Need that perfect gift for the space buff in your life?
Got 129 million cu ft of spare hangar space?
Then has NASA got a deal for you: Once the space shuttle fleet retires,
probably by 2010, the shuttles will be ready for purchase.
But even for the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum,
the shuttles come at a hefty price—about $42 million each!

Earlier this week the space agency issued a Request for Information (RFI) to educational institutions, museums, and "other organizations" in an attempt to sell off the remaining space shuttles in 2010. The estimated total for tax, tags and freight is $42 million. According to NASA, the RFI will "gauge the level and scope of interest of U.S. organizations in acquiring … orbiters and other major flight hardware."

The agency hopes to find homes for two of the three orbiters; Discovery is already earmarked for the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. By law, the institution has something akin to a rights-of-first-refusal agreement with NASA that allows it first crack at space memorabilia once the government is done with it.

Discovery's long, active history makes it a logical choice for the Smithsonian. The third of NASA's winged spaceships and the oldest working orbiter, Discovery was deployed for the Hubble Space Telescope on mission STS-31 in April 1990, carried the 77-year-old John Glenn back into space in 1998, and was twice NASA's return-to-flight spacecraft—after the Challenger disaster in 1986 and the Columbia explosion five years ago. While Enterprise, the shuttle built for test flights, anchors the Smithsonian's space collection at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles airport in Virginia, the museum has long wanted to replace it with an operational orbiter. "To have any flown orbiter would be wonderful," says Valerie Neal, the Smithsonian's curator of the human spaceflight collection. "The Smithsonian tries to acquire the oldest or first-flown aircraft—so up until 2003, we'd hoped it would be Columbia. Now, of course, Discovery would be a perfect fit."

But that history comes with a hefty price tag—even for the internationally renowned Smithsonian. "We were in a different era then, where we had no eBay and people who were looking to make money off of artifacts," NASA spokesman Michael Curie told CollectSpace, a Web site devoted to space memorabilia. "So it was to everyone's advantage to try to provide them to those who might display them." NASA makes an important distinction: The $42 million isn't to buy an orbiter, but to prepare it for public presentation—nearly $30 million goes to "safeing" the craft (removing the fuel systems and other environmental hazards), approximately $8 million goes to display preparation and the final $6 million or so is spent on transportation and installation. Technically, the agency says, the cost is compensation for shipping and handling.

Industry observers also suggest that the cash-strapped space agency is grabbing every dollar it can find for the over-budget Constellation Program. In August, budget constraints forced NASA to scrap plans to have the shuttle's replacement, Orion, ready by 2013. The orbiters should be available Sept. 30, 2011, according to the RFI, and they should be ferried to their final destinations by May 31, 2012—where they will likely remain for a long time, since the agency is also decommissioning the 747 that is used to haul the spacecraft. "In the past, sometimes we have paid for this sort of 'shipping and handling,'" Neal says, "but this is unprecedented in terms of the cost involved. We're thrilled to have an orbiter designated for us, but we'll have to resolve the cost matter. Luckily, it's not like we have to come up with the money in 90 days."

Check out the article at Popular Mechanics.

Sweet... I want one!!! =)

Labels: History, Images, Space, Technology

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The heavens smiled down on Earth Monday in a rare celestial trifecta of Venus, Jupiter, and the moon.

The planets aligned—an event known as a conjunction—Sunday night, and were joined by a thin sliver of moon on Monday.

The rare planetary meeting was visible from all parts of the world, even from light-polluted cities such as Hong Kong and New York.

People in Asia witnessed a smiley face (above, photographed from Manila, Philippines), while skywatchers in the United States saw a frown.

The three brightest objects in the sky were so tightly gathered that one could eclipse them with a thumb, according to NASA's Web site.

The next visible Venus-Jupiter conjunction will be on the evening of March 14, 2012, but the two planets will appear farther apart in the sky.

Check out the article at National Geographic News.

Wish I could've seen the smiley face in the sky, but it was still an awesome viewing despite the frown! =)

Labels: History, Images, Space

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Nov. 26, 2008 -- It's not just families that are getting together this Thanksgiving week. The three brightest objects in the night sky -- Venus, Jupiter and a crescent moon -- will crowd around each other for an unusual group shot.

Starting Thanksgiving evening, Jupiter and Venus will begin moving closer so that by Sunday and Monday, they will appear 2 degrees apart, which is about a finger width held out at arm's length, said Alan MacRobert, senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine. Then on Monday night, they will be joined by a crescent moon right next to them, he said.

Look in the southwestern sky around twilight -- no telescope or binoculars needed. The show will even be visible in cities if it's a clear night.

"It'll be a head-turner," MacRobert said. "This certainly is an unusual coincidence for the crescent moon to be right there in the days when they are going to be closest together."

The moon is the brightest, closest and smallest of the three and is 252,000 miles away. Venus, the second brightest, closest and smallest, is 94 million miles away. And big Jupiter is 540 million miles away.

The three celestial objects come together from time to time, but often they are too close to the sun or unite at a time when they aren't so visible. The next time the three will be as close and visible as this week will be Nov. 18, 2052, according to Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium.

But if you are willing to settle for two out of three -- Venus and the crescent moon only -- it will happen again on New Year's Eve, MacRobert said.

Check out the article at Discovery News.

Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the viewing!

Labels: Images, Space

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A nearby star, visible with the unaided eye, is ringed with two rocky asteroid belts and an outer icy halo, making it a three-ring cosmic circus.

The inner asteroid belt appears to be a virtual twin to the belt in our solar system.

The presence of the separate rings of material around the nearby star, called Epsilon Eridani, suggests unseen planets lurk there, where they confine and shape the rings, say the researchers.

If there were in fact rocky planets within the inner gap between the star and asteroid belt, the worlds would likely reside within the star's habitable zone where temperatures would be such that life could survive.

Located 10.5 light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, the star is the ninth closest to the sun.

Our sun's three nearest known stars are gravitationally bound in a system called Alpha Centauri, which is 4.36 light-years away. (A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, about 6 trillion miles or 10 trillion km.)

Epsilon Eridani is slightly smaller and cooler than the sun. And it's also younger. While the sun is an estimated 4.5 billion years old, Epsilon Eridani has been around for just 850 million years.

"Studying Epsilon Eridani is like having a time machine to look at our solar system when it was young," said researcher Massimo Marengo, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts.

