NASA will launch your name and photo into outer space for free

NASA is collecting digital photos and names from the public to launch on the two final space shuttle missions.

You may not be able to squeeze your whole body onto NASA's last two space shuttle missions in history, but your face can go – at no charge. All it takes is a digital photo and a few clicks of the mouse.

NASA is collecting digital photos and names from the public to launch on the two final space shuttle missions scheduled before the famed reusable space planes retire for good. The photographs and names can be uploaded to a new website under the "Face in Space" program.

"The Space Shuttle Program belongs to the public, and we are excited when we can provide an opportunity for people to share the adventure of our missions," NASA's space shuttle program chief John Shannon said in a statement. "This website will allow you to be a part of history and participate as we complete our final

NASA's next shuttle mission is slated to launch on Sept. 16 aboard Discovery, the oldest space shuttle in the three-orbiter fleet. That mission will deliver a robot assistant (called Robonaut 2) to the International Space Station along with a cargo pod refitted to serve as a permanent closet for the orbiting lab.

The U.S. space agency's final shuttle flight will be onboard Endeavour, the fleet's youngest spaceship. That mission is set to launch no earlier than Nov. 27 to deliver a $1.5 billion astrophysics instrument to hunt for antimatter galaxies and other phenomena in universe.

So far, NASA has launched 132 space shuttle missions since the fleet first began flying in April 1981. The most recent mission, the STS-132 mission last month, marked the 32nd and final mission for the space shuttle Atlantis.

NASA is retiring its space shuttle program after nearly 30 years to make way for a more ambitious plan of sending astronauts to visit an asteroid by 2025 and then move on to Mars.

The space agency plans to rely on commercial spaceships and rockets to launch American astronauts and cargo missions to the space station once the shuttle fleet retires. U.S. President Barack Obama has called for the cancellation of NASA's initially planned post-shuttle program Constellation, which aimed to send astronauts back to the moon.

read more

NASA And World Science Festival Host Special Tweetup In New York

NASA and the World Science Festival are inviting Twitter followers to a unique behind-the-scenes Tweetup at 2 p.m. EDT on Saturday, June 5, in New York City. The event will bring together 100 Twitter users with some of the world's best and brightest scientific minds.

Tweetup attendees will have the opportunity to speak with festival co-founder Brian Greene, Nobel-prize winning NASA astrophysicist John C. Mather, and astronaut Leland Melvin, known as @Astro_Flow on Twitter.

Registration is open from 10 a.m. EDT, Friday, May 21, to 10 a.m., Monday, May 24. NASA and the World Science Festival will randomly select 100 participants from Web registrants. Additional applicants will be placed on a waiting list. For more Tweetup and sign up information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup

The Tweetup is just one of 40 special programs scheduled during the third annual World Science Festival, which runs from June 2-6. The Tweetup also will include a social session for participants to mingle with fellow tweeps and the staff behind the tweets on @NASA and @WorldSciFest.

To follow NASA programs on Twitter, visit:

http://www.twitter.com/NASA

To follow the World Science Festival on Twitter, visit:

http://www.twitter.com/WorldSciFest

read more

Atlantis astronauts complete walk

Astronauts on the shuttle Atlantis's latest, and probably, last mission to the space station have made their first spacewalk.

Mission specialists Garrett Reisman and Steve Bowen ventured outside the platform to install an antenna and a robot tool tray.

Atlantis arrived at the station on Sunday following a picture perfect launch from Florida on Friday.

The ship's crew of six are spending the next week at the 350km-high outpost.

Other key tasks will include the replacement of six large batteries and the addition to the underside of the platform of a Russian docking and storage module.

The berthing on Tuesday of the Rassvet module to the Earth-facing port of the station's Zarya unit is likely to be the trickiest operation of the entire mission.

Cable niggle

The Atlantis crew were unable to do their usual full post-launch inspection of the orbiter's external surfaces on Saturday due to a snagged cable that prevented the ship's robotic arm from picking up a high-resolution laser imager and TV camera.

To compensate for some of the missing data, mission managers instead ordered more pictures than usual to be taken from the space station of the shuttle as it moved in for its docking.

Three station crew-members took a total of 398 photographs of Atlantis's heat-shield as the orbiter performed a back-flip. The pictures were then sent down to Earth for analysis.

