astronomy & space stuff

[Lost Cause]

Magnetic personality..

Powerful magnetic waves have been confirmed for the first time as major players in the process that makes the sun's atmosphere strangely hundreds of times hotter than its already superhot surface.

The magnetic waves — called Alfven waves — can carry enough energy from the sun's active surface to heat its atmosphere, or corona.

"The surface and corona are chock full of these things, and they're very energetic," said Bart de Pontieu, a physicist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in California.

The sun contains powerful heating and magnetic forces which drive the temperature to tens of thousands of degrees at the surface — yet the quieter corona wreathing the sun reaches temperatures of millions of degrees. Scientists have speculated that Alfven waves act as energy conveyor belts to heat the sun's atmosphere, but lacked the observational evidence to prove their theories.

http://www******.com/scienceastronomy/080122-st-sunshine-hinode.html

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/080122-hinodesun-02.jpg

 

[Lost Cause]

1-2 Punch someday?

A good-sized asteroid sailing past our planet right now turns out to be two giant rocks doing a celestial jig.

The setup, catalogued as 2008 BT18, was thought to be nearly a half-mile wide after its discovery by MIT's LINEAR search program in January. Nothing else was known about it.

Now seen as two objects orbiting each other, the pair will be closest to Earth on July 14, at about 1.4 million miles (2 million kilometers) away. That's nearly six times as far from us as the moon.

It will not strike the planet. But scientists want to learn more about binary asteroids because one day they might find one headed our way. Deflecting a binary off course could be considerably more challenging that altering the path of a single rock.

Radar observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on July 6 and 7 "clearly show two objects," said Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The objects are estimated to be 1,970 feet (600 meters) and 650 feet (200 meters) in diameter. The larger one rotates upon its axis in 3 hours or less.

http://www******.com/scienceastronomy/080713-binary-asteroid-2008-BT18.html

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/080713-arecibo-asteroid-02.jpg

 

[Fagin]

Unfortunately true

U.S. Won Space Race, May Be Losing Marathon


The Washington Post

Published: July 13, 2008

China plans to conduct its first spacewalk in October. The European Space Agency is building a roving robot to land on Mars. India recently launched a record 10 satellites into space on a single rocket.

Space, like the Earth it surrounds, is globalizing. And as it does, America's long-held superiority in exploring, exploiting and commercializing "the final frontier" is slipping away, many experts think.

Although the United States remains dominant in most space-related fields - and owns half the military satellites currently orbiting Earth - experts say the nation's superiority is diminishing, and many other nations are expanding their civilian and commercial space capabilities at a far faster pace.

"We spent many tens of billions of dollars during the Apollo era to purchase a commanding lead in space over all nations on Earth," said NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin, who said his agency's budget is down by 20 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since 1992.

"We've been living off the fruit of that purchase for 40 years and have not ... chosen to invest at a level that would preserve that commanding lead."

Clamor Of Competition

In a recent in-depth study of international space competitiveness, the technology consulting firm Futron of Bethesda, Md., found that the globalizing of space is unfolding more broadly and quickly than most Americans realize. "Systemic and competitive forces threaten U.S. space leadership," company president Joseph Fuller Jr. concluded.

Six separate nations and the European Space Agency are capable of sending sophisticated satellites and spacecraft into orbit - and are setting up launches. New rockets, satellites and spacecraft are being planned to carry Chinese, Russian, European and Indian astronauts to the moon, to turn Israel into a center for launching minuscule "nanosatellites," and to allow Japan and the Europeans to explore the solar system and beyond with unmanned probes as sophisticated as NASA's.

While the United States has been making small steps of progress in space, its global rivals have been taking the giant leaps that once defined NASA:

• India has announced ambitious plans for a manned space program. In November, the European Union will probably approve a proposal to collaborate on a manned space effort with Russia, which will soon launch rockets from a base in South America under an agreement with the European company Arianespace, whose main launch facility is in Kourou, French Guiana.

• Japan and China both have satellites circling the moon, and India and Russia are working on lunar orbiters. NASA will launch a lunar reconnaissance mission this year, but many analysts think the Chinese will be the first to return astronauts to the moon.