Rocky rings

Astronomers had known about the star's outer icy ring, but they were surprised when NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope revealed two rocky rings between the icy halo and the star.

The inner asteroid belt looks identical to ours in terms of material, and it orbits at 3 astronomical units (AU) from Epsilon Eridani — the same distance between the sun and the rocky asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (An astronomical unit equals the average Earth-sun distance of 93 million miles, or about 150 million km.)

Epsilon Eridani's second asteroid belt is 20 AU from the star, or about where Uranus is in relation to our sun, and it is crowded with as much mass as Earth's moon.

The outer icy ring, previously observed, extends about 35 AU to 100 AU from Epsilon Eridani and is similar in composition to our Kuiper Belt, a region of icy objects beyond Neptune. Eridani's outer ring holds about 100 times more material than ours, however.

New exoplanets?

The rings formed when the system was very young, likely when collisions between planets and other smaller bodies resulted in small bits and big chunks of debris that took shape as the asteroid belts and icy ring, the researchers suggest.

And the gaps between these rings were likely shaped by planets whose gravitational forces could remove any excess material flung from the belts, while also keeping the shape of the rings. Planets in our solar system exert similar shaping effects.

"The big planets that are now keeping those gaps are determining the geometry of the system of rings," Marengo told SPACE.com.

He and his colleagues propose that three planets with masses between those of Neptune and Jupiter could be in orbit about Epsilon Eridani.

A Jupiter-mass exoplanet was detected in 2000 by the radial velocity method in which astronomers look for wobbling motion of a star due to the gravitational tug of a planet. That planet is located near the edge of the innermost ring.

A second planet must lurk near the second asteroid belt, and a third at about 35 AU near the inner edge of Epsilon Eridani's Kuiper Belt, the researchers say.

Terrestrial planets could reside inside the innermost asteroid belt as well, though there currently is no clear indication of that, Marengo said.

The research will be detailed in the Jan. 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Check out the article at Fox News.

Cool! Maybe one day we'll develop the technology to travel there! Who knows, maybe it'll be soon enough that my kids or grandkids could go explore the planets there!

Labels: Images, Space

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The Space Race

After the Soviet space program's launch of the world's first human-made satellite (Sputnik 1) on 4 October 1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. The U.S. Congress, alarmed by the perceived threat to U.S. security and technological leadership (known as the "Sputnik crisis"), urged immediate and swift action; President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his advisors counseled more deliberate measures. Several months of debate produced an agreement that a new federal agency was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space.

Explorer 1, officially Satellite 1958 Alpha, was the first Earth artificial satellite of the United States, having been launched at 10:48pm EST on 31 January 1958.

On 29 July 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). When it began operations on 1 October 1958, NASA consisted mainly of the four laboratories and some 80 employees of the government's 46-year-old research agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). A significant contributor to NASA's entry into the Space race was the technology from the German rocket program, led by Wernher von Braun, who became a naturalized citizen of the United States after World War II. He is today regarded as the father of the United States space program. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (of which von Braun's team was a part) and the Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA.

NASA's earliest programs involved research into human spaceflight and were conducted under the pressure of the competition between the U.S. and the USSR (the Space Race) that existed during the Cold War. Project Mercury, initiated in 1958, started NASA down the path of human space exploration with missions designed to discover simply if man could survive in space.

On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard—one of the seven Project Mercury astronauts selected as pilot for this mission—became the first American in space when he piloted Freedom 7 on a 15-minute suborbital flight. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on 20 February 1962 during the 5 and a quarter-hour flight of Friendship 7.

Once the Mercury project proved that human spaceflight was possible, Project Gemini was launched to conduct experiments and work out issues relating to a moon mission. The first Gemini flight with astronauts on board, Gemini 3, was flown by Gus Grissom and John Young on 23 March 1965. Nine other missions followed, showing that long-duration human space flight was possible, proving that rendezvous and docking with another vehicle in space was possible, and gathering medical data on the effects of weightlessness on human beings.

Apollo program

The Apollo program was designed to land humans on the Moon and bring them safely back to Earth. Apollo 1 ended tragically when all the astronauts inside died due to fire in command module during an experimental simulation. Because of this incident, there were a few unmanned tests before men boarded the spacecraft. Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 tested various components while orbiting the Moon, and returned photography. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11, landed the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. Apollo 13 did not land on the Moon due to a malfunction, but did return photographs. The six missions that landed on the Moon returned a wealth of scientific data and almost 400 kilograms of lunar samples. Experiments included soil mechanics, meteoroids, seismic, heat flow, lunar ranging, magnetic fields, and solar wind experiments.

Skylab

Skylab was the first space station the United States launched into orbit. The 75 tonne station was in Earth orbit from 1973 to 1979, and was visited by crews three times, in 1973 and 1974. Skylab was originally intended to study gravitational anomalies in other solar systems, but the assignment was curtailed due to lack of funding and interest. It included a laboratory for studying the effects of microgravity, and a solar observatory. A Space Shuttle was planned to dock with and elevate Skylab to a higher safe altitude, but Skylab reentered the atmosphere and was destroyed in 1979, before the first shuttle could be launched, landing over parts of Western Australia and the Indian Ocean, with some fragments being recovered.

Apollo-Soyuz

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (or ASTP) was the first joint flight of the U.S. and Soviet space programs. The mission took place in July 1975. For the United States of America, it was the last Apollo flight, as well as the last manned space launch until the flight of the first Space Shuttle in April 1981.

Shuttle era

The Space Shuttle became the major focus of NASA in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Planned to be a frequently launchable and mostly reusable vehicle, four space shuttles were built by 1985. The first to launch, Columbia, did so on April 12, 1981.

The shuttle was not all good news for NASA — flights were much more expensive than initially projected, and the public again lost interest as missions appeared to become mundane until the 1986 Challenger disaster again highlighted the risks of space flight. Work began on Space Station Freedom as a focus for the manned space program, but within NASA there was argument that these projects came at the expense of more inspiring unmanned missions such as the Voyager probes.

Nonetheless, the shuttle launched milestone projects like the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The HST is a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), and its success has paved the way for greater collaboration between the agencies. The HST was created with a relatively small budget of $2 billion but has continued operation since 1990, delighting both scientists and the public. Some of its images, such as the groundbreaking Hubble Deep Field, have become famous.