The docking occurred at 1428 GMT, with the hatch opening and the movement of the Atlantis crew through into the International Space Station (ISS) taking place a little under two hours later.

"It's bigger than we remember and, speaking for myself, better than I remember," shuttle commander Ken "Hock" Ham was heard to say on the radio. "I love this place."

Atlantis is undertaking what many expect to be its last mission before retirement.
'Standby' role.

read more

How Chile's quake may possibly have shortened a day?

NASA scientists consider Chile's devastating earthquake may have speeded up the Earth's rotation and shortened the length of a day.

Researcher Richard Gross and his colleagues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California intended that Saturday's 8.8-magnitude quake could have cut 1.26 microseconds off the length of a day. Not that anyone would observe however - as that's one-millionth of a second.

How an earthquake could shorten a day explained below:

The Earth is not a perfect sphere. It is strained in slightly at the poles and bulges at the equator. As such, it rotates with a wobble just similar to a spinning top. However, changes in the distribution of mass can influence this spin. This is shown in the following figure:

In the same way a skater speeds up a spin by pulling in their limbs, a quake can make the Earth rotate quicker by nudging some of its mass closer to the planet's axis. Movements in atmosphere and oceans can have a related effect. This is shown in the following figure:


NASA calculates the quake in Chile shifted mass to such an extent that it altered the rotation rate to shorten a day by about 1.26 microseconds, or one millionth of a second. This is shown in the following figure:

---

View This Site: Vehicle Shipping

---

read more

NASA resists to End Constellation Lunar Program

NASA still hesitant how to end Constellation and move forward

NASA has been beset with financial issues and a sustained lack of innovation, but now faces the equally intimidating task of leaving behind the Constellation program.

President Obama and numerous space observers have been revolted at how poorly operated NASA has been in the past, with internal struggle and political opposition expected to make change even more difficult. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has acquired support from some politicians who said the White House is doing whatever it likes instead of working with experts.

As division of the agreement to end Constellation, NASA is expected to pay $2.5 billion to contractors previously working on the Ares Rockets, Altair lunar lander, and Orion space capsule. Though, it's mysterious how accurate the $2.5 billion estimate is, even though NASA relied on its own analysts and industry analysts to calculate the price.

NASA formerly hoped to return to the moon by 2025, as other space nations plan to send lunar spacecraft and manned missions in the same time frame. China, Japan, Russia, India, and several other developing space programs have uttered interest in landing on the moon by 2030 space industry observers think China will be the next country to reach the moon.

The 2011 budget has probable ended any chance of NASA returning to the moon, with private companies expected to help transport astronauts into space.

President Obama must now try to bind ongoing bickering as he works with NASA, private contractors, and legislators during his presidency. The U.S. space agency will now rely more on the private contractors until present funding problems are sorted out in the future.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

Final ground check on shuttle rocket completes: NASA

A Utah Company that makes powerful booster rockets for space travel has conducted its final ground test for the nation's vanishing space shuttle program.

The firing, with the 38.4-metre rocket attached horizontally to the ground, ignited more than 450,000 Kg of propellant in a split second and took about two minutes to burn off, according to Alliant Techsystems and NASA.

About 5,000 people came to northern Utah's cape near the Great Salt Lake to watch it fire, a company spokeswoman said.

Anytime you test a rocket out here, it's cute impressive, said Trina Patterson.

NASA officials said the test went easily but that data collected from hundreds of sensors have not yet been fully analysed.

The solid motor is the same type that will help lift the space shuttle in its last four scheduled missions.

The space shuttle test - the 52nd since testing started in 1977 - was planned to ensure safe liftoff for the upcoming shuttle flights.

These solid rocket motors have verified themselves to be the safest and most reliable human-rated launch system, Charlie Precourt, an ATK vice president and shuttle astronaut said in a report.

The test symbols a turn for the company and the nation's space program.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

NASA preparing GOES-P for March 2 launch

NASA is all ready to launch the NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-P (GOES-P) aboard a Delta IV rocket which will be launched by United Launch Alliance for Boeing Launch Services.

According to NASA, the spacecraft will be commences from Space Launch Complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The launch is embattled for March 2, during a launch window from 6:19 to 7:19 p.m. EST (3rd March, 04:49 to 05:49 a.m IST).

