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Endeavour Prepares for ISS Docking

Thu, 13/03/2008 - 12:42 by MT Bureau

Houston -- U.S. space shuttle Endeavour's STS-123 crew completed its first full day in space Wednesday, preparing for arrival at the International Space Station.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the astronauts inspected the orbiter's heat shield and prepared for their arrival at the ISS at 11:25 p.m.

During the day the crew used the shuttle's robotic arm and orbiter boom sensor system to check the underside of Endeavour and the leading edges of its wings to ensure no liftoff damage occurred to the tiles that protect Endeavour from reentry heat.

NASA said the STS-123 astronauts also inspected the spacesuits they will use during the 16-day mission's five scheduled spacewalks. Three of the spacewalks will include tasks devoted to assembly of Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency's two-armed robotic system.

Scientists study Salmonella in space

Wed, 12/03/2008 - 18:05 by MT Bureau

Phoenix -- U.S. scientists will use experiments on the space shuttle Endeavor to determine why bacteria in space are more likely to cause disease.

An experiment designed by Arizona State University Professor Cheryl Nickerson that flew aboard space shuttle Atlantis last fall showed microbes in space are nearly three times more likely to cause disease than the same microbes on Earth.

Nickerson and other scientists now have experiments on Endeavor designed to replicate those results, examine how space affects other bacteria and test a way to counteract the space-induced increase in disease-causing potential.

Last autumn, Nickerson and her team discovered space changed the way 167 genes were expressed in the bacteria Salmonella, a cause of food-borne illnesses, making the bacteria better able to infect people. She and her team will now test a way to eliminate or decrease the infectious risk to astronauts.

Canadian astronomers tape meteor fall

Wed, 12/03/2008 - 17:38 by MT Bureau

London, Ontario -- Canadian astronomers at the University of Western Ontario are hunting for pieces of a meteorite they videotaped falling to Earth.

Associate Professor Peter Brown said the university's network of all-sky cameras shot video of the large fireball at 10:59 p.m. last Wednesday.

Brown and post doctoral student Wayne Edwards are asking for the help of local residents in recovering meteorites that might have crashed in the Parry Sound area.

"Most meteoroids burn up by the time they hit an altitude of (36-42 miles) from Earth," said Edwards. "We tracked this one to an altitude of about (14 miles) so we are pretty sure there are at least one, and possibly many meteorites, that made it to the ground."

Edwards said the area where meteorites would have fallen has been calculated at about 5 square miles.

Cassini to cross Saturn moon water plume

Wed, 12/03/2008 - 17:32 by MT Bureau

Washington -- The U.S. space agency plans to send its Cassini spacecraft through a water plume erupting from a geyser on Saturn's moon Enceladus.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the spacecraft will skirt the edge of a huge geyser erupting from giant fractures on the south pole of Enceladus. Cassini will sample water-ice, dust and gas in the plume.

The source of such geysers is of great interest to scientists who theorize liquid water, perhaps even an ocean, might exist in the area. While flying through the edge of the plumes, Cassini will be approximately 120 miles from the moon's surface during the Wednesday experiment. At its closest approach to Enceladus, Cassini will be 30 miles from the surface.

"There are two types of particles coming from Enceladus, one pure water-ice, the other water-ice mixed with other stuff," said Sascha Kempf, deputy principal investigator for Cassini's cosmic dust analyzer at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. "We think the clean water-ice particles are being bounced off the surface and the dirty water-ice particles are coming from inside the moon. This flyby will show us whether this concept is right or wrong."

NASA selects initial lunar investigators

Wed, 12/03/2008 - 17:29 by MT Bureau

Washington -- The U.S. space agency has named 24 scientists to be involved in Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, research.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the selected researchers will initiate new investigations and assist with planned measurements to be conducted by the LRO when it is launched later this year.

The LRO -- which NASA says is its first step toward returning humans to the moon -- is to conduct a one-year primary mission exploring the moon and taking measurements to identify future robotic and human landing sites. In addition, it will study lunar resources and how the moon's environment will affect humans.

The mission also will involve a spacecraft called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which will impact the lunar south pole to search for evidence of polar water frost.

Space Laboratory Transmits First Pictures

Wed, 12/03/2008 - 16:51 by MT Bureau

Paris -- The European Space Agency said the first pictures of Earth taken by its Columbus laboratory at the International Space Station have been received.

The laboratory's Earth Viewing Camera is one of the experiments housed on the laboratory's external platform. It initially malfunctioned after the lab was installed last month but after several weeks of troubleshooting by the EVC team in the Netherlands, the first pictures from the orbiting camera have arrived on Earth, the ESA said.