In 1995 Russian-American interaction resumed with the Shuttle-Mir missions. Once more an American vehicle docked with a Russian craft, this time a full-fledged space station. This cooperation continues to today, with Russia and America the two biggest partners in the largest space station ever built – the International Space Station (ISS). The strength of their cooperation on this project was even more evident when NASA began relying on Russian launch vehicles to service the ISS during the two year grounding of the shuttle fleet following the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Costing over one hundred billion dollars, it has been difficult at times for NASA to justify the ISS. The population at large has historically been hard to impress with details of scientific experiments in space, preferring news of grand projects to exotic locations. Even now, the ISS cannot accommodate as many scientists as planned.

During much of the 1990s, NASA was faced with shrinking annual budgets due to Congressional belt-tightening in Washington, D.C. In response, NASA's ninth administrator, Daniel Goldin, pioneered the "faster, better, cheaper" approach that enabled NASA to cut costs while still delivering a wide variety of aerospace programs (Discovery Program). That method was criticized and re-evaluated following the twin losses of Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander in 1999. Yet, NASA's shuttle program had made 116 successful launches as of December 2006.

The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, which killed the crew of six Americans and one Israeli, caused a 29-month hiatus in space shuttle flights and triggered a serious re-examination of NASA's priorities. The U.S. government, various scientists, and the public all reconsidered the future of the space program.

NASA's future

NASA's ongoing investigations include in-depth surveys of Mars and Saturn and studies of the Earth and the Sun. Other NASA spacecraft are presently en route to Mercury and Pluto. With missions to Jupiter in planning stages, NASA's itinerary covers over half the solar system.

Managed by the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, the Phoenix mission was launched on August 4, 2007. It will search for possible underground water courses in the northern Martian pole. This lander revives much of its experiments and instrumentation from the failed 1999 Mars Polar Lander, hence its name. An improved and larger rover, Mars Science Laboratory, is under construction and slated to launch in 2009. On the horizon of NASA's plans are two possibilities under consideration for the Mars Scout 2013 mission.

The New Horizons mission to Pluto was launched in 2006 and will fly by Pluto in 2015. The probe received a gravity assist from Jupiter in February 2007, examining some of Jupiter's inner moons and testing on-board instruments during the fly-by.

Vision for space exploration

On January 14, 2004, ten days after the landing of the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, US President George W. Bush announced a new plan for NASA's future, dubbed the Vision for Space Exploration. According to this plan, mankind will return to the Moon by 2018, and set up outposts as a testbed and potential resource for future missions. The Space Shuttle will be retired in 2010 and Orion will replace it by 2014, capable of both docking with the ISS and leaving the Earth's orbit. The future of the ISS is somewhat uncertain — construction will be completed, but beyond that is less clear. Although the plan initially met with skepticism from Congress, in late 2004 Congress agreed to provide start-up funds for the first year's worth of the new space vision.

Hoping to spur innovation from the private sector, NASA established a series of Centennial Challenges, technology prizes for non-government teams, in 2004. The Challenges include tasks that will be useful for implementing the Vision for Space Exploration, such as building more efficient astronaut gloves.

Moon base

On December 4, 2006, NASA announced it was planning to build a permanent moon base. NASA Associate Administrator Scott Horowitz said the goal was to start building the moonbase by 2020, and by 2024, have a fully functional base, that would allow for crew rotations like the International Space Station. Additionally, NASA plans to collaborate and partner with other nations for this project.

Man on Mars

On September 28, 2007, NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin stated that NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037, and in 2057, "We should be celebrating 20 years of man on Mars."

Check out the article at Wikipedia.

When you look at how much NASA has brought us in the past 50 years, one cannot even begin to imagine what the next 50 will bring! Exciting stuff!!!

Be sure to check out the image gallery at the NASA 50th Anniversary website!

For more information, check out the following interesting links:

• Space Shuttle
• Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicle
• International Space Station
• Colonization of the Moon
• Colonization of Mars

Labels: History, Images, Space, Technology

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Shuttle Endeavour and a crew of seven blasted into orbit Tuesday on what was to be the longest space station mission ever, a 16-day voyage to build a gangly robot and add a new room that will serve as a closet for a future lab.

The space shuttle roared from its seaside pad at 2:28 a.m., lighting up the sky for miles around as it took off on a multinational flight involving Canada and Japan.

It was a rare treat: The last time NASA launched a shuttle at nighttime was in 2006. Only about a quarter of shuttle flights have begun in darkness.

"Good luck and Godspeed, and we'll see you back here in 16 days," launch director Mike Leinbach radioed to the astronauts right before liftoff.

"Banzai," replied Endeavour's commander, Dominic Gorie, using a Japanese exclamation of joy. "God truly has blessed us with a beautiful night here, Mike, to launch, so let's light them up and give Him a show."

They did. The shuttle took flight with a flash of light, giving a peach-yellow glow to the low clouds just offshore before disappearing into the darkness.

Shortly after liftoff, the astronauts had to deal with alert messages regarding their ship's steering thrusters. Then for unknown reasons, the cooling system had to be switched from the primary to backup line. NASA said it was looking into the problems.

Gorie and his crew face a daunting job once they reach the international space station late Wednesday night. The astronauts will perform five spacewalks, the most ever planned during a shuttle visit.

The launching site was jammed with Canadians and Japanese representing two of the major partners in the international space station.

The Canadian Space Agency supplied Dextre, the two-armed robot that was hitching a ride aboard Endeavour, while the Japanese Space Agency sent up the first part of its massive Kibo lab, a storage compartment for experiments, tools and spare parts.

Also on hand for the liftoff was a 19-member congressional delegation led by Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, whose district includes Johnson Space Center in Houston. He is pushing for increased NASA funding.

For the first time since space station construction began nearly 10 years ago, all five major partners were about to own a piece of the orbiting real estate. The launch of the first section of Kibo, or Hope, finally propelled Japan into the space station action.

"Our Japanese people have been waiting for a very long, long time," said Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, the Japanese Space Agency's station program manager.

"With this flight I believe that we finally became a real partner of the (space station) project, not just one of the members on the list, after 20 some years of effort in the project," said Keiji Tachikawa, head of the Japanese Space Agency.

Work on the space station project began in the mid-1980s, with preliminary design work for Kibo (pronounced KEE'-boh) starting in 1990. Space station construction, however, was stalled over the years for various reasons, most recently the 2003 Columbia tragedy.