GOES-P represents the latest generation of environmental satellites built by Boeing for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the technical guidance and project management of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

GOES are the backbone of NOAA's severe weather forecasts, examining fast-changing conditions in the atmosphere that spawn hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and other hazards, said Steve Kirkner, GOES program manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, according to the report.

The GOES satellites present observations of more than 50% of the Earth as well as environmental information and severe weather warnings.

GOES-P is the third and last spacecraft to be launched in the GOES N Series of geostationary environmental weather satellites. Other than forecasting weather on Earth GOES-P with the help of the Solar X-Ray Imager (SXI) will constantly monitor solar conditions.

GOES-P once in orbit will be designated as GOES-15 and will thus provide timely ecological information to meteorologists and the public, as per the report.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

New NASA Web Page discards Light on Science of Warming World

PASADENA, Calif. -- Will 2010 be the warmest year on testimony? How do the latest U.S. "Snowmageddon" winter storms and record low temperatures in Europe fit into the bigger picture of long-term global warming? NASA has launched a new Web page to assist people better understand the causes and effects of Earth's changing climate.

The new "A Warming World" page hosts a series of new articles, videos, data visualizations, space-based imagery and interactive visuals that presents unique NASA perspectives on this topic of global importance.

The page includes aspect articles that explore the recent Arctic winter weather that has gripped the United States, Europe and Asia, and how El Nino and other longer-term ocean-atmosphere phenomena may influence global temperatures this year and in the future. A new video, piecing mutually the Temperature Puzzle, illustrates how NASA satellites monitor climate change and help scientists better appreciate how our complex planet works.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

NASA’s Cassini locates plethora of plumes and hotspots at Enceladus

Newly released images from last November’s swoop over Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have exposed a forest of new jets spraying from prominent fractures crossing the south polar region and yield the most full temperature map to date of one fracture.

The new images from the imaging science subsystem and the complex infrared spectrometer teams also comprise the best 3-D image ever obtained of a “tiger stripe,” a fissure that sprays icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds.

There are also views of regions not well-mapped formerly on Enceladus, including a southern area with crudely circular tectonic patterns.

Enceladus persists to astound, said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

With each Cassini flyby, we learn more about its great activity and what makes this weird moon tick, he added.

Scientists intended to use this flyby to look for new or smaller jets not visible in previous images. In one mosaic, scientists count more than 30 individual geysers, with more than 20 that had not been seen before.

A latest map that combines heat data with visible-light images shows a 40-kilometer (25-mile) segment of the longest tiger stripe, known as Baghdad Sulcus.

The map show the correlation, at the highest resolution yet seen, among the geologically youthful surface fractures and the anomalously warm temperatures that have been recorded in the South Polar Region.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

For NASA no easy reply for next space destination

For the record in decades, NASA has no particular space destination for its next stop, although it has lots of places it wants to go. Future space flight, NASA officials say, now depends on new rocket science and where it can acquire us.

That ambiguity may not sit well with Congress, which will be grilling NASA chief Charles Bolden on Wednesday and Thursday in the first hearings since the George W. Bush moon mission was shelved.

There are only little places in space where humans can go in the next couple of decades. NASA desires to go to all of them, with the ultimate destination, as always, being Mars.

The suite of destinations has not altered over time, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver said in an interview. The moon, asteroids, Mars - if you're going to go anyplace - is where we are going.

But with any route there is a first stop, so what is that?

Check back in a pair of years. That's when new technology should be developed sufficient to answer that question, Garver said. President Barack Obama plans to divert billions of dollars from the Bush moon plan to developing better rocketry.

The best mode to get anywhere ... is in fact invest in technologies that will reduce the cost, reduce the time, reduce the risk and so forth, Garver said.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

Station Crew have the benefit of Off-Duty Time

(NASA) – In the wake of problems Sunday with the International Space Station’s Command and Control computers, the crew had a typically off-duty day Monday, taking time for an emergency egress drill that is conducted occasionally to maintain crew proficiency.

Space shuttle Endeavour is home behind two weeks in space, having delivered the final U.S. module and a “room with a view” to the station. STS-130 Commander George Zamka showed Endeavour to a landing at the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility at 10:20 p.m. EST Sunday, to cover up a 5.7-million-mile mission.

