January 20, 2010 - 11:17 am
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The container with Tranquility is lifted into pad 39A’s gantry this morning. Credit: NASA-KSC
The Tranquility module that’ll be a new room with a view for the International Space Station was trucked to space shuttle Endeavour’s launch pad overnight, destined for blastoff next month.
Packed in a special transport canister shaped like the shuttle’s 60-foot-long payload [...]
January 20, 2010 - 10:15 am
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The price of Nasa’s Space Shuttle fleet has just been slashed from £25.8m Credit: Getty
It flew faster and higher than any machine in history and was the was the ultimate boy’s toy, but at $42 million (£25.8 m) it was beyond most budgets. But now the price of Nasa’s soon-to-be redundant space shuttles has [...]
January 20, 2010 - 1:17 am
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Still hoping for that Jetsons future?
Ruh-roh, as the Jetsons’ dog, Astro, might put it.
Just six years ago, President Bush laid out a vision of space exploration that harked back to NASA’s halcyon days built on astronauts as explorers. Bush wanted to sling them from low Earth orbit to a base on the moon and then, [...]
January 20, 2010 - 12:15 am
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This year begins a new decade, but it also will see the end of the United States’ trailblazing approach to manned spaceflight: the space shuttle program.
“In just five more flights, a chapter of history will be forever closed,” says Mike Mullane, a three-time NASA space shuttle astronaut and author of Riding Rockets. “It will be [...]
January 16, 2010 - 2:17 am
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Coming to an IMAX theatre near you soon is this astonishing 3D movie film from NASA.
Served up in delicious high definition 3D, the film promises to take viewers on a, “journey through distant galaxies to explore the grandeur and mysteries of our celestial surroundings.”
NASA IMAX 3D movie features astonishing Hubble repair footageEven better, there’s some [...]
January 16, 2010 - 2:15 am
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The U.S. military is urgently dispatching a Navy aircraft carrier and large-deck amphibious ship, as well as military transport aircraft and assessment teams, to Haiti to assist with the earthquake relief effort, a senior U.S. military official said Wednesday.
“We are massing our forces to provide as much support as we can as quickly as we [...]
January 14, 2010 - 12:40 pm
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At the moment, no programme for its use nor any funding has been put in place to support the platform beyond 2015.
But the European Space Agency’s (Esa) Director General, Jean-Jacques Dordain, told the BBC the uncertainty was undermining best use of the ISS.
He said he was persuaded of its worth, and expressed the desire to [...]
January 13, 2010 - 1:21 am
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A German-built telescope is exposed during a flight of NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy 747SP on Dec. 18, 2009. Credit: Carla Thomas/NASA
On Dec. 18, NASA for the first time opened the doors of its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy in flight.
The observatory, known by its acronym, SOFIA, is a modified Boeing 747 equipped with [...]
January 13, 2010 - 1:18 am
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NASA has big plans for its Mars Exploration Program.
As it decides the future of one of the two rovers exploring the planet, the agency is looking to the launch of the newest generation of robotic explorer next year.
In addition, NASA tells CNN Radio that the agency is close to a deal to merge its Mars [...]
January 12, 2010 - 1:12 am
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Space Shuttle Endeavour rolls to launch pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center January 6, 2010 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Coolant hoses on board the to-be-launched Tranquility module failed pre-launch checks. Credit: Matt Stroshane / Getty Images
NASA is still hoping to launch the shuttle Endeavour in early February as engineers scramble to repair broken [...]