The main part of the Kibo lab will fly on the next shuttle mission in May, with the final installment, a porch for outdoor experiments, going up next year.

Altogether, the Japanese Space Agency has invested about $6.7 billion in the space station program, including a Kibo control center near Tokyo.

Canada's $200 million-plus Dextre, meanwhile, is designed to eventually take over some of the more routine outdoor maintenance chores from spacewalking astronauts.

Dextre, short for dexterous and pronounced like Dexter, will join the space station's Canadian-built robot arm, already in orbit for seven years.

In addition to working with their international payloads, Endeavour's astronauts will try out a caulking gun and high-tech goo on deliberately damaged shuttle thermal tile samples.

The test — part of NASA's ongoing post-Columbia safety effort — should have been performed last year, but was put off because of emergency space station repairs.

Astronaut Garrett Reisman will stay behind on the space station until June, swapping places with a Frenchman who accompanied Europe's Columbus lab into orbit in February.

A Japanese astronaut is also part of Endeavour's all-male crew.

Endeavour's countdown was the smoothest in years, officials said. Shortly after liftoff, however, the astronauts had to deal with a couple of problems that ended up being minor. They got alert messages for some of their ship's steering thrusters, but it turned out to be a bad electronics card. Then the primary cooling system failed, and they had to switch to the backup.

A cursory look at the initial launch images — fewer than usual because of the nighttime launch — showed only one significant loss of debris from the external fuel tank 83 seconds into the flight. But it appeared to miss the right wing.

In any event, Endeavour will be checked thoroughly in orbit for any potential damage, standard procedure ever since the loss of Columbia because of a foam strike.

"This is just a wonderful beginning to what's going to be a long and challenging mission for us," said LeRoy Cain, a shuttle manager who gave the final "go" for launch. "But we're really looking forward to it and we're ready to go, ready to get to work on orbit."

It is the second of six planned shuttle missions this year, all but one to the space station. NASA faces a 2010 deadline for finishing the station and retiring its shuttles.

Check out the article at Fox News.

Cool stuff! Man, do I need a Dextre at home!

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

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Scientist have nailed down how and when the Earth will cease to exist.

The sun will slowly expand into a red giant, pushing the Earth further out into space, but not far enough.

Our home planet will be snagged by the sun's outer atmosphere, gradually plunging to its doom inside the fiery stellar furnace.

"The drag caused by this low-density gas is enough to cause the Earth to drift inwards, and finally to be captured and vaporized by the sun," explains astronomer Robert Smith of the University of Sussex in southern England.

Previous projections had all figured that the Earth would avoid falling into the sun, even during our star's red-giant phase.

The good news: This won't happen for another 7.6 billion years.

The bad news: Life on Earth will end long before then.

In fact, we've only got a billion years left before the slowly expanding sun boils off the oceans and reduces our planet to an uninhabitable cinder, says Smith.

That may sound like a long time, but in fact life on Earth's been around a lot longer than that — a total of 3.7 billion years, according to the latest estimates.

For those first three billion years, true, we were nothing but pond scum. Still, the new figures indicate the long story of life on our fair blue-green planet may be entering its last act.

Is there any way our future descendants can save themselves? Why, yes, explains Smith.

He cites a recent study emanating from the University of California, Santa Cruz. It proposes taming an asteroid to swing by the Earth every few thousand years, slowly nudging the Earth into higher solar orbit, enough to outpace the sun's own outward growth.

"This sounds like science fiction," says Smith. "But it seems that the energy requirements are just about possible and the technology could be developed over the next few centuries."

Check out the article at Fox News.

Holy crap does that sound like a bad day!

Labels: Space, Technology

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U.S. Officials Plan to Shoot Down Satellite

WASHINGTON — Taking a page from Hollywood science fiction, the Pentagon said Thursday it will try to shoot down a dying, bus-size U.S. spy satellite loaded with toxic fuel on a collision course with the Earth.

The military hopes to smash the satellite as soon as next week — just before it enters Earth's atmosphere — with a single missile fired from a Navy cruiser in the northern Pacific Ocean.

One of the main goals of the satellite's destruction is to prevent any sensitive equipment from falling into the wrong hands.

"We are worried about something showing up on e-Bay," defense and intelligence expert John Pike said, adding that breaking up the satellite's pieces lessens the chance that sensitive U.S. technology could wind up in Chinese hands.

"What they have to be worried about is that a souvenir collector is going to find some piece, put it on e-Bay, and the Chinese buy it," said Pike, who is director of the defense research group GlobalSecurity.org.

The dramatic maneuver may well trigger international concerns, and U.S. officials have begun notifying other countries of the plan — stressing that it does not signal the start of a new American anti-satellite weapons program.

Military and administration officials said the satellite is carrying fuel called hydrazine that could injure or even kill people who are near it when it hits the ground.

That reason alone, they said, persuaded President Bush to order the shoot-down.

"That is the only thing that breaks it out, that is worthy of taking extraordinary measures," said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Pentagon briefing.

He predicted a fairly high chance — as much as 80 percent — of hitting the satellite, which will be about 150 miles up when the shot is fired.

The window of opportunity for taking the satellite down, Cartwright said, opens in three or four days and lasts for about seven or eight days.

"We'll take one shot and assess," he said. "This is the first time we've used a tactical missile to engage a spacecraft."

Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey discounted comparisons to an anti-satellite test conducted by the Chinese last year that triggered criticism from the U.S. and other countries.

"This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings," Jeffrey said. "Specifically, there was enough of a risk for the president to be quite concerned about human life."

There might also be unstated military aims, some outside the administration suggested.

Similar spacecraft re-enter the atmosphere regularly and break up into pieces, said Ivan Oelrich, vice president for strategic security programs at the Federation of American Scientists.

He said, "One could be forgiven for asking if this is just an excuse to test an anti-satellite weapon."

A key issue when China shot down its defunct weather satellite was that it created an enormous amount of space debris.

"All of the debris from this encounter, as carefully designed as it is, will be down at most within weeks, and most of it will be down within the first couple of orbits afterward," said Jeffrey. "There's an enormous difference to spacefaring nations in ... those two things."

He and others dismissed suggestions that this was simply an attempt by the U.S. to flex its muscles, and that officials were overstating the toxic fuel threat.

Left alone, the satellite would be expected to hit Earth during the first week of March. About half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft would be expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and would scatter debris over several hundred miles.