• The United States is largely out of the business of launching satellites for other nations, something the Russians, Indians, Chinese and Arianespace do regularly. Their clients include Nigeria, Singapore, Brazil, Israel and others. The 17-nation European Space Agency and China are also cooperating on commercial ventures, including a rival to the U.S. space-based Global Positioning System.

• South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil have plans to quickly develop their space programs and possibly become low-cost satellite launchers. South Korea and Brazil both are developing homegrown rocket and satellite-making capacities.

This explosion in international space capabilities is recent, largely taking place since the turn of the century. While the origins of Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Israeli and European space efforts go back several decades, their capability to pull off highly technical feats - sending humans into orbit, circling Mars and the moon with unmanned spacecraft, landing on an asteroid and visiting a comet - are all new developments.

Financial, Military Appeal

In contrast to the Cold War space race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the global competition today is being driven by national pride, newly earned wealth, a growing cadre of highly educated men and women, and the confidence that achievements in space will bring substantial soft power as well as military benefits. The planet-wide eagerness to join the space-faring club is palpable.

China has sent men into space twice in the past five years and plans another manned mission in October. More than any other country besides the United States, experts say, China has decided that space exploration, and its commercial and military purposes, are as important as the seas once were to the British empire and air power was to the United States.

The Chinese space program began in the 1970s, but it was not until 2003 that astronaut Yang Liwei was blasted into space in a Shenzhou 5 spacecraft, making China one of only three nations to send humans into space.

"The Chinese have a carefully thought-out human spaceflight program that will take them up to parity with the United States and Russia," Griffin said. "They're investing to make China a strategic world power second to none ... because deals and advantage flow to world leaders."

Meanwhile, other nations are pushing to increase their space budgets. Ministers from the European Space Agency nations will vote in November on a costly plan to begin a human space program.

David Southwood, the agency's director for science, said human space travel has broad support across the continent, and European astronauts who have flown to the space station on U.S. and Russian spacecraft are "extremely popular people" in their home nations. "It seems highly unlikely that Europe as a whole will opt out of putting humans into space," he said.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/ju...race-may-be-losing-marathon/?news-nationworld

 

[Lost Cause]

7-31-2008:

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has confirmed the existence of water ice on Mars.

"We have water," Boynton added. "We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted."

The news that ice had fallen into TEGA came on Thursday morning, surprising scientists who had run into problems delivering a sample of the icy dirt because of its unexpected stickiness.

"There were champagne corks popping in the downlink room," Boynton said. "It's something we've been waiting a long time for."

http://www******.com/missionlaunches/080731-phoenix-update.html

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/astronomy/mars/mars-comparison.jpg

 

[raindancer]

Linux! I was watching the sky for the space station last night and I saw a huge green fireball unlike any meteor I've ever seen. I've searched for reports online. Have you heard anything about it?

 

[Lost Cause]

Linux! I was watching the sky for the space station last night and I saw a huge green fireball unlike any meteor I've ever seen. I've searched for reports online. Have you heard anything about it?

Green meteors are extremely rare... 1 in 1000-

The green color is produced by the doubly ionized oxygen produced when
larger particles encounter the atmosphere.


Probably a Perseid early arrival...

The Perseid meteor shower is one of the brightest and reliable meteor showers of the year. The debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle will collide with the Earth's upper atmosphere at a relative velocity of 132,000 mph, producing an average of 110 bright meteor streaks per hour all over the dark sky.

The Perseids are active from July 17 to Aug. 24, peaking on Aug. 12 and 13. This year, moonlight will obscure the dimmer meteors, but the brightest ones should still provide thrilling sights. Perseid meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus and are brighter after midnight. Other meteor showers include the Capricornids, which peaked Friday, first with 10 meteors per hour and the Southern Aquarids peaking Wednesday with eight meteors per hour.

 

[Fagin]

Tomorrow's MythBusters is on the Moon Landing Hoax.




http://www******.com/entertainment/cs-080827-mythbusters-apollo-moon-hoax.html

 

[Fagin]

Another setback for Ares/Orion.

