surface, such as the Earth's, directly into space or orbit, without the use of large rockets. An Earth-based space elevator would consist of a cable with one end attached to the surface near the equator and the other end in space beyond geosynchronous orbit (35,800 km altitude). The competing forces of gravity, which is stronger at the lower end, and the outward/upward centrifugal force, which is stronger at the upper end, would result in the cable being held up, under tension, and stationary over a single position on Earth. Once deployed, the tether would be ascended repeatedly by mechanical means to orbit, and descended to return to the surface from orbit.

ref: The International Space Elevator Consortium

ref: other dedicated website: www.spaceelevator.com

ref: 2012 Annual Space Elevator Conference Set for August 25-27 

Obayashi Corporation is one of five major Japanese construction companies.

Established in 1892 in Osaka, Obayashi operates in Japan and other countries, especially Southeast Asia and Australia, as well as the United States and Europe.

In February 2012 it announced plans to build a space elevator by 2050.

Hayabusa (はやぶさ^?, literally "Peregrine Falcon") was an unmanned spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to return a sample of material from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa to Earth for further analysis.

Hayabusa, formerly known as MUSES-C for Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft C, was launched on 9 May 2003 and rendez-vous-ed with the asteroid Itokawa in mid-September 2005. After arriving at Itokawa, Hayabusa studied the asteroid's shape, spin, topography, colour, composition, density, and history. In November 2005, it landed on the asteroid and collected samples in the form of tiny grains of asteroidal material, which were returned to Earth aboard the spacecraft on 13 June 2010.

The John D. Odegard School Of Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota (UND) is a center for aerospace learning, with achievements in collegiate aviation education, atmospheric research, and space studies. It gathers over 500 faculty and staff members, over 1,500 students from around the world, and a myriad of programs and projects.

At UND Aerospace, Department of Space Studies, the space studies provides the student with the broader background necessary to understand the linkages between engineering, space science, and policy.

The Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is one of the largest and most diverse astrophysical institutions in the world, where scientists carry out a broad program of research in astronomy, astrophysics, earth and space sciences, and science education. The center's mission is to advance knowledge and understanding of the universe through research and education in astronomy and astrophysics.

The center was founded in 1973 as a joint venture between the Smithsonian Institution and Harvard University. It consists of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The center's main facility is located at Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Beyond this location there are also additional satellite facilities elsewhere around the globe. 

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS is a major multi-filter imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey using a dedicated 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, United States. The project was named after the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Data collection began in 2000, and the final imaging data release covers over 35% of the sky, with photometric observations of around 500 million objects and spectra for more than 1 million objects. The main galaxy sample has a median redshift of z = 0.1; there are redshifts for luminous red galaxies as far as z = 0.7, and for quasars as far as z = 5; and the imaging survey has been involved in the detection of quasars beyond a redshiftz = 6.

Data release 8 (DR8), released in January 2011, includes all photometric observations that will be taken with the SDSS imaging camera, covering 14,555 square degrees on the sky (just over 35% of the full sky). Data release 9 (DR9), released to the public on 31 July 2012, includes all data from previous releases, plus the first results from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) spectrograph, including over 800,000 new spectra. Over 500,000 of the new spectra are measurements of radiation produced 7 billion years ago (roughly half the age of the universe).

Funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS was managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions.

Ziyuan 3 or ZY-3 (Chinese: 资源三号 meaning Resources 3) is a Chinese Earth observation satellite launched in January 2012. It is a high-resolution imaging satellite operated by the Ministry of Land and Resources of the People's Republic of China.

The Ziyuan 3 satellite was constructed by the China's Academy of Space Technology, and carries three cameras produced by the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Machinery and Physics. A camera aligned normal to the Earth's surface will produce images with a spectral resolution of 2.5 metres (8 ft 2 in), whilst the other two, offset at 22 degrees forward and aft, have spectral resolutions of 4.0 metres (13.1 ft). In addition to the three cameras, Ziyuan-3 carries an infrared multispectral spectrometer, with a spectral resolution of 6.0 metres (19.7 ft). The satellite is used to provide imagery to monitor resources, land use and ecology, and for use in urban planning and disaster management. It had a mass at launch of 2,630 kilograms (5,800 lb).

Ziyuan 3 was launched by a Long March 4B carrier rocket, flying from Launch Complex 9 at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre. The launch occurred at 03:17 UTC on 9 January 2012, and was the first orbital launch of the year. VesselSat-2 was launched as a secondary payload on the same rocket.

ref: CASC website news

The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is a next-generation system of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT) for the investigation of cosmic gamma rays in the 100 GeV and TeV energy range. The acronym was chosen in honour of Victor Hess, who was the first to observe cosmic rays.

The name also emphasizes two main features of the currently-operating installation, namely the simultaneous observation of air showers with several telescopes, under different viewing angles, and the combination of telescopes to a large system to increase the effective detection area for gamma rays.

H.E.S.S. permits the exploration of gamma-ray sources with intensities at a level of a few thousandth parts of the flux of the Crab Nebula. H.E.S.S. has four telescopes, each with a mirror just under 12m in diameter, arranged 120m apart from each other in a square. A larger telescope with a 30m mirror called H.E.S.S. Phase 2, constructed in the centre of the array, saw its first light at 0:43 a.m. on 26 July 2012.
As with other gamma-ray telescopes, H.E.S.S. observes high energy processes in the universe. Gamma-ray producing sources include supernova remnants, active galactic nucleii and pulsar wind nebulae. It also actively tests unproven theories in physics such as looking for the predicted gamma-ray annihilation signal from WIMP dark matter particles and testing lorentz invariance predictions of loop quantum gravity.

The H.E.S.S. observatory is operated by the collaboration of more than 170 scientists, from 32 scientific institutions and 12 different countries: Namibia and South Africa, Germany, France, the UK, Ireland, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Armenia, and Australia. To date (Aug. 2012), the H.E.S.S. Collaboration has published over 100 articles in high-impact scientific journals, including the top-ranked ‘Nature’ and ‘Science’ journals.

Kounotori 3 (Japanese: こうのとり3号機; English: "white stork"), also known as HTV-3, is the third Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle. It was launched on 21 July 2012 to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the H-IIB Launch Vehicle No. 3 (H-IIB F3) manufactured by MHI and JAXA.

Kounotori 3 arrived at the ISS on 27 July 2012, and Expedition 32 Flight Engineer and JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide used the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm to install Kounotori 3, to its docking port on the Earth-facing side of the Harmony module at 14:34 GMT.