Tag Archives: ISS

STS-131 Mission Update from the ISS

Space Shuttle Discovery is docked at the International Space Station, with astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Clay Anderson spending their fifth day in space working outside the ISS.
They’ve retrieved a science experiment on the Japanese Kibo Laboratory, replaced a rate gyro assembly on the center segment of the station’s truss, and removed an ammonia tank used to help cool the station.
The accuracy and co-ordination between the astronauts while working in space is amazing. Imagine floating weightless in space for six-and-a-half-hours, while orbiting the earth at 17,000 miles an hour. Often they have to use the grappling robotic arm from [...]

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Space Shuttle Discovery STS-131

Space Shuttle Discovery is set to lift-off tomorrow morning at 6:21 AM EDT on mission STS-131.
Follow NASA’s Launch Blog beginning at 1:15 AM.
Commander Alan Poindexter, Pilot Jim Dutton, Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio, Clay Anderson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki will execute the 33rd shuttle mission to the International Space Station.
Discovery will carry a multi-purpose logistics module filled with science racks for the laboratories aboard the ISS. The mission has three planned spacewalks, with work to include replacing an ammonia tank assembly, retrieving a Japanese experiment from the station’s exterior, and switching out a rate gyro assembly [...]

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Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-130

Space Shuttle Endeavour has completed it’s latest mission, STS-130, and has safely landed at the Kennedy Space Center. It’s one of the few remaining shuttle flights left in NASA’s aging fleet of space vehicles.
The International Space Station is 98 percent complete, following NASA’s last big construction project, known as the Tranquility connecting node and cupola. The project added a new room and observation deck to the space station, giving the ISS crew a 360 degree view of earth through it’s seven windows.
Astronauts Bob Behnken and Nicholas Patrick conducted three spacewalks for a total of eighteen hours [...]

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Space Shuttle Program

It was February 1st, 2003, when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. All seven crew members aboard STS-107 were tragically lost.
Now seven years later, NASA’s Space Shuttle program is almost over. There’s only five more shuttle flights planned before the space shuttle fleet is retired from service. U.S. astronauts will then have to hitch a ride with the Russian Space Agency, whose Soyuz and Progress spacecraft have been participating in the International Space Station program for years.
President Barack Obama is calling for drastic changes in the U.S. space program, taking the [...]

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NASA: Ten Years of Space Exploration

The past decade has been pretty exciting in the realm of space exploration. Here’s my look at NASA’s milestones in the past ten years.
NASA 2009 Year in Review
October 2009: water discovered on the moon by the LCROSS mission.
July 2009: 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing
May 2009: Hubble Space Telescope upgraded and repaired. Space walking astronauts from the Atlantis space shuttle gave the aging space telescope several new updated systems. Two new instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3 and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph were installed, while repairs were made to the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Space [...]

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NASA 2008 Year in Review

NASA has a great end-of-year review on their website nasa.gov.  The space agency achieved some great accomplishments in 2008:  A Mars landing with the Phoenix Lander, stunning photographs from other planets in our solar system, major additions to the International Space Station, a joint lunar science mission with India, progressed toward the goal of returning astronauts to the moon, and celebrated two important anniversaries.
NASA celebrated the tenth year in operation of the International Space Station (ISS), and also celebrated their fifty years of operation as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  The Apollo lunar program also hit the forty year [...]

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Space Shuttle & ISS Visible in Night Sky

Found on Google’s Hot Trends:
Source: www.google.com/trends
Official First Day of Summer ~ June 21, 2007:
blogs.earthsky.org
Earth & Sky
Shuttle Viewing Times:
NASA HumanSpaceFlight
NASA SkyWatch
Shuttle Landing
screenshot from http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/

Spinal Tap Summer Solstice Jam @ Stonehenge, England: www.abcnews.go.com

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