Parachute Test Fails for NASA's New Spaceship
By SPACE.com Staff

posted: 21 August 2008
05:32 pm ET

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/080821-nasa-parachutefail-01.jpg

A mock-up of NASA's Orion space shuttle successor twisted, tumbled and fell from thousands of feet up after a parachute failed to inflate properly during a July 31 test.

The programmer chute was designed to stabilize the mock-up before beginning a test of its parachute recovery system, but instead sent the capsule careening toward the desert floor at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona.

"This is the most complicated parachute test NASA has run since the '60's," said Carol Evans, test manager for the parachute system at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "We are taking a close look at what caused the set-up chutes to malfunction. A failure of set-up parachutes is actually one of the most common occurrences in this sort of test."

The Orion crew module is part of NASA's Constellation program slated to return astronauts to the moon by 2020. Orion will carry astronauts into orbit atop the Ares I rocket to dock with an orbiting Earth departure stage previously launched by an Ares V rocket, and from there proceed to the moon.

The space shuttles are scheduled to retire from service as NASA's workhorses in 2010.

The failure occurred in one of 10 parachutes that make up the testing equipment, and not in the parachute recovery system itself.

Some of the parachutes helped the mock-up get clear of the C-17 airplane which carried the test capsule up to a drop height of 25,000 feet (7,620 meters). The programmer chute that failed to inflate was designed to help two other stabilization chutes get the capsule into the right orientation, before releasing at a predetermined time to allow the parachute recovery system to take over.

The Orion recovery parachute system is based on the same eight-chute system used for the Apollo missions, for use in case of a launch abort.

Two drogue parachutes first deploy to slow and stabilize the capsule so that it points in the right direction. Once the drogue chutes get cut away, three pilot chutes deploy to each pull out one of the three main 116-feet (35-meter) diameter parachutes that are meant to ensure a safe landing speed.

The mock-up was already dropping faster than intended by the time the drogue parachutes deployed during the test. The drogue parachutes cut away immediately and sent the test capsule into freefall.

The falling mock-up began to tumble out of control, and the resulting forces pulled the main parachutes out and tore away two of them. The third battered parachute held, but could not slow the falling mock-up on its own.

A final impact on the ground left the mock-up severely damaged. NASA engineers and managers are looking to test procedures and test hardware and set-up, as well as video and photograph evidence, to figure out what might have led to the programmer chute's failure.

NASA announced in August that the first manned flight test won't launch until 2014 at the earliest, or four years after the space shuttle retires. Earlier this week, the agency unveiled plans to add a shock absorbing system to smooth out excessive shaking of its Ares I rocket during launch.

The story.

The video.

 

[Fagin]

Now why haven't we thought of this before? Oh, yeah, we have. I guess the Russian wakeup call finally woke someone up.

McCain to Bush: Kep Space Shuttle Options Open
By Brian Berger
Space News Staff Writer
posted: 26 August 2008
07:17 pm ET

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/080602-sts124-shuttle-01.jpg

WASHINGTON – Acknowledging that a NASA authorization bill is unlikely to be enacted this year, three Republican senators – including presidential candidate John McCain (R-Ariz.) – have written President George W. Bush imploring him to direct NASA to hold off for at least a year taking any action that would preclude the agency from flying space shuttles beyond 2010.

McCain, joined by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and David Vitter (R-La.), also cited Russia's recent military incursion into neighboring Georgia earlier this month as evidence that Russia's continued cooperation on the international space station program should not be taken for granted.

Once the space shuttle is retired, Russia stands to possess the only means of transporting astronauts to and from the space station until the shuttle's successor – the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Ares 1 launcher – comes on line around 2015.

Russia has agreed to fly U.S. astronauts to the station through 2011 when a temporary exemption from a non-proliferation law barring NASA from making space station-related payments to Russia is due to expire.

The White House asked Congress earlier this year to pass this year legislation known as the International Space Station Payments Act of 2008 (S. 3103), which would permit NASA to continue buying Russian Soyuz vehicles for as long as the space station remains in service.