Meanwhile, flight controllers in Houston’s Mission Control Center secluded the issue that caused the three Command and Control computers to switch their roles as primary, backup and standby units.

Station Spacecraft Communicator Stan Love told Expedition 22 Commander Jeff Williams that the glitches were based by S-band telemetry software that takes Columbus laboratory data puts it into packets and sends it to the ground. For now, that particular piece of code will be avoided and flight controllers will command the remaining systems back to their normal configurations, including Ku-band communications.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

NASA astronomers loosen secret of the supernova

Supernovas have long been used as “cosmic mile markers” to measure the growth of the universe, but NASA scientists now claim that they have finally exposed what actually sparks the massive stellar explosions.

A team of astronomers led by Marat Gilfanov used NASA’s Chandra X-Ray laboratory to study supernovas in five near elliptical galaxies and the central region of the Andromeda galaxy — a spiral galaxy nearby to our own, the Milky Way.

They found that most Type 1a supernovas are sparked by the merging of two white dwarf stars, or the collapsed remains of old stars. The stars become uneven when they exceed their weight limit which causes a stellar explosion, the Telegraph reported.

It was a major discomfiture that we did not know how they (supernovas) worked. Now we are beginning to appreciate what lights the fuse of these explosions, said Gilfanov, an astronomer from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany.

Previously it was consideration that Type 1a supernovas were also caused by accretion — when the gravity of a star draws in enough material from a sun-like companion and becomes unstable.
Though, Akos Bogdan of the Max Planck Institute said: If the supernovas were formed by accretion, the galaxies would be roughly 50 times brighter in x-rays than actually observed.

It is not clear whether merging is also the primary source of supernovas in spiral galaxies, and further study is required, he said. Pairs of white dwarfs are tremendously difficult to find. Once the white dwarfs spiral into expanses when they are about to merge, it takes just a few tenths of a second for them to explode.

The study is available in the latest edition of the journal Nature.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

NASA fetches the Dark Side of the Sun to Your iPhone

As the sun reawakens from an anomalously calm period, keep track of solar flares, sunspots and coronal mass ejections with a new iPhone app that puts the real-time status of the sun in your hand. This is over cool, Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, said in a press release. For the first time ever, we can observe the sun as a living, breathing 3-dimensional sphere.

With the free 3D Sun app, you can set your phone to attentive you when a new solar flare erupts; watch video of a solar prominence or a comet heading into the sun. You can influence an image of the sun in three-dimensions with your finger.

The data is streamed to Earth by NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft which monitor the sun from two different spots, one ahead of Earth in its orbit and one after, giving stereoscopic images to give a sort of three-dimensional view, comparable to the way our two eyes do.

The pair covers 87 percent of the sun’s surface, efficiently giving us a view of the “dark side” of the sun. This means anyone can see on their phone parts of the sun that even the most influential telescopes on Earth can’t see.

The STEREO spacecraft watch the tremendous ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum because the most exciting solar phenomena show up best at these wavelengths. That’s why the 3D sun seems false-color green, said STEREO program scientist Lika Guhathakurta in a press release. These are not white-light imagery.

The team plans to release 3D Sun 2.0 which will have higher-res images and data from other wavelengths.

This is the second free iPhone app NASA has unconfined recently. NASA’s first app fetch you load of space photos from the Hubble Space Telescope and other NASA missions, videos from NASA TV of science updates, mission activity, rocket launches and other events, mission status updates and live countdowns clocks and you can track the International Space Station as well.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

Foremost images from Nasa's Wise infrared sky probe

---

NASA has published the foremost images from its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or Wise, which has been scanning the skies since January. Wise has worked beautifully, said the agency's Ed Weiler in Washington DC.

The images include a comet, a "star factory" 20,000 light years away in our Milky Way galaxy and our adjacent large neighbour, the Andromeda spiral galaxy. Wise will search on until October when its provisions of frozen coolant for chilling instruments will run out.

It's hoped it will find many more comets and, from them, give information about the birth of our Solar System. It's also appearing for asteroids and cool stars called brown dwarfs.

By the time the mission ends the explorer should have scanned the sky one-and-a-half-times with its "infrared goggles", enlightening objects not visible to the naked eye.

