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NASA Delays Atlantis Mission to Hubble Telescope
NASA is delaying next month's shuttle launch to the Hubble Space Telescope because of problems stemming from Hurricane Ike and replacement parts for the observatory. NASA is delaying next month's shuttle launch to the Hubble Space Telescope because of problems stemming from Hurricane Ike and re... more
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NASA may have to abandon Space Station
NASA is about out of options for keeping U.S. astronauts in space after 2011.
Unless President Bush intervenes, or whoever succeeds him in January immediately steps into the space arena, the dismantling of the space shuttle program will be too far along to reverse course.
The three-ship fleet is scheduled for retirement in 2010. NASA wants to use the shuttle's budget for developing replacement ships that can go to the moon as well as to the International Space Station. The new vehicle, called Orion, won't be ready until 2015 -- five years after the shuttle stops flying.
NASA had counted on buying Russian Soyuz capsules to transport crews to the space station during the gap. But in recent interviews, NASA administrator Michael Griffin said he has no hope Congress will pass the legislation needed for NASA to keep the Soyuz assembly lines running.
"My guess is that there is going to be a lengthy period with no U.S. crew on (the space station) after 2011," Griffin wrote in an email to top NASA managers that was posted on the Orlando Sentinel's Web site.
The agency cannot purchase Russian rockets unless it receives an exemption from a trade sanction Congress levied in 2005 after Russia reportedly helped Iran develop nuclear weapons technology. Griffin has said the exemption to the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act, needs to be in place by early 2009 to keep U.S. and partner astronauts in orbit.
U.S. outrage over Russia's handling of a dispute with neighboring Georgia has pretty much nixed any chance Congress will lift the trade ban again, Griffin said.
"In a rational world, we would have been allowed to pick a shuttle retirement date to be consistent with Ares/Orion availability … and we would have been provided the necessary budget to make it so.
"The rational approach didn't happen, primarily because for OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy) and OMB (Office of Management and Budget) retiring the Shuttle is a jihad rather than an engineering and program management decision," Griffin wrote.
Despite the dire forecast, NASA's associate administrator for space operations Bill Gernstenmaier said there was still time to work out a solution. For now, the shuttle program's top priority needs to be next month's mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.
"We need to step back from the hum of the outside world and focus on this Hubble mission," Gerstenmaier said. NASA is about out of options for keeping U.S. astronauts in space after 2011. ... more -
A Hubble Anniversary and a Successful Collider Test
There is news from both inner space and outer space.
On Monday morning at 7:42 Eastern time, the Hubble Space Telescope began its 100,000th trip around the Earth in what has been a storied 18-year career. In honor of that milestone, and the telescope’s own perpetual youth and its ability to rise from the ashes of disaster and political misfortune, a group of astronomers led by Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute took a special picture of the swirling clouds of starbirth in a nearby galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.
There, 170,000 light-years from here, near a star cluster known as NGC 2074, glowing but not twinkling in the upper left corner of this picture taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, clouds are condensing in what the astronomers called in a press release “a firestorm of raw stellar creation,” perhaps triggered by a recent supernova explosion.
Meanwhile, 300 feet below ground outside Geneva, the world’s largest and most costly physics experiment took another step toward a birth of its own. Scientists and engineers at CERN fired the first beam of protons into the lab’s long-awaited Large Hadron Collider and sent them successfully part way around the collider’s 17-mile racetrack.
That is a few million protons coming at you in the image captured by the collider’s “beam television,” a few yards into the collider from the beam injection point Friday evening.
Shortly thereafter, the “television” camera was removed and on the first try, the protons made it all the way to their destination, passing through Alice, one of the giant detectors built to observed proton collisions. A Web site summary of the evening’s activities ended with the word “beer.” Indeed, in this photo, Lyn Evans of CERN, who has been project director for the collider for 14 years and $8 billion now, can be seen handing out champagne.