McCain, Hutchison and Vitter, in their letter to Bush, wrote that Russia's actions "raised new questions about the wisdom of providing" the exemption the White House seeks from a provision in the Iran, North Korea, Syria Non-proliferation Act barring so-called extraordinary payments to the Russian space program so long as Russia continues to help Iran acquire missiles and other advanced weapons.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a key member on such issues, told several Florida newspapers in recent days that Russia's military action against Georgia had all but killed any chance of such legislation passing this year. In addition to chairing the Senate Commerce space and aeronautics subcommittee, Nelson also sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has jurisdiction over the White House's legislative request.

"Given all of these considerations, we believe it imperative, as NASA continues the transition from the Space Shuttle to the successor vehicles, that the means for producing additional flight hardware and obtaining additional flight engineering and support services, not be completely and irretrievable lost through destruction or deterioration, at least until a clear path to alternative launch capabilities is at hand," McCain, Hutchison, and Vitter wrote Bush in an Aug. 25 letter.

McCain, Hutchison and Vitter's request was first reported by the Orlando Sentinel, which posted a copy of the letter on its website.

The three Republicans ask Bush to "at minimum...direct NASA to take no action for at least one year from now that would preclude the extended use of the Space Shuttle beyond 2010."

McCain, Hutchison and Vitter note that similar provisions were included in the NASA Authorization bill (S. 3270) approved by the Senate Commerce Committee this summer, but say that there may not be enough time to enact the legislation before Congress adjourns for the November elections.

Meanwhile, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the Democratic presidential candidate, has voiced support for adding at least one additional shuttle flight to the 10 remaining on NASA's manifest. Obama space advisors, including Nelson, have said Obama also supports securing an additional $2 billion for NASA in short order to help it minimize the gap between the last flight of shuttle and the first flight of Orion.

http://www******.com/news/080826-mccain-nasa.html

 

[Lost Cause]

Astronomers have taken what may the first picture of a planet orbiting a star similar to the sun.

This distant world is giant (about eight times the mass of Jupiter) and lies far out from its star (about 330 times the Earth-Sun distance). But for all the planet's strangeness, its star is quite like our own sun.

Previously, the only photographed extrasolar planets have belonged to tiny, dim stars known as brown dwarfs. And while hundreds of exoplanets have been detected by noting their gravitational tug on their parent stars, it is rare to find one large enough to image directly.

"This is the first time we have directly seen a planetary mass object in a likely orbit around a star like our sun," said David Lafrenière, an astronomer at the University of Toronto who led the team that discovered the star. "If we confirm that this object is indeed gravitationally tied to the star, it will be a major step forward."

http://www******.com/scienceastronomy/080915-first-exoplanet-picture.html

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/080915-exoplanet-02.jpg

 

[Lost Cause]

Is anyone concerned about this?

NASA has delayed the launch of two space shuttles because of setbacks related to Hurricane Ike.

The U.S. space agency announced Wednesday that Atlantis' STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope will likely be delayed from Oct. 10 to Oct. 14 at 10:19 p.m., EDT. The shuttle Endeavour's STS-126 supply mission for the International Space Station will move from its original launch date of Nov. 12 to Nov. 16 at 7:07 p.m., EST.

NASA plans to confirm the dates on Oct. 3, after another Flight Readiness Review. NASA changed the shuttle launch schedule Wednesday such a review.

The closure of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston affected Mission Operations, Flight Crew Operations, and training divisions, NASA said. The center shut down Sept. 11, as Hurricane Ike approached the Texas coast and it did not fully re-open until Sept. 22.

Before the closure, workers covered electronic equipment and that work seems to have paid off. Ike took down trees and light poles at the center, causing damage to some buildings' roofs, walls, facades, and windows. Still, the Mission Control Center and other key facilities were largely unscathed, NASA said.

International Space Station flight control resumed from Mission Control in Houston on Friday, Sept. 19, after it had been transferred to a facility in Austin, Texas, and then to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The Space Shuttle Program's vehicle processing at Kennedy continues on schedule, but officials decided to postpone the launches because of the lost week of training and mission preparation from the Johnson closure.

NASA will officially announce the new launch dates after a Flight Readiness Review, Oct. 3.

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/mirrors/images/images/pao/STS41/10064404.jpg




Wow!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwfsFtpACFw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQsbk937KAw&feature=related

 

[Lost Cause]

Snow on Mars!