All these pictures tell a story concerning our dusty origins and destiny, said Peter Eisenhardt, Wise project director at Nasa in California.

Wise sees dirty comets and rocky asteroids tracing the configuration and evolution of our solar system. We can map thousands of forming and dying solar systems diagonally our entire galaxy.
We can see patterns of star formation across other galaxies, and waves of star-bursting galaxies in clusters millions of light years left, he explained.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping Auto Transport

---

read more

Patrick, Behnken comprehensive Final STS-130 Spacewalk

Mission Specialists Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken begin the third and final spacewalk of the STS-130 mission at 9:15 p.m. EST Tuesday and finished at 3:03 a.m Wednesday.

Behnken opened the second of two ammonia loops to allow coolant to flow during Tranquility and disconnected temporary power cables. Patrick installed heater and data cables from the new node to Pressurized Mating Adapter 3, now situated on Tranquility’s outboard docking port.

Next the two spacewalkers removed the lagging from the cupola’s seven windows, and Patrick unconfined launch locks from the windows so Pilot Terry Virts could open the window shutters from inside the module for the first time.

Other tasks for the spacewalk integrated installation of handrails and other spacewalk support equipment on Tranquility, routing video signal converter cables from the S0 Truss to the Zarya module to maintain future Canadarm2 operations from a base on the Russian segment of the station, and removal of clamps and a flex hose rotary coupler on the P1 Truss.

During the spacewalk, station Commander Jeff Williams and other crew members sustained outfitting the Tranquility and cupola modules and performed closeout operations on components of the regenerative environmental control system prior to the last four racks of that system are relocated into Node 3 on Flight Day 11. Early Wednesday morning, Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov replaced a futile vacuum valve in the Russian carbon dioxide removal unit.

The STS-130 mission included three spacewalks and the release of a connecting module that increases the station’s interior space. Node 3, known as Tranquility, provides extra room for crew members and many of the station's life support and environmental control systems. Attached to the node is a cupola, which is a robotic control station with six windows about its sides and another in the center that will provide a panoramic view of Earth, celestial objects and visiting spacecraft. The space station is at present about 90 percent complete.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping Auto Transport

---

read more

Bay Window View fitted on Space Station

A multi-window cupola was effectively moved Monday from the new Tranquility module's outboard port to an Earth-facing hatch where the observation deck will provide bay-window views.

After resolving problems with stuck bolts and sticky latches, Astronauts Kay Hire and Terry Virts - operating the space station's robot arm - moved the cupola into position for add-on at Tranquility's nadir port.

The cupola features six canted windows and a middle overhead pane. While it will give station crews panoramic views of Earth, the primary objective is to give robot arm operators direct views of approaching unmanned cargo ships.

Initial attempts to isolate the cupola from Tranquility's outboard port ran into a snag late Sunday, reports CBS News Space Analyst Bill Harwood, when at least two motorized bolts in the docking mechanism failed to unfasten. The frequent berthing mechanism features four sets of motorized bolts.

We had some early challenges with unbolting the cupola from the port side and that was essentially due to higher than expected running torques on the bolts, said shuttle Flight Director Kwatsi Alibaruho. The cupola was bolted to the port side of node 3 on the ground so we just had to apply somewhat higher torque than what we had expected, just by a few newton-meters.

The control software, in its evasion mode, was limited to applying a maximum torque of about 22 foot-pounds. When that didn't work, flight controllers sent information to increase the torque and the bolts released at about 27 foot-pounds. So not a problem at all, just a slight adjustment we had to make, Alibaruho said.

After the common berthing mechanism detached, astronauts Kay Hire and Terry Virts, operating the space station's robot arm, stimulated the cupola into position for attachment at Tranquility's nadir port.

Motorized bolts drove home in two stages, carrying out the attachment procedure at 1:31 a.m. The astronauts planned to work on outfitting the foyer between harmony and the cupola later this morning, but they do not plan to open the emerge and go inside until overnight Monday.

Launch locks and defensive window covers will be released during a spacewalk overnight Tuesday. Computer displays and apparatus for controlling the station's robot arm will be moved into the cupola overnight Wednesday.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

NASA launched sun watching satellite

NASA has effectively launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory, a satellite that will take ultra-high-resolution pictures of the sun and help forecast solar storms.