Physicists hope to start running protons around the entire ring on Sept. 10 and build up to smashing them together at energies of five trillion electron volts apiece in the month or two after that. There is news from both inner space and outer space. ... more -
Hubble completes 100,000th orbit, takes yet another breathtaking photo
Hubble, without a doubt the most spectacular digital camera in the solar system, has completed its 100,000th orbit. To celebrate, scientists pointed the telescope to NGC 2074, a spectacular star birthplace 170,000 light-years away, right next to the Tarantula nebula Hubble, without a doubt the most spectacular digital camera in the solar system, has completed its 100,000th orbit. To celebrate, scie... more
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3 Questions :: Hubble's Universe
Discovery-News.com: The Hubble Space Telescope sees into space like we wish we could. Discovery Space Producer Dave Mosher finds out how Hubble’s changed what we know about the universe. Jorge Ribas produces. Discovery-News.com: The Hubble Space Telescope sees into space like we wish we could. Discovery Space Producer Dave Mosher finds out h... more
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Top 5 NASA Videos!
Discovery-News.com: In celebration of NASA turning the 5-0, Discovery News presents our top 5 favorite out-of-this world NASA video moments. Discovery-News.com: In celebration of NASA turning the 5-0, Discovery News presents our top 5 favorite out-of-this world NASA video mo... more
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Hubble Awaits Final Tune-Up
Discovery-News.com: With one last Hubble servicing mission left, Discovery Space Producer Dave Mosher and Jorge Ribas find out exactly what upgrades await the space telescope. Discovery-News.com: With one last Hubble servicing mission left, Discovery Space Producer Dave Mosher and Jorge Ribas find out exactly... more
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Explore The Universe From The Comfort Of Your Workstation
I can't download it yet, my present computer is too "old" and doesn't meet the requirements, but as soon as I acquire a new computer with dual-core and loads of storage, the first thing I'll do is to go to http://www.worldwidetelescope.org and download it. Click on the image to get your first taste of the World Wide Telescope! I can't download it yet, my present computer is too "old" and doesn't meet the requirements, but as soon as I acqu... more
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NASA’s Clean Room: Last Stop for New Hubble Hardware
A very clean room.
Astronauts will travel to the Hubble Space Telescope this summer, installing new instruments and other components during Servicing Mission 4. But before these components are cleared for launch, they go through one final checkup in the world’s largest clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
...all these features afford the Goddard clean room a Class-10,000 rating. That means any cubic foot of air in the clean room has no more than 10,000 particles floating around in it larger than 0.5 microns.
How small it that? A micron is one-millionth of a meter, and typical “outside” air has millions of such particles. (A human hair is between 20 and 200 microns wide.) If an inch ballooned to the size of the Empire State Building, a 0.5-micron bit of dust would still be smaller than a penny on the sidewalk. A very clean room. ... more -
The Eye of Sauron
Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have released this amazing Hubble image a ring of dust around star Fomalhaut, described by New Scientist as resembling "the Great Eye of Sauron"
There's no word on The Shire yet, I think they're still looking... Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have released this amazing Hubble i... more -
One Last Ride to the Hubble
Here's a link to a story about the Hubble Telescope and its remarkable ups and downs since it was first powered on in 1990. There is plenty of information in this story that I hadn't read elsewhere (ymmv). Here's a link to a story about the Hubble Telescope and its remarkable ups and downs since it was first powered on in 1990. There... more
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One Last Ride to the Hubble
Published: December 4, 2007
GREENBELT, Md. Its the last roundup for the Peoples Telescope.
Next August, after 20 years of hype, disappointment, blunders, triumphs and peerless glittering vistas of space and time, and four years after NASA decided to leave the Hubble Space Telescope to die in orbit, setting off public and Congressional outrage, a group of astronauts will ride to the telescope aboard the space shuttle Atlantis with wrenches in hand.
That, at least, is the plan. Published: December 4, 2007 GREENBELT, Md. Its the last roundup for the Peoples Telescope. ... more
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