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follow the shuttle as it disappears into the outer atmosphere. This can create some truly stunning footage, especially as the rockets fire and the initial launch happens. On Thursday Discovery got its last ascent into space, but this time instead of just seeing it from the ground, one lucky passenger flight also saw it from the air. The flight was from Orlando, Florida, and it happened to be passing by the Kennedy Space Center just as the launch happened. We’re also lucky that one of the passengers had the sense to pull his camera out and start recording. The footage...

NASA Managers: It's a "Go" for LaunchAt today's pre-launch news conference NASA's mission management team have given their unanimous approval for space shuttle Discovery's launch tomorrow at 4:50 p.m. EST. "Everything is on track and going beautifully with the countdown," said Mike Moses, mission management team chair. "We're really looking forward to a very action-packed, successful mission and everything is on track." Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director, agreed that everything is going extremely well with the launch countdown. He also acknowledged the processing teams who worked on Discovery, its flight systems and ground elements. "As we're powering up (the systems)...

Record crowds by the thousands are expected to turn out Thursday (Feb. 24) to watch NASA's space shuttle Discovery soar to space for the last time. Luckily, a shuttle launch is such a bright spectacle that anyone on Florida's Space Coast can get a decent view. The shuttle is poised to blast off on Feb. 24 at 4:50 p.m. EST (2150 GMT) to make one last delivery trip to the International Space Station.

Private industry could be prepared to go where NASA fears to tread and develop a spaceplane to replace the space shuttle and ferry crews to and from the International Space Station. But if industry succeeds, it will be thanks to decades of work by the space agency on lifting-body reentry vehicles. While its plans for replacing the shuttle are in flux, NASA has a small program underway intended to stimulate private-sector efforts to develop commercial human spaceflight services. While most of those involved are pursuing Apollo-style capsules similar to NASA’s Orion crew vehicle, one is designing a spaceplane. The Dream...

NASA's space shuttle orbiters may not be destined for a museum in five months, after all. Agency officials are conducting a "what-if budget exercise" that could keep the orbiters potentially flight-worthy for several more years, NASA says. The option may offer a tantalizing alternative to the space shuttle workforce, who now must find new jobs before mid-year. Currently, NASA plans to retire all three orbiters - including Discovery after a scheduled flight in February, Endeavour after a planned trip in April and finally Atlantis after it returns from a scheduled launch in June. Meanwhile, NASA has asked the space industry...

February 1, 2003 - Explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia. As memorable as the 9/11 tragedy, so was the explosion and destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia over Louisiana, February 1st, 2003. History has given special notice to Space Shuttle Challenger's destruction 25 years ago, but why hasn't the disintegration of Columbia been as noteworthy? Maybe, it has something to do with Political Correctness and the EPA, proving again how our daily lives are excessively affected by by Political Correctness and the EPA. We have seen the deadly effects of the enviromentally obsessed: The banning of DDT which has promoted...

On the morning the Challenger space shuttle made its final flight, Mark Letalien was sitting in his high school theatre surrounded by wildly cheering students as the spacecraft carrying their teacher, Christa McAuliffe, tore through the Florida sky. But 73 seconds into the historic mission, the raucous celebration at Concord High School in Concord, New Hampshire, was shattered by a teacher's yell to be quiet.

With the space shuttle program shutting down this year, NASA on Jan. 24 issued official notification that Kennedy Space Center (KSC) launch pads, payload processing facilities, runways and other amenities will be available for use by commercial companies and non-federal entities. In its Notice of Availability and Request for Information, NASA identified four types of facilities it expects to make available upon completion of the shuttle program: space vehicle processing and launch, off-line processing, payload processing and miscellaneous. Listed in the announcement are Launch Complexes 39A and 39B, the Vehicle Assembly Building, Launch Control Center, Orbiter Processing Facilities, Shuttle Landing...

The shocking gundown of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has left NASA reeling: Her astronaut husband was due to rocket away in just three months as perhaps the last space shuttle commander, and her brother-in-law is currently on the International Space Station. Shuttle commander Mark Kelly rushed to his wife's hospital bedside Saturday as his identical twin brother, Scott, did his best to keep updated on the Arizona shooting through Mission Control, the Internet and the lone phone aboard the space station. (snip)

Five minute time lapse of STS 131, from hangar to launch. Pretty cool! Direct Link

The second flight of the space shuttle Atlantis was almost its last. What was then NASA’s newest orbiter sustained severe damage to its fragile thermal protection system when it lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B on Dec. 2, 1988. But through a combination of military secrecy and plain old human misunderstanding, the problem went unaddressed until Atlantis returned to Earth four days later. The STS-27 mission was the second shuttle flight after the fatal Challenger mission, an urgent “black” mission to orbit the Lacrosse-1 radar-reconnaissance satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office (AW&ST July 9, 2007, p. 28)....