The investigate was launched aboard an Altas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida Thursday at 10:23 a.m. An effort to launch the satellite Wednesday had to be scrubbed because of high winds.

Once in synchronous orbit over its ground station in New Mexico, the SDO will beam back pictures of the sun at an exceptional resolution of 4,096 by 4,096 pixels, 10 times better resolution than HDTV. The SDO will take one picture at eight different wavelengths each 10 seconds.

Other instruments on the satellite will measure the sun's brightness in the tremendous ultraviolet light spectrum, map the sun's magnetic fields and watch sound waves passing over its surface to probe its inner workings. The 290-kilogram satellite has no on-board storage and will beam down 1.5 terabytes of data — adequate to fill about 60 Blu-ray discs — every day, more than any other NASA mission. Two 18-metre dishes at the New Mexico base will obtain the transmissions.

With its solar panels extensive, the SDO satellite is more than six meters wide and 4.5 meters long. Its five-year mission is to examine the sun's magnetic field and how it generates solar wind, solar flares and other phenomena, recognized as space weather. Our sun affects our lives more and more as we depend progressively on technology, said NASA project scientist William Dean Pesnell.

Space weather can influence communications, power grids, GPS satellites and other technological systems on Earth. The $856-million US instrument is the first mission of NASA's Living with a Star program, which has a goal of studying how the performance of the sun affects life on Earth.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

Astronauts examine shuttle on way to space station

Endeavour's astronauts inspected their ship early Tuesday for any launch damage as they raced toward a meeting with the International Space Station.

Scarcely a day after blasting into orbit, the space shuttle crew used a 15-metre, laser-tipped boom held by the Canadarm to check the thermal shielding on the wings and nose.

A few pieces of foam insulation broke off the exterior fuel tank during Monday morning's launch, as well as a narrow 30-centimetre strip. But there was no indication anything strike the shuttle.
A foam strike brought down Columbia in 2003, and orbiting astronauts have carried out thorough inspections ever since. Commander George Zamka and his crew performed the custom survey to ensure the launch cameras did not miss something.

The long, arduous process got underway late Monday and prolonged into Tuesday morning. The astronauts were in the home extend — surveying Endeavour's left wing — when the screens rapidly went black. Mission Control worked with pilot Terry Virts to get all back in order. The disruption lasted just a half-hour.

Flight director Kwatsi Alibaruho said nothing of concern was jumping out in the survey, but strained that the data needed to be analyzed by experts.

Endeavour will catch up with the space station early Wednesday, performing a slow-motion spin for the cameras before docking. The close-up pictures of the shuttle's belly — impossible to see any other way in such detail — will provide even more information concerning Endeavour's health.

The shuttle is delivering a new room to the space station, as well as the largest window ever launched, part of a fancy vaulted compartment. Collectively, the additions are worth more than $400 million US.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

Solar Dynamics Observatory Set intended for Launch

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is set to commence on Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 10:26 a.m. EST as of Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Launch willingness Review was conducted Monday morning and the "go" was given to proceed, with no technical issues reported.

Weather for launch day stands at 60 percent "no go" at liftoff time due to storm, cloud width and a slight chance of showers. Launch-time temperature ought to be a chilly 51 degrees.

A prelaunch news meeting will be held at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, followed by the mission science briefing. Both will be conceded live on NASA TV. Live reporting of the launch will begin at 7:15 a.m. Wednesday on NASA TV and the launch blog.

SDO's unparalleled mission will study the sun and its dynamic performance. On-board telescopes will inspect sunspots and solar flares with more pixels and colors than any other observatory in the history of solar physics. And SDO will expose the sun’s hidden secrets in an abnormal rush of pictures.

---

View This Site: Car Shipping

---

read more

Endeavour, Crew Prep for STS-130

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians are completing the shuttle interface and hydraulic leak tests in the Vehicle Assembly Building today.

Space shuttle Endeavour and its solid rocket boosters will be powered down and prepared for their move, or rollout, to Launch Pad 39A scheduled for early January 2010.

The six STS-130 mission astronauts will carry out a variety of administrative duties this morning at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Commander George Zamka and Pilot Terry Virts also will practice shuttle landing techniques in T-38 jets and NASA's Shuttle Training Aircraft.

read more