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A 32-year-old man was found guilty after he reportedly purchased Chinese parts for a NASA space launch project and tried to cover it up. Seongchan “Steven” Yun of Redondo Beach, California was charged with providing a false document to a federal agency and now faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison, according to the United States Department of Justice. Yun worked for the CBOL Corporation which provides parts and materials to the aerospace industry, including NASA. Yun was responsible for a contract that would provide stainless steel tubing to carry rocket fuel in support of NASA’s Space...

(CNN)—NASA's rockets are astounding machines, capable of blasting into space at thousands of miles per hour and withstanding temperatures twice the melting point of steel. But they can't take off underwater. Rising sea levels caused by melting ice caps threaten to disrupt a handful of NASA launch sites along U.S. coastlines, the space agency warns. In the coming years, launch facilities at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and other places may need to be retrofitted or even moved inland, NASA says. "Every NASA center has its own set of vulnerabilities, and some are more at risk than others," NASA climatologist...

Technicians had worn them for decades as they prepared the space shuttles for their move from Kennedy Space Center’s three Orbiter Processing Facilities to the towering Vehicle Assembly Building, and eventually the launch pad. “Bunnysuits,” those white coveralls with floppy hoods and rubber-banded booties, were designed to keep dirt and debris from contaminating the orbiter interiors. But on this summer day in one Orbiter Processing Facility, technicians working inside Discovery’s crew module wore street clothes. No need to worry about contamination: Discovery would not be returning to space. After flying 148 million miles and orbiting Earth 5,830 times, Discovery, first...

NASA and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company have paid tribute to the workforce who built the external tanks for the space shuttle fleet. The last external tank scheduled to fly on a shuttle mission was completed on June 25 by Lockheed Martin workers at Michoud. "ET-138 is the last in a series of tanks that has provided increasingly safer launches of space shuttles," said John Honeycutt, manager of the External Tank project. The tank was scheduled to depart after the ceremony Thursday aboard the Pegasus barge on a six-day, 900-mile sea journey to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida where...

The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that President Barack Obama's next issues summit will be about his new space policy. It will take place on April 15th, likely at the Kennedy Space Center. Other details, such as invitees, are yet to be determined.

...By the end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no U.S. manned space program, no way for us to get into space. We're not talking about Mars or the moon here. We're talking about low-Earth orbit, which the U.S. has dominated for nearly half a century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper. Our absence from low-Earth orbit was meant to last a few years, the interval between the retirement of the fatally fragile space shuttle and its replacement with the Constellation program (Ares booster, Orion capsule, Altair lunar lander) to take astronauts more...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The name of the new vehicle that NASA hopes will take astronauts back to the moon was supposed to be hush-hush until next week. But apparently U.S. astronaut Jeff Williams, floating 220 miles above Earth at the international space station, didn't get the memo. Williams, through no fault of his own, let it slip Tuesday that the new vehicle's name is Orion. "We've been calling it the crew exploration vehicle for several years, but today it has a name — Orion," Williams said, taping a message in advance for the space agency that was transmitted accidentally...

The President and First Lady spent the weekend at Camp David returning to the White House on Sunday. Today the President signed H.R. 5403, the Safe and Timely Interstate Placement of Foster Children Act of 2006 The Vice President had a busy Saturday. First he had a sucessful annual physical, then he and his wife Lynne along with their 3 grandaughters went to Kennedy Space Center for the launch of Discovery which unfortunately due to bad weather did not take-off. They then went to Daytona Beach for the Pepsi 400. Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA is trying to rid the Kennedy Space Center of vultures after the shuttle struck one of the large birds during lift-off last year on the first flight after the Columbia disaster. The space center has set up what it calls a "road kill posse" to quickly clear as many carcasses as possible from the 6,000-acre site (2,400-hectare), in hopes of encouraging the vulture population to relocate by cutting off its food supply. When shuttle Discovery lifted off the launch pad last July on the first flight since the 2003 Columbia accident, it hit a...

Well since the Space Shuttle is landing at 4:45 am, I figure I start a live thread now (I won't be awake)...

Poised for Liftoff Space Shuttle Discovery rests in full view on the launch pad. Image above: The rolling back of Launch Pad 39B's Rotating Service Structure reveals orbiter Discovery. + Click for larger image. Image credit: NASA/KSC Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-114, NASA's Return to Flight mission, is set for Tuesday at 10:39 a.m. EDT. The launch pad's Rotating Service Structure (RSS) was rolled away from Discovery at 3:38 p.m. on Monday. When in place, the giant enveloping appendage is used to install payloads into an orbiter's cargo bay and provide protection from inclement weather. With the...

<p>CAPE CANAVERAL -- The Visitor Complex at Kennedy Space Center hopes to give tourists a shuttle "immersion experience" with a new attraction that could open as soon as 2006.</p> <p>In a year when attendance has continued a decline that began after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Visitor Complex is seeking to re-create the boost it got when it opened its Apollo/Saturn 5 Center in 1996.</p>

<p>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - In an abrupt shake-up prompted by the Columbia disaster, the chief of the Kennedy Space Center is being moved to another NASA installation to strengthen its engineering department for the shuttle fleet's eventual return to flight.</p>

Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial Service Remarks by FL Gov. Jeb Bush They were supposed to return here. After orbiting the earth for sixteen days, after traveling more than six million miles, after seeing every corner of our beautiful world, they were supposed to return here. You -- their coworkers, their colleagues, their friends -- were ready to greet them with their families, to congratulate them on their successful mission, to honor them as the newest standard bearers of the great American tradition of exploration and discovery in space. They were supposed to return here, to the Kennedy Space Center at...

A spectator at the space shuttle landing facility weeps after hearing the news of the breakup of the Space Shuttle Columbia over Texas on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2003 at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Space shuttle Columbia apparently disintegrated in flames over Texas on Saturday minutes before it was to land in Florida. TV video showed what appeared to be falling debris, as NASA declared an emergency and warned residents to beware of falling objects. (AP Photo/Terry Renna) An unidentified worker in the Vehicle Assembly Building (L) is consoled by security officer Susan Nelson after the space...