The initial image, showing a dimly illuminated cloud-covered region was downloaded last Thursday. A second picture taken shortly after dawn Friday -- the first to be produced on command from the ground -- shows scattered white and pink clouds close to the Aleutian Islands in the north Pacific, the ESA said.

Space shuttle Endeavour is launched

Tue, 11/03/2008 - 19:46 by MT Bureau

Cape Canaveral, Fla. -- Space shuttle Endeavour roared into the dark Florida sky early Tuesday, beginning a record 16-day mission to the International Space Station.

Endeavour lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center at 2:28 a.m. EDT. During the STS-123 mission -- the longest flight ever taken to the ISS -- the Endeavour's seven astronauts will work with the three-member space station crew to install the first section of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory and the Canadian Space Agency's two-armed robotic system known as Dextre. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission will also include a record five shuttle spacewalks.

Shortly before launch, Shuttle Commander Dominic Gorie thanked the teams that helped make the launch possible and then said: "God's truly blessed us with a beautiful night to launch so let's light 'em up and give them a show."

NASA readies GLAST for launch

Tue, 11/03/2008 - 13:39 by MT Bureau

Cape Canaveral, Fla. -- The U.S. space agency's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, was undergoing payload processing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the space telescope -- a collaborative mission with France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Sweden -- was targeted for an 11:45 a.m. EDT launch on May 16.

NASA said GLAST is designed to explore the most extreme environments in the universe, and answer questions about supermassive black hole systems, pulsars and the origin of cosmic rays. It also will study the mystery of powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts.

The rocket that will launch GLAST is a Delta II 7920-H, a heavier-lift model of the standard Delta II that uses larger solid rocket boosters. The first stage is to be erected on the space center's Pad 17-B next week.

Jupiter Discovery Helps Earth Satellites

Tue, 11/03/2008 - 12:32 by MT Bureau

Cambridge, England -- A British-led team of space scientists has found radio waves accelerate electrons within Jupiter's magnetic field in the same way they do on Earth.

The team, led by Richard Horne of the British Antarctic Survey, said the discovery has important implications for protecting Earth-orbiting satellites.

Using data collected at Jupiter by the Galileo spacecraft, Horne and colleagues from the University of California-Los Angeles and the University of Iowa found a special type of very low frequency radio wave is strong enough to accelerate electrons up to very high energies inside Jupiter's magnetic field.

"We've shown before that very low frequency radio waves can accelerate electrons in the Earth's magnetic field but we have now shown exactly the same theory works on Jupiter, where the magnetic field is 20,000 times stronger than the Earth's and the composition of the atmosphere is very different," said Horne. "This is the ultimate test of our theory."

Space tourism: The next frontier?

Tue, 11/03/2008 - 12:17 by MT Bureau

Newark, Del. -- U.S. and Italian researchers predict outer space will become a frequent tourist destination during this century.

"In the 21st century, space tourism could represent the most significant development experienced by the tourism industry," said University of Delaware Professor Fred DeMicco.

DeMicco, along with Professor Silvia Ciccarelli of the University of Rome -- a consultant to the Italian Association of Aerospace Industries -- said while there are global policies to be determined relating to private ventures in space, the technology to make space travel safer and cheaper is moving forward.

Ciccarelli said suborbital trips will likely be available to tourists by 2015, while tourism in space hotels is predicted to become a reality by 2025. She also noted the low-gravity of space will make possible novel recreational and sports activities that are impossible on Earth.

NASA releases universe study data

Mon, 10/03/2008 - 21:17 by MT Bureau

Greenbelt, Md -- The U.S. space agency has released five years of data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, refining the understanding of the universe.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the new data provide three major discoveries: evidence that a sea of cosmic neutrinos permeates the universe, the first stars took more than a half-billion years to create a cosmic fog, and suggest tight new constraints on the burst of expansion in the universe's first trillionth of a second of existence.

"We are living in an extraordinary time," said Gary Hinshaw of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Ours is the first generation in human history to make such detailed and far-reaching measurements of our universe."

NASA awards safety contract at Kennedy

Mon, 10/03/2008 - 20:18 by MT Bureau

CAPE Canaveral, Fla -- The U.S. space agency has awarded the Millennium Engineering and Integration Co. a safety and mission assurance support services contract.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the cost-plus-award-fee contract awarded the Satellite Beach, Fla., company is valued approximately $45.2 million and includes a two-year base period and two, one-year options.

NASA said the new contract consolidates several contracted activities currently supporting the Kennedy Space Center's Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate requirements into a single support contract.

Services include performing risk assessments, inspections, mishap investigations, analyses, independent assessments, evaluations of work performed by other contractors and NASA organizations, and maintaining various applications and databases.