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Cape Canaveral FL (SPX) Apr 17, 2008 The cargo aboard the space shuttle Discovery on mission STS-124 already has traveled halfway around Earth, more than 10,000 miles over land and sea. It's now ready for the culmination of its 23-year journey to the International Space Station. Hope will take flight on Discovery. Or rather, the centerpiece of Kibo, a laboratory complex named for the Japanese word for hope, will take flight. STS-124 will launch the main segment of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's - or JAXA's - station laboratory. Kibo's Japanese Pressurized Module, or JPM, is 14.4 feet in diameter...

Russian shuttle with space mines retiresIt was built to take on America in Cold War star wars, but now a Russian version of the US Space Shuttle has come to earth with a bump to end in a German museum. The Buran ­ or Blizzard ­ orbiter, was designed to be equipped with high-technology lasers or missiles and space mines, as Soviet war planners assumed America has weaponised the Space Shuttle. But 15 years after the project was finally shut down in 1993, marking the end of the Cold War's most ambitious and expensive confrontations, Buran is making a much...

NASA Says Thousands Could Lose Jobs After Shuttle Program Ends MIAMI (AP) -- More than 8,000 NASA contractor jobs in the nation's manned space program could be eliminated after the space shuttle program is shut down in 2010, the agency said Tuesday. The number of civil servants is expected to remain roughly the same, but dramatic job cuts are possible among private contractors as NASA transitions to the Constellation program, which is developing the next-generation vehicle and rockets to go to the moon and later to Mars. -snip-

A judge agreed Monday to postpone for 13 months the trial of a Chinese-American engineer charged with stealing military and aerospace trade secrets on behalf of China. Kenneth Miller, the attorney for 72-year-old Dongfan "Greg" Chung, asked for the delay because he is involved in a lengthy trial, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples. The trial was scheduled for April 8, but U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney agreed to delay it until May 5, 2009. The government alleges that Chung stole trade secrets on the space shuttle, C-17 military transport and the Delta IV rocket during his decades of employment...

The space shuttle Endeavour and the international space station will be visible to Antelope Valley residents early each morning for more than a week beginning Sunday. The Endeavour mission, to deliver the first component of a Japanese science laboratory and a Canadian robotic system to the station, is scheduled to end with a landing at 5:33 p.m. Wednesday, March 26, in Florida. The shuttle-space station combination will look like a very bright star moving steadily as they arc through the sky. If no variations are made to the flight plan, the only evening sighting of the shuttle and space station...

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

Endeavour astronauts inspected the space shuttle's heat shield Wednesday, while NASA puzzled over a mysterious piece of debris that may have struck the shuttle's nose just after launch. Officials at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas refused to speculate on the origin or even the size of the debris captured on camera 10 seconds after launch. Nor are they sure if it struck the shuttle. "It looks like it's not coming from the orbiter, and you can't really tell if it strikes the orbiter or not," flight director Mike Moses told reporters after viewing video of the debris. "I...

EDWARDS AFB ­- Space shuttle Endeavour astronauts are going into space wearing a mission patch designed by NASA Dryden Flight Research Center research pilot Mark Pestana. Mission STS-123 will take to the international space station the Japanese Kibo module, which will hold electronic equipment and serve as a storage area for experiment materials. It also carries the Canadian Dextre robot, which will attach to the station's robotic arm and allow astronauts to replace hardware outside the station without doing a spacewalk. Pestana's logo depicts a shuttle with its mechanical arm extending the Kibo module to the station. Behind the shuttle...

This is the official thread for the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.. During the launch I'm going to be in bed sleeping since I have to go to work the next day..

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA's space shuttle Endeavour is on track to light the predawn Florida sky ablaze early Tuesday as it rockets toward the International Space Station (ISS) with seven astronauts on board. Led by commander Dominic Gorie, Endeavour's STS-123 crew will install the first piece of Japan's three-part Kibo laboratory, assemble a monstrous, two-armed Canadian robot and deliver a suite of on-orbit experiments during their mission. The shuttle is counting down toward a planned 2:28 a.m. EDT (0628 GMT) launch on Tuesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Gorie and his crew plan to spend...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle Endeavour was poised for a rare nighttime launch Tuesday to the international space station and the longest visit ever to the orbiting outpost. With no major problems reported, NASA began fueling the shuttle late Monday afternoon. Good weather was forecast for the 2:28 a.m. liftoff. The odds were 90 percent in NASA's favor. It will be the first shuttle launch in darkness since 2006; only a quarter of all shuttle flights have begun at nighttime. It also will be NASA's longest space station mission: 16 days.

I saw not only Atlantis and the International Space Station flyover my neighborhood tonight, but I also saw the spy satellite scheduled for missile destruction on Thursday/ Michelle Obama, eat your heart out. This is one proud American.

Space Weather News for Feb. 17, 2008 http://spaceweather.com DOUBLE FLYBY: If all goes according to plan, space shuttle Atlantis will undock from the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday morning, Feb. 18th, at approximately 4:30 am EST. This is good news for sky watchers across North America who will be able to witness a rare double flyby on Monday evening. Atlantis and the ISS will appear as a tight pair of lights, as bright as Jupiter or Venus, gliding in tandem across the twilight sky--an unforgettable sight. Favored cities include Los Angeles, New Orleans, Dallas, Jackson (MS), Pensacola, Philadelphia, Reno,...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The crews of the space shuttle and station said a teary farewell, then sealed the hatches between them Sunday after more than a week of working tirelessly together to build a bigger and better scientific outpost in orbit. Atlantis was scheduled to undock early Monday, its load considerably lighter than when it arrived Feb. 9 with Europe's premiere space laboratory, Columbus. Astronaut Daniel Tani was especially emotional as he left the international space station, his home for the past four months. Before floating into Atlantis for his long-overdue ride home, Tani paid tribute to his mother,...

The Justice Department said Monday that it has arrested a former Boeing Co. engineer on charges that he stole Boeing trade secrets related to several aerospace programs -- including the Space Shuttle -- on behalf of the Peoples Republic of China. The department said the arrest of 72-year-old Dongfan "Greg" Chung, of Orange, Calif. follows his indictment on eight counts of economic espionage and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - After two months of delay, shuttle Atlantis blasted off Thursday with Europe's gift to the international space station, a $2 billion science lab named Columbus that spent years waiting to set sail. Atlantis and its seven-man crew roared away from their seaside launch pad at 2:45 p.m., overcoming fuel gauge problems that thwarted back- to-back launch attempts in December. The same cold front that spawned killer tornadoes across the South earlier in the week stayed far enough away and, in the end, cut NASA a break. All week, bad weather had threatened to delay the...

PALMDALE - The space shuttle fleet is slated to retire in 2010, and Palmdale officials believe they can offer one of the orbiters a worthy home in the high desert. City officials are pushing the idea of bringing one of the spacecraft to a former B-1B bomber manufacturing hangar that they would convert into a museum. The site, at Rancho Vista Boulevard and 30th Street East, would be near where all six of the space shuttles were built and near the city's airpark. "We have a natural connection," said Mayor Jim Ledford. "We built all the shuttles and we did...

This is the official thread of the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The space shuttle Atlantis is tentatively set to launch February 7 on a mission to the International Space Station carrying the European lab Columbus, NASA said. "The team did a great job to isolate where (the cutting engine sensor) failure were (so that) the failure would not occur again," Bill Gerstenmayer, deputy administrator for space programs told reporters Wednesday. Gerstenmayer said that as "we head for the 7th of February for launch and we continue to follow the radiator retract hose over the next couple of days; there is a lot of work out to be done...