Space shuttle Discovery’s final mission is off until February. NASA managers announced the latest delay for Discovery on Friday. They say they need more time to analyze cracks in the shuttle’s fuel tank. The damage cropped up following a failed launch attempt in early November. Discovery remains on the launch pad, holding a load of equipment for the International Space Station. Officials want to conduct a fueling test to better understand the problem. Officials say they will tentatively aim for a liftoff on Feb. 3. That will result in a postponement for shuttle Endeavour, which had been scheduled to soar...

The wonderfully sort-of-secret X-37B is back on terra firma after a long stay in space. Very little information beyond its appearance, dimensions and the fact that the Air Force is deploying it is known about the vehicle, which looks a lot like a mini space shuttle. The vehicle can stay in orbit for at least nine months. As someone who spent five years at Space News — much of that time covering intelligence issues — I’m going to engage in some informed speculation. It could take advanced sensors into space for testing and, probably, allow sensors to operate from the...

The final launch of Space Shuttle Discovery will take place no earlier than 3 December. Weather permitting, the launch - originally set for September but postponed to 1 November because the payload was not ready and then to 30 November after a hydrogen leak was discovered while filling the external fuel tank - is now expected at 02:52 Eastern Standard Time. The current launch window will be open until 5 December. The countdown-stopping leak was at the ground umbilical carrier plate, an attachment point between the external tank and a 178mm (7in) pipe that carries gaseous hydrogen safely away from...

The aviation and space press buzzed last week with the news that NASA had quietly moved its two long-grounded X-34 space planes from open storage at the space agency's Dryden center - located on Edwards Air Force Base in California - to a test pilot school in the Mojave Desert. At the desert facility, the mid-'90s-vintage, robotic X-34s would be inspected to determine if they were capable of flying again. It seemed that NASA was eying a dramatic return to the business of fast, cheap space access using a reusable, airplane-style vehicle - something the Air Force has enthusiastically embraced...

Preliminary analysis of the space shuttle’s Discovery’s leaking Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate (GUCP) shows a misaligned seal, a NASA spokesman said Nov. 11. “Not to get ahead of the engineering investigation, but they’re analyzing the flight seal, which they found wasn’t aligned properly. The team plans to install a new GUCP ... connectors, seal, etc., by tomorrow,” Kennedy Space Center spokesman Allard Beutel said in an e-mail to Aviation Week. The GUCP leak forced NASA to cancel its Nov. 5 launch attempt of Discovery on the STS-133 mission, an 11-day space station assembly and maintenance mission that will be the...

NASA has postponed the launch of Discovery’s 11-day mission to the International Space Station until no earlier than Nov. 30, following a substantial leak of hydrogen gas at a launch pad vent-line fitting during a Nov. 5 countdown to the orbiter’s 39th and final mission. The leak at the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate (GUCP), surfaced before 8 a.m. EDT, and the pre-launch Mission Management Team (MMT) initially braced for repairs that would permit another flight attempt on Nov. 8, a day beyond the nominal closing of the launch window. However, it soon became clear that the lack of rapid access...

Well this is live launch thread of the Space Shuttle Discovery..

NASA will Thursday try to launch space shuttle Discovery on its final voyage, although stormy weather could force yet another delay. Mission managers met Wednesday afternoon and into the evening to discuss an electrical problem that forced the latest postponement. They concluded the circuit breaker trouble no longer exists and the shuttle is safe to fly. But forecasters warned there is an 80 per cent chance that thunderstorms will keep Discovery on the pad. Liftoff is scheduled for 3:29 p.m. (1929 GMT).

NASA managers met Monday to review preparations for the space shuttle Discovery launch on STS-133, clearing the spacecraft for liftoff Wednesday on what will be its 39th and final flight. It was a quick meeting, with unanimous consent to press ahead with a launch attempt at 3:52 p.m. EDT. “If I wouldn’t have talked about how quickly it was going, it would have gone even faster. We didn’t have any technical issues to discuss,” quips Mike Moses, shuttle launch integration manager at Kennedy Space Center. Over the weekend, technicians plugged helium and nitrogen leaks in the shuttle’s right-side Orbital Maneuvering...