Science editor Alan Boyle’s Weblog: As NASA celebrates its greatest triumph, the space agency also is facing its biggest wave of uncertainty in decades.
Archive for July 25, 2009
Astronauts get the day off to rest after hectic pace
The combined 13-member crew of the shuttle-station complex enjoyed a day off Saturday, taking a break after a grueling week and a half of work that included four spacewalks, internal and external equipment transfers and the precisely coordinated use of three robotic arms.
Bush-Era Plans to Reach Moon and Beyond Still Alive Under Obama
Despite rumors that NASA’s next-gen human space-flight program would be severely cut back or scuttled, Obama’s Human Spaceflight Plans Committee said today that no such decision had been made.
Extensive spacewalk replanning underway
NASA managers terminated a spacewalk today when astronaut Chris Cassidy’s carbon dioxide levels showed an upward trend due to a problem with his spacesuit’s CO2 removal system.
Forty years later …
The four children in the front row of the videoconference with NASA Engineer Tom Benson have only heard accounts of the first moon landing on July 20, 1969.But some in the room of the Brownsburg Challenger Learning Center saw those first famous steps live on a grainy black and white television 40 years ago.
Read More at Hendricks County Flyer…
Spacewalkers unload spare parts from carrier
Astroanut David Wolf, anchored to the end of the space station’s robot arm, has successfully transferred a fragile Ku-band antenna module to a storage platform on the lab’s solar array truss.
Langley played huge role in putting man on the moon
Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, famously called the feat a ?giant leap for mankind.? That leap 40 years ago today was made possible by scientific advances at the NASA Langley Research Center here.
Read More at Richmond Times-Dispatch…
Spacewalkers to unload spare parts from carrier
Astronauts David Wolf and Thomas Marshburn are preparing for a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk today to move critical spare parts to the International Space Station as a hedge against failures after the shuttle is retired.
Visionaries rocketing past NASA
On Oct. 4, 2004, a group of revolutionaries in the Mojave Desert sent a little dart-shaped rocket called SpaceShipOne beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.
Shuttle heat shield inspection finds no major issues
NASA’s Debris Analysis Team is in the final stages of reviewing launch and on-orbit photography of the shuttle Endeavour’s heat shield.