If the missile shot is successful, officials said, much of the debris would burn up as it fell. They said they could not estimate how much would make it through the atmosphere.

They said the largest piece that would survive re-entry would be the spherical fuel tank, which is about 40 inches wide — assuming it is not hit directly by the missile.

The goal, however, is to hit the fuel tank in order to minimize the amount of fuel that returns to Earth, Cartwright said.

A Navy missile known as Standard Missile 3 would be fired at the spy satellite in an attempt to intercept it just before it re-enters Earth's atmosphere.

It would be "next to impossible" to hit the satellite after that because of atmospheric disturbances, he said.

Known by its military designation US 193, the satellite was launched in December 2006. It lost power and its central computer failed almost immediately afterward, leaving it uncontrollable. It carried a sophisticated and secret imaging sensor.

Software associated with the Standard Missile 3 has been modified to enhance the chances of the missile's sensors recognizing that the satellite is its target. The missile's designed mission is to shoot down ballistic missiles, not satellites.

Other officials said the missile's maximum range, while a classified figure, is not great enough to hit a satellite operating in normal orbits.

"It's a one-time deal," Cartwright said when asked whether the modified Standard Missile 3 should be considered a new U.S. anti-satellite technology.

He said that if an initial shoot-down attempt fails, the military would have about two days to reassess and decide whether to take a second shot.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told reporters that analysis shows the hydrazine tank would survive a fall to Earth under normal circumstances, much as one did when the space shuttle Columbia crashed.

"The hydrazine which is in it is frozen solid, as it is now. Not all of it will melt," he said.

If the tank hits the ground it will have been breached because the fuel lines will have broken off and hydrazine will vent out, he said.

Jeffrey said members of Congress were briefed on the plan earlier Thursday and that diplomatic notifications to other countries were being made by the end of the day.

"It should be understood by all, at home and abroad, that this is an exceptional circumstance and should not be perceived as the standard U.S. policy for dealing with errant satellites," said House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton.

Check out the article at Fox News.

If you're interested in getting a look at this satellite before we blow it out of the sky, it will be easy to see with the unaided eye. Just go check out the Satellite US 192 page at Heavens-Above.com for more info. I'm kinda hoping I can catch a glimpse of the explosion... provided I don't get a close-up view of any falling debris!

Labels: Military, Space, Technology

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January 16, 2008—The first of many planned images from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft is showing astronomers a side of Mercury no one's ever seen before.

Mercury is tough to view from Earth, since it's so close to the sun. And when the Mariner 10 probe flew past the innermost planet in 1974 and 1975, only one side of the body was facing sunlight.

That's because Mercury rotates three times during every two orbits, so the same side of the planet is lit up every other time it is nearest to the sun—including during all of Mariner's flybys.

Added up, these factors have meant that although Mercury sits only about 57 million miles (92 million kilometers) away from Earth, for more than 30 years scientists have had almost no details about its other face.

But on Monday MESSENGER, the first mission to Mercury since the 1970s, snapped the first image of the "missing" half of the rocky world.

Among many new sights, the picture features the full Caloris Basin, a huge impact basin more than 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) across that sits on the border between the known and previously unknown regions of the planet.

More unprecedented images of the tiny planet are expected as the MESSENGER craft completes three flybys of Mercury before settling into orbit in March 2011.

From that point on, writes astronomer Phil Plait on the Bad Astronomy blog, "we'll get as many images of this tiny, hot, battered, dense and neglected planet as we can handle."

Check out the article at National Geographic News.

Awesome new photos! I can't wait to see the map of Mercury once Messenger gets settled into orbit!

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

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Here we are, nearly eight years into the 21st century, and the most spectacular manned mission NASA can pull off is a trip to the International Space Station, a mere 210 miles above the Earth. Even the most ambitious part of NASA's current plans for human spaceflight involves visiting a celestial body we've already been to: the moon. Astronauts, space buffs and an unimpressed public hunger for space exploration that's more dramatic, more heroic, more new. Something like, say, landing astronauts on a distant rock hurtling through space at 15 miles per second.

That's exactly the kind of trip NASA has been studying. In fact, scientists at the space agency recently determined that a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid would be possible using technology being developed today. The mission wouldn't be easy. A crew of two or three would spend months riding in a cramped spacecraft before reaching their barren, nearly gravity-free target. That such a mission is even being considered, though, says a lot about the versatility of NASA's next fleet of spacecraft and the ambitions the agency has for them. If nothing else, it's a signal that space exploration could soon get much more exciting.

The Allure of an Asteroid

This wouldn't be our first trip to an asteroid. We've been visiting them by proxy for years now, using unmanned space probes. In 2000 NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft arrived at 433 Eros, which a century earlier became the first near-Earth asteroid known to man; five years later, the Japanese Hayabusa probe touched down on asteroid 25143 Itokawa.

Yet unmanned probes have their limitations. NEAR Shoemaker and Hayabusa gathered a good deal of data, but we still don't know the exact composition and internal structure of the asteroids they visited. And although Hayabusa was designed to collect two small samples from Itokawa, it's doubtful the probe will actually have anything onboard when it returns in 2010.

Humans, however, could be much more effective. Unlike robots, we adapt to our environment in real time. "We spend weeks at a rock with a Mars rover, trying to determine what it is," says Rob Landis, an engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center and one of the co-leaders of the mission feasibility study. "An astronaut could make that determination in a matter of seconds."

A human crew could travel across an asteroid more intelligently than a robot, making it easier to deploy scientific instruments, collect samples, and zero in on the areas of greatest interest. "No doubt, on a human mission we would characterize an asteroid better than we ever have," says Bruce Betts, director of projects for the Planetary Society.

Plenty of characterization needs to be done. While most asteroids are a safe distance from Earth (in an approximately 190-million-mile-wide expanse between Mars and Jupiter), Jupiter's gravitational tug and, less often, collisions between asteroids can kick these objects into orbits that pass uncomfortably close to Earth. The 270-meter-wide asteroid 99942 Apophis, for example, will pass within roughly 24,000 miles of Earth in 2029, and could come back for a direct hit in 2036.

And if we're to have any hope of deflecting asteroids, we need to know a lot more about them than we do now. First off: What, exactly, are they made of? Measurements taken by Hayabusa indicate that 40 percent of Itokawa's volume is empty space. If some asteroids are truly this porous, that's helpful information for any plan to destroy or deflect an Earth-bound object.

