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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronaut Sunita Williams is stuck in space — at least temporarily. She flew up to the international space station last December planning to come home in early July after a seven-month stay. When she comes back now will be a bit later than she planned. The problem is that a hail storm that damaged the fuel tank of the space shuttle Atlantis has knocked NASA's flight schedule for the year out of whack. Her ticket home, space shuttle Endeavour, may get off the ground several weeks later than its originally scheduled June 28 launch. So Williams...

When Mark Polansky reaches space, he'll have brought a little piece of Jersey with him. The astronaut is scheduled to lift off tonight from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. He is commanding the STS-116 mission to the International Space Station. But his journey began as a boy growing up by Roosevelt Park in North Edison, a pharmacist's son who devoured books on science, was glued to the television for all the early space launches and pretended a cardboard box was a spaceship. "I loved geography. I loved the idea of exploring," Polansky said. "I figured...

This is will be the official thread for the Space Shuttle Discovery landing at KSC or either at Edwards or White Sands.

For the first time in more than five years, members of the general public may have the opportunity to watch a space shuttle landing in person at Edwards Air Force Base. The base, the primary backup landing site for the shuttle, will open its gates Friday to view the return of Discovery, if conditions prevent using the main landing site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Due to limited supplies on board Discovery, and a worsening weather forecast for Saturday, shuttle officials are pushing for a Friday landing. Because the landing site decision will not be made until 60 to...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Fresh from the success of an impromptu spacewalk, shuttle Discovery's astronauts awoke Tuesday to the strains of "Zamboni" by the Gear Daddies and got ready to undock from the international space station. "We can't offer you a Zamboni to drive today," said Mission Control astronaut Shannon Lucid, referring to the ice rink machine immortalized in the Minnesota band's country rock song. "But if you look at today's flight plan, you will see that we are offering you the opportunity to fly the shuttle for half a lap flyaround. That's not a bad tradeoff." Space shuttle Discovery's...

HOUSTON - The space shuttle Discovery crew was awakened by the Beach Boys hit "Good Vibrations" on Monday to get them ready for a day of work trying to shake loose a jammed solar energy array. Two spacewalking astronauts were scheduled to work on the stuck solar wing, with instructions from their counterparts inside the international space station and in Mission Control. It was to be the fourth spacewalk of this now 13-day mission. NASA added it to the schedule on Saturday after several attempts to fully fold the solar array were unsuccessful. U.S. astronaut Robert Curbeam was poised to...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA approved conducting a fourth, unplanned spacewalk if astronauts were unable to get a stubborn solar array to fold up into a box properly Saturday. The extra spacewalk, if carried out on Monday, would delay space shuttle Discovery's landing at the Kennedy Space Center by a day to Friday, and push back other activities such as undocking and a late inspection of the shuttle's heat shield. NASA managers made the decision as U.S. astronauts Robert Curbeam and Sunita "Suni" Williams were midway into a six-hour spacewalk. It was Curbeam's third spacewalk in a week and Williams'...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA began retracting via remote control a 115-foot solar panel on the international space station Wednesday, likening the tricky task to folding a road map back up and stuffing it in the glove compartment. The electricity-generating solar array served as a temporary power source aboard the orbiting outpost. NASA needed to move it out of the way so that a new, permanent pair of solar wings could rotate in the direction of the sun. The folding-up began shortly before 1:30 p.m. EST and was expected to take about five hours. A crease developed when the array...

HOUSTON - The 2-ton, $11 million addition astronauts have delivered to the international space station may be one of the smaller pieces of the structure, but even supporting actors are vital. The addition will act both as a spacer between a pair of the station's power-generating solar arrays and as a channel through which lines of electricity, data and cooling liquid will run, NASA said. Two astronauts were scheduled to install the addition on Tuesday, in the first of three harrowing spacewalks during the 12-day mission that left Earth on Saturday. The space shuttle Discovery crew are continuing the assembly...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - After a two-day journey, space shuttle Discovery reached the international space station Monday for a weeklong stay to continue construction on the orbiting lab and rotate out a crew member. Discovery commander Mark Polansky closed in on the station at a tenth of a foot per second before latches automatically linked the spacecraft as they flew 220 miles above southeast Asia during a sunrise. "Capture confirmed," Polansky told Mission Control and the space station. About an hour before docking, Discovery did a slow back flip so the space station crew could photograph its belly for any...

Dec. 11, 2006 — - Moving ever so slowly -- albeit at 17,200 miles an hour relative to Earth's surface -- the astronauts of Space Shuttle Discovery docked with the International Space Station, 200 miles out in space. Having made the first night launch since the Columbia accident in 2003, the astronauts also had no problem approaching the giant station as they passed over the night side of Earth. "Houston, Discovery," radioed the shuttle crew, "no trim required, we're initiating final approach." A Tenth of a Foot Per Second The shuttle's commander, astronaut Mark Polansky, slowed his approach to less...

Will the Shuttle go or not... It all depends on the weather...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Space shuttle Discovery's seven astronauts arrived at the Kennedy Space Center Sunday for a final stretch of training and preparations before they are launched on a 12-day mission to rewire the international space station. Liftoff was set for Thursday at 9:35 p.m. EST. It will be the first night launch in four years. "We're going to go ahead and hopefully have one heck of a night show to give everybody this Thursday night," Mark Polansky, Discovery's commander, said after he and his crew arrived from Houston aboard five training jets. Polansky and pilot William Oefelein will...