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. Spacecraft soil experiments also have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes that occur on Earth.

A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft's landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground.

"Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars," said Jim Whiteway, of York University, Toronto, lead scientist for the Canadian-supplied Meteorological Station on Phoenix. "We'll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground."

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080929.html

 

[Lost Cause]

Atlantis retreated from its launch pad Monday for the third time in its last four missions.

* In 2006, the shuttle got halfway back to the Vehicle Assembly Building before forecasters determined Tropical Storm Ernesto was a safe distance from Kennedy Space Center.

* Last year, a February hailstorm damaged the orbiter's tiles and external tank, making repairs necessary.

* This time, a computer glitch aboard the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope last month postponed Atlantis' servicing mission and forced the shuttle back into storage.

"Of course, we always prefer a launch to a rollback, but the vehicle is in good condition and will be ready for the Hubble mission," Atlantis Flow Director Angie Brewer said.

Atlantis began the 3.5-mile trip to the assembly building on top of a 6 million-pound crawler-transporter just before sunrise, and finished six hours later.

The shuttle, its twin solid rocket boosters and fuel tank will remain stacked on a mobile launcher platform until next year, preparing to launch as early as February.

The move cleared the way for Endeavour to shift to launch pad 39A early Saturday.

Endeavour is stationed on pad 39B, a short distance up the coast, where it stood ready as a rescue vehicle if Atlantis sustained critical damage during the Hubble mission. But it now will proceed with a 15-day outfitting mission to the International Space Station that is targeted for liftoff Nov. 14. Endeavour's cargo includes bedroom, bathroom and kitchen gear that will enable the station to support six-person crews for long-duration visits. Astronauts also will conduct four spacewalks to work on rotating joints that allow solar arrays to track the sun.

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/081021-sts125-rollback-02.jpg

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/283896main_126_rollback_oct20_690.jpg

 

[Lost Cause]

The answer is blowing in the wind...
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/phoenix/collection_16/16613.gif

This series of images show Phoenix's telltale instrument waving in the Martian wind. Documenting the telltale's movement helps mission scientists and engineers determine what the wind is like on Mars.

On the day these images were taken, one of the images seemed to be "out-of-phase" with other images, possibly indicating a dust devil occurrence. Preliminary analysis of the images taken right before and after the passing of this possible dust devil indicates winds from the west at 7 meters per second. The image taken during the possible dust devil shows 11 meters per second wind from the south.

These images were taken by the lander's Surface Stereo Imager (SSI) on the 136th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Oct. 12, 2008). Phoenix's telltale is part of the Canadian Space Agency's meteorological package on the lander. The telltale was built by the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/images.php?fileID=12888

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~lemmon/mer_dd/dd_enhanced_568a.gif

 

[Bad_Doggie]

India the first nan in space!

Woof!

 

[Lost Cause]

"It is a historic moment as far as India is concerned. We have started our journey for the moon and the first leg of the journey has gone perfectly well," Nair said seconds after the successful completion of the launch. ( Watch )

"It is a remarkable performance by the launch vehicle," he said.

It is a perfect launch. Now it will be orbiting the earth, he said, adding that today "what we have started is a remarkable journey for the Indian spacecraft to go to the moon and try to unravel the mysteries of the moon".

"We have been fighting against all odds," the noted scientist said explaining that heavy rains and cloudy skies over the last four days had led to a lot of worries about the launch.

"Fortunately, we had clear skies today and we would be completing the remaining part of the journey within 15 days," Nair said.

Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G Madhavan Nair described the successful launch as a historic moment in India's space programme.

"The launch was perfect and precise. The satellite has been placed in the earth orbit. With this, we have completed the first leg of the mission and it will take 15 days to reach the lunar orbit," Nair announced in the mission control centre shortly after PSLV-C11 put the spacecraft in a transfer orbit.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ct_says_ISRO_chairman/articleshow/3626358.cms

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/21/world/21india-600.jpg

 

[Lost Cause]

If anyone cares- STS 126 made it up 14 Nov.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/264180main_sts126-s-002_425.jpg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLpGib8Zzxs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QVGh8DBAUk

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

Using the space station's robotic arm, astronauts plucked the Italian-built cargo module from Endeavour's payload bay and attached it to an Earth-facing port on the orbiting lab's Harmony connecting node so its vital contents of space bedroom, bathroom and kitchen hardware can be moved in later this week.