Averting the apocalypse isn't the only reason to study near-Earth asteroids, though. They could be floating gold mines for future deep-space expeditions. Preliminary observations suggest that some asteroids are rich in useful minerals and, better yet, frozen water—the most valuable resource a space traveler could hope to find. If water could be extracted from asteroids, it could not only be used for drinking, but also broken down into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for rocket fuel. "It might be an ultimate way to get to Mars," Landis says.

Check out the article and the slideshow at Popular Science.

Just image the resources that could be discovered and the knowledge that would be gained by this venture. Truly exciting stuff!

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

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The original Earth-rise - taken by William Anders
during the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon on December 24, 1968.

A Japanese moon probe has replicated the famous Apollo-era "Earth-rise" photograph with modern high-definition imaging.

The Kaguya spacecraft, also called Selene, has been orbiting 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the moon since Oct. 18.

The new Earth-rise image shows our blue world floating in the blackness of space. It is a still shot taken from video made by the craft's high-definition television (HDTV) for space.

A second image, taken from a different location in the lunar orbit, has been dubbed Earth-set. A related series of still images shows our planet setting beyond the lunar horizon.

In the Earth-set image, Earth appears upside-down; visible are Australia and Asia. A region near the moon's south pole is seen in the foreground.

The footage was taken Nov. 7 using equipment provided by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK).

The orbiter mission is run by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Its first high-definition videos of Earth were sent back last month. The mission objectives are to obtain scientific data on the origin and evolution of the moon and to develop the technology for future lunar exploration.

Check out the article at Space.com.

Awesome images... I want to get my hands on that video! Congrats to JAXA on a successful mission, and thanks for sharing!

Labels: History, Images, Space, Technology

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With a series of small beeps from a spiky globe 50 years ago Thursday, the world shrank and humanity's view of Earth and the cosmos expanded.

Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, was launched by the Soviets and circled the globe Oct. 4, 1957. The Space Age was born. And what followed were changes to everyday life that people now take for granted.

What we see on television, how we communicate with each other, and how we pay for what we buy have all changed with the birth of satellites.

Communications satellites helped bring wars and celebrations from thousands of miles away into our living rooms. When we go outside, weather satellites show us whether we need to carry an umbrella or flee a hurricane. And global positioning system satellites even keep us from getting lost on unfamiliar streets.

Sputnik gave birth to more than mere technology. The threat of a Soviet-dominated space spurred the U.S. government to increase tenfold money spent on science, education and research. Satellite pictures of Earth inspired an embryonic environmental movement.

Spy and communications satellites also kept the world at relative peace, experts say. Just last week, scientists used commercial satellite images to document human rights violations in Myanmar.

When Sputnik was launched, the public thought a space future would consist of gigantic space stations and colonies on the moon and other planets. The fear was warfare in space raining down on Earth.

"The reality is that the things we expected did not come to pass, and the things that we did not fathom changed our lives in so many ways that we cannot even envision a life that's different at this point," said Roger Launius, senior curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

America got a taste of that in May 1998. Just one communications satellite malfunctioned. More than 30 million pagers went silent. Credit card payment approvals didn't work. National Public Radio and CNN's Airport Television Network went off the air in some places.

"The civilization we live in today is as different from the one that we lived in the mid-1950s as the mid-1950s were from the American revolution," said Howard McCurdy, an American University public policy professor. "It's hard to imagine these things happening without space. I guess I could have a computer, but I wouldn't be able to get on the Internet."

All thanks to an 184-pound metal ball with spikes shot into space by a country that doesn't exist anymore.

"The launch of Sputnik actually triggered heightened interest among the American people, not only in space, but in science, mathematics and education," said White House science adviser John Marburger. "It also opened up people's eyes to the possibility that space could actually be used for something."

Check out the article at Fox News.

It's amazing the technology that hostility and competition can breed. Where would we be now if not for the World Wars and the Cold War? I don't think we could even imagine!

Sputnik was not the original plan by the Russians... they used rockets from their ICBM program and threw together the simple little sphere with a radio transmitter in an effort to beat the USA to space. The only thing that they actually accomplished was to show the world that it could be done and that they did it first, and to broadcast the "Beep Heard Around the World."

Check out the:

• Sputnik I Photo Gallery (Fox)
• Sputnik I Photo Gallery (ABC)
• Sputnik I Wiki Entry
• Original Audio of Sputnik's Beep

Labels: History, Space, Technology

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On what started as a normal mid-August Saturday night, residents of a small, remote Peruvian town saw a bright light streak across the sky, heard a resounding bang and suddenly found themselves at the center of a media frenzy.

Initial suspicions of an airplane crash quickly spiraled into widespread reports that a meteorite had plummeted to Earth and left a smoking, boiling crater whose supposedly noxious fumes were reported to have sickened curious locals who went to peer at the hole.

Geologists doubted that the crater was actually caused by a meteorite, and firm explanations were offered that a meteorite would not even emit fumes and that the "sickness" was likely a case of mass hysteria.

Nevertheless, onlookers far and wide were fascinated by the idea that this event could be a real-life "Andromeda Strain," after the 1969 novel by Michael Crichton in which a mysterious rock from outer space carries a lethal microbe that kills nearly everyone infected by it.

So what is it about things falling from the sky that fills us with such fear that we make ourselves sick with panic?

Mass Hysteria

Media reports of the number of locals afflicted by a "mysterious disease" — with symptoms such as nausea, headaches and sore throats — after visiting the crater figured in every news article about the Aug. 15 event, with some reporting that as many as 600 people had fallen ill.

But doctors who visited the site told the Associated Press they found no evidence that the crater had actually sickened such a large number of people.

If noxious fumes did emanate from the crater, they were most likely the result of a hydrothermal explosion that could have actually formed the crater, or were released from the ground if and when the meteorite struck, according to many geologists.

Arsenic is found in the subsoil in that area of Peru and often contaminates the drinking water there, according to Peruvian geologists quoted on Sept. 21 by National Geographic News.

Arsenic fumes released from the crater could have sickened locals who went to look, said one geologist who examined the site.

Some health officials suggest instead that the symptoms described by the locals, the large number of people reporting those symptoms and the apparently rapid spread have all the hallmarks of a case of mass hysteria.