Endeavour docked at the space station on Sunday to deliver its cargo and a new crewmember to the outpost's Expedition 18 crew during a planned 15-day mission that includes four spacewalks.

http://www******.com/missionlaunches/081117-sts126-movingday.html

 

[Bat_Guano]

Sorry if this has already been posted:

WEIRD aurora on Saturn's hexagram North Pole "cyclone":

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/11/12/1671310.aspx

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/081112-coslog-aurora-466p-1140a.jpg

OK, this is strange.

 

[Lost Cause]

Good to Go!

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 8 (Reuters) - Countdown clocks began ticking down on Sunday for NASA's first space shuttle launch of the year, a mission meant to complete the International Space Station's power system and exterior beams.

Shuttle Discovery is scheduled for liftoff at 9:20 p.m. EDT (0120 GMT on Thursday) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Astronauts plan to deliver and install a final set of solar wing panels and transport Japan's first live-aboard station crewmember to his new home.

"We're ready to get going," said Discovery commander Lee Archambault, who arrived at the Florida spaceport on Sunday afternoon along with his six crewmates.

The flight has been on hold since Feb. 12 as engineers and managers reviewed a possible safety issue with valves needed to keep the fuel tank properly pressurized during the 8.5-minute ride into orbit. NASA replaced the valves and cleared the launch team to begin the three-day countdown.

A final review is scheduled for Monday. There were no outstanding technical issues, however, and meteorologists were forecasting a 90 percent likelihood the weather will be suitable for launching.

The mission, slated to last two weeks, will complete the station's 11-part exterior truss. The final segment contains a $300 million set of solar wing panels needed to bring the station up to full power.

Discovery's crew includes Archambault, pilot Dominic Antonelli, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, spacewalkers Steven Swanson, Richard Arnold and Joseph Acaba, and mission specialist John Phillips, who has been a space station crewmember.

http://photos.upi.com/story/w/b8b80fb3497a90770746d324b459a488/Space_shuttle_Discovery_launch_postponed.jpg

 

[Lost Cause]

12 hours to go.....full sails Discovery!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

http://image.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/discovery_sts_119_launch_pad_428(1).jpg

 

[Shagly]

lets curve some light.

how is it done?

 

[Lost Cause]

Simply amazing...

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

http://webglobe.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/070619_sts117_shuttle_02.jpg

 

[Lost Cause]

Hand O' Gawd?

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/090404-chandra-nebula-02.jpg

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090405/sc_space/cosmichandreachesforthelight

 

[Cathleen]

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/hst_sm4/index.html


Launch set for 2:00pm ET

STS-125: Final Shuttle Mission to Hubble Space Telescope


The STS-125 mission will return the space shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope for one last visit before the shuttle fleet retires in 2010. Over 11 days and five spacewalks, the shuttle Atlantis’ crew will make repairs and upgrades to the telescope, leaving it better than ever and ready for another five years – or more – of research.



Overview:

STS-125: The Final Visit


It's a mission to once more push the boundaries of how deep in space and far back in time humanity can see. It's a flight to again upgrade what already may be the most significant satellite ever launched.

And, for the space shuttle, it's a final visit to a dear, old friend.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/hst_sm4/overview.html



http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/248123main_sts125-s-002_425.jpg




Here's hoping they're successful and God speed to the crew, Atlantis.

 

[Lost Cause]

Full Sails, Atlantis!

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

The 11-day mission will include five spacewalks, at up to 7hours each. "This will be the most challenging servicing mission that's been faced by our astronauts in terms of the total amount of work," said mission manager, Preston Burch. If the mission succeeds, it will add up to five years onto the life of the 19-year-old telescope.

NASA is running a live feed of the launch all day with commentary over on its official site.

https://secure.reservexl.net/wwwimg/img/tours/38-2.jpg

http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/shuttle_09_01/sts125_24.jpg