"The Peruvian event seems to be a rare case where we may be witnessing collective anxiety that is approaching near hysteria," said Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University in England. "The major[ity] of the affected Peruvian town hinted that some of the mass anxiety is due to fear of imminent impacts and psychological stress, which is not surprising given the premature speculation and media hype."

Fear of Outer Space

Fear of a meteorite impact is nothing new — humans have long looked to the heavens with a wary eye.

"The fear of cosmic disaster, in particular cometary impacts, has existed in all cultures for millennia," Peiser told SPACE.com

But the space age revealed just how many dangers, including comets, meteors, asteroids and cosmic rays, await us in the final frontier.

"Only since the late 20th century, humankind has become aware of the risk posed by asteroids and comets," Peiser said. "Unfortunately, this risk has been wildly exaggerated by popular culture."

Our curiosity and fear of impact events has increased their coverage by the world media, Peiser says, which in turn has increased the number of meteorite impact reports, even when the evidence doesn't point that way.

While this fear is normal and understandable, it's been blown out of proportion so that the public thinks that impact risks are higher than they are, Peiser argues.

"Most people are simply not aware that we are making enormous progress in finding and identifying the population of Near Earth Objects and that the impact risk is thus diminishing year by year," Peiser said.

When meteorites have struck, they have never carried any hint of some mysterious space disease.

So much for the Andromeda Strain.

Check out the article at Fox News.

LOL! The Peruvian Chicken Little: "The sky is falling, the sky is falling... I think I'm coming down with something!"

Labels: Images, Space

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The moon should be developed as a sanctuary for civilization in case of a cataclysmic cosmic impact, according to an international team of experts.

NASA already has blueprints to create a permanent lunar outpost by the 2020s.

But that plan should be expanded to include a way to preserve humanity's learning, culture, and technology if Earth is hit by a doomsday asteroid or comet, said Jim Burke of International Space University (ISU) in France.

An impact of the size that wiped out the dinosaurs hasn't happened since long before the rise of humans, he pointed out.

Yet scientists' expanding knowledge of asteroids and craters left throughout the solar system has created a consensus that Earth remains vulnerable to a civilization-crushing collision.

This calls for the creation of a space age Noah's ark, Burke said.

Lunar Ark

Humans are just beginning to send trinkets of technology and culture into space. NASA's recently launched Phoenix Mars Lander, for example, carries a mini-disc inscribed with stories, art, and music about Mars.

The Phoenix lander is a "precursor mission" in a decades-long project to transplant the essentials of humanity onto the moon and eventually Mars.

The International Space University team is now on a more ambitious mission: to start building a "lunar biological and historical archive," initially through robotic landings on the moon.

Laying the foundation for "rebuilding the terrestrial Internet, plus an Earth-moon extension of it, should be a priority," Burke said.

The founders of the group Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC) agreed that extending the Internet from the Earth to the moon could help avert a technological dark age following "nuclear war, acts of terrorism, plague, or asteroid collisions."

But the group also advocates creating a moon-based repository of Earth's life, complete with human-staffed facilities to "preserve backups of scientific and cultural achievements and of the species important to our civilization," said ARC's Robert Shapiro, a biochemist at New York University.

"In the event of a global catastrophe, the ARC facilities will be prepared to reintroduce lost technology, art, history, crops, livestock, and, if necessary, even human beings to the Earth," Shapiro said.

"The establishment of an ARC sanctuary would for the first time provide a compelling purpose for the colonization of space."

If the international lunar outpost of the 2020s expands into a colony and then a city, "it is possible that a whole new phase in civilization may develop—the branching of history into one stream on Earth and another on the moon," ISU's Burke added.

This "dual-world expansion" could be within reach by the end of this century, he said.

"Look at the last century, when we went from the Wright brothers to the Apollo missions—along with man's great expansion of his understanding of the cosmos."

Check out the article at National Geographic News.

What an exciting venture! I think that it's an excellent contingency plan for the preservation of our civilization... and yet another justification for the space program!

Labels: History, Space, Technology

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GOLDEN, Colorado -- Architectural and engineering teams have begun shaping the look and feel of New Mexico's Spaceport America, taking the wraps off new images today that showcase the curb appeal of the sprawling main terminal and hangar at the futuristic facility.

Last month, a team of U.S. and British architects and designers had been recommended for award to design the primary terminal and hangar facility at Spaceport America - structures that symbolize the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport.

When the 100,000 square-foot (9,290 square-meter) facility is completed -- the centerpiece of the world's first, purpose-built, commercial spaceport -- the structures will serve as the primary operating base for Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceliner, and also as the headquarters for the New Mexico Spaceport Authority.

The terminal and hangar facility will also provide room for aircraft and spacecraft, and Virgin Galactic's operations facilities, including pre-flight and post-flight facilities, administrative offices, and lounges. The spacious maintenance hangar can hold two White Knight Two carrier aircraft and five SpaceShipTwo spaceliners - vessels now under construction at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.

Destination experience

The terminal and hangar facility are projected to cost about $31 million, and will provide a "Destination Experience" for visitors to Spaceport America. Virgin Galactic intends to sign a 20-year lease for approximately 84,000 square feet (7,803 square meters) in the building.

"The URS/Foster team presented us with a concept that blends sensitivity to the environment, cutting-edge technology and a stunning image and shape when viewed from high above," noted Kelly O'Donnell, chair of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority in a press statement last month.

The design chosen is a low-lying, striking bit of construction that uses natural earth as a berm, and relies on passive energy for heating and cooling, with photovoltaic panels for electricity and water recycling capabilities. A rolling concrete shell acts as a roof with massive windows opening to a view of the runway and spacecraft.

According to a press statement, the low-lying, organic shape resembles a rise in the landscape, and will use local materials and regional construction techniques.

"A careful balance between accessibility and privacy is achieved, as visitors and astronauts enter the building through a deep channel cut in the landscape," the statement noted. "The walls will form an exhibition area leading to a galleried level above the hangar that houses the spacecraft and on through to the terminal building. Natural light enters via skylights, with a glazed façade reserved for the terminal building, establishing a platform for spectacular views onto the runway."

Construction on the 100,000 square-foot hangar and terminal facility is scheduled to begin in 2008.

Check out the article at Space.com.

WOW... I can't wait to check this place out when it's finished! I think I'll take a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to space tourism. I'd like to have a destination other than "fly into space, enjoy the view and float around for a few minutes, fly home." Maybe these guys need to build a space station resort as the destination, then I'll go.

Be sure to check out the official Spaceport American website!

Also check out the Future of Flight feature at Space.com... interesting stuff!

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A robotic dirt and ice digger blasted off Saturday, August 4th, 2007 on a 422 million-mile journey to Mars that NASA hopes will culminate next spring in the first ever landing within the red planet's Arctic Circle.

The unmanned Delta rocket carrying the Phoenix Mars Lander rose from its seaside pad at 5:26 a.m., exactly on time, and hurtled through the clear moonlit sky. It was easily visible for nearly five minutes, a bright orange speck in a spray of stars.

If all goes as planned — a big if considering only five of the world's 15 attempts to land on Mars have succeeded — the spacecraft will set down on the Martian Arctic plains on May 25, 2008, and spend three months scooping up soil and ice, and analyzing the samples in minuscule ovens and mixing bowls.

The Phoenix Mars Lander won't be looking for evidence of life on Mars but rather traces of organic compounds in the baked and moistened samples, which would be a possible indicator of conditions favorable for life, either now or once upon a time.

If organic compounds are present on Mars, they're more likely to have been preserved in ice. That's why NASA is aiming for the planet's high northern latitudes, where ice is almost certainly lurking just beneath the surface.

Only about six inches of soft red soil should cover the ice, and so the digger shouldn't have to probe too deeply. The ice is expected to be as hard as concrete, and a drill on the scoop will help gather enough frozen samples. Some dirt and ice samples will be baked and their vapors analyzed. Other soil samples will be mixed with onboard water and the muddy soup examined by onboard microscopes.

"We're really going there just to understand whether the conditions might have been hospitable for microbial life at some point," said the University of Arizona's William Boynton, lead scientist for the oven experiment.

Even if organic molecules pop up, they could be from incoming meteorites, Boynton noted. "It is important, I think, to keep in mind that we are just looking for organic molecules to see if the conditions are right that they could survive," he said, "and that we aren't really going to be making any inference about whether these molecules are indicative of life."

Mars landings are especially risky. Only five of the 15 U.S., Russian and European attempts have worked, all of them American successes beginning with the 1976 Viking touchdowns. Given those odds, the Phoenix team said it did everything possible to test for failures and will continue to do so as the spacecraft flies to Mars. The entire mission costs $420 million.

NASA has never attempted to land a spacecraft on Mars at such a high northern latitude. A lander intended for the red planet's South Pole went silent immediately upon arrival in 1999. That failure, combined with the loss of the companion Mars orbiter, prompted NASA to cancel a 2001 lander mission. The parts from that scrapped mission were used for Phoenix, thus its name, which alludes to the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes.

Phoenix should help pave the way for human visitors, especially if it confirms the presence of water ice in large amounts near the pole, said Michael Meyer, NASA's lead Mars scientist. That would be a tremendous resource, he noted. But if organic matter is indeed found, it could pose a dichotomy: "As Mars gets more interesting, you may not want to send humans right away until you learn out a little bit more about the red planet and find out whether or not life ever got started there."

Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, whose novel "Green Mars" is one of dozens of writings going up on a disk aboard Phoenix, is thrilled to see another robot headed to Mars.

The photos beamed back by recent Mars spacecraft "are just astonishingly precise compared to what I got to deal with when I was working on my books," he said. "It's like putting on glasses after you've been semi-blind all your life."

"I'm quite confident that humans will go to Mars and I do think it's important," Robinson said Friday. "When people get there, they'll be able to do on the ground what maybe 100 robotic missions would have been able to do."

Check out the article at Fox News.

This is so interesting! What's more, it brings us one step closer to understanding Mars and sending manned missions there in the future!

Be sure to check out the Mars Exploration Timeline at the official Phoenix Mars Lander website.

Check out my previous Mars posts: Martian Terraforming and Water on Mars!

If you have never checked out Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, you don't know what you're missing!!!

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle Endeavour roared into orbit Wednesday carrying teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan, who was finally fulfilling the dream of Christa McAuliffe and the rest of the fallen Challenger crew.

Endeavour and its crew of seven rose from the seaside pad at 6:36 p.m. (2236 GMT), right on time, and pierced a solidly blue sky. They were expected to reach the international space station on Friday.

Once Endeavour was safely past the 73-second mark of the flight, the moment when Challenger exploded shortly after the call "Go at throttle up," Mission Control exclaimed, "Morgan racing toward space on the wings of a legacy."

Immediately after the shuttle reached orbit, Mission Control announced, "For Barbara Morgan and her crewmates, class is in session."

Morgan was McAuliffe's backup for Challenger's doomed launch in 1986 and, even after two space shuttle disasters, never swayed in her dedication to NASA and the agency's on-and-off quest to send a schoolteacher into space. She rocketed away in the center seat of the cabin's lower compartment, the same seat that had been occupied by McAuliffe.

McAuliffe's mother, Grace Corrigan, watched the launch on TV from her home in Massachusetts. "I'm very happy that it went up safely," she said. "We all send her our love," she added, her voice breaking.

More than half of NASA's 114 Teacher-in-Space nominees in 1985 gathered at the launch site, along with hundreds of other educators, all of them thrilled to see Morgan continue what McAuliffe began.

Also on hand was the widow of Challenger's commander, who said earlier in the day that she would be praying and pacing at liftoff and would not relax until Morgan was safely back on Earth in two weeks.

"The Challenger crew — my husband, Dick Scobee, the teacher Christa McAuliffe — they would be so happy with Barbara Morgan," said June Scobee Rodgers. "It's important that the lessons will be taught because there's a nation of people waiting, still, who remember where they were when we lost the Challenger and they remember a teacher was aboard."

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin met Tuesday night with several members of the Challenger astronaut families in town for the launch — although not the McAuliffe family — and said they did not seem worried.

"They didn't act like they came to see another tragedy," he said. "They're here to celebrate her having a chance to fly."

Check out the article at Fox News.

Congratulations Barbara Morgan and the Space Shuttle Endeavor STS-118 Crew! I'm sure that Christa McAuliffe would be happy that her mission is finally underway.

I remember witnessing the Challenger Disaster on the television in my 3rd Grade classroom. What a terrible day that was... I will never forget it. Words cannot express how happy I am to see this mission proceed!

Be sure to check out the STS-118 Mission feature at NASA.gov.

Labels: History, Images, Space

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