U.S. SPACE SHUTTLE LAUNCH DELAYED BY NASA MISSION CONTROL?
September 29, 2008
ORIGINAL TIMELINE FOR COMPLETION OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
Preliminary launch dates for shuttles in the rest of 2008:
11 March, Endeavour: to deliver the first part of the Japanese science complex known as Kibo and the Canadian Dextre robot to the ISS
24 April, Discovery: to loft the second and main component of the Japanese Kibo lab together with its exterior robot arm
28 August, Atlantis: a flight to service the Hubble Space Telescope
16 October, Endeavour: a cargo flight to the ISS using the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module in Endeavour's payload bay
4 December, Discovery: taking up the fourth starboard "backbone" segment for the ISS; and the fourth set of solar arrays and batteries
Because Atlantis will not be able to reach the space station if it gets into trouble, or is damaged, on its Hubble flight, the Endeavour orbiter will be made ready on the pad for a rescue mission in case it is needed.
Launch dates for the remaining seven flights in 2009/10 are under review. The crew of the space station is expected to rise from three to six in mid-2009.
Orbital Arrival: Fresh Astronaut Crew Docks at Space Station By Tariq Malik Staff Writer posted:
NASA has delayed the last shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope until early 2009? in order to repair a broken device that is blocking the orbital observatory from sending its iconic images of the cosmos back to Earth, agency officials said late Monday.
Seven astronauts were training to launch toward Hubble aboard the shuttle Atlantis on Oct. 14 on mission to extend the space telescope's life through at least 2013, but the unexpected failure of a vital data relay system on Saturday will add months of delay to their spaceflight.
"I think it's very obvious that Oct. 14 is off the table," NASA's space shuttle program manager John Shannon told reporters.
NASA announced Monday that a device known as theSide A Science Data Formatterfailed, apparently for good, late Saturday, leaving the otherwise healthy Hubble with no means of relaying data and observations to scientists back on Earth. The electronics box failed after 18 years in service since Hubble launched in April 1990.
There is a backup for the unit, Side B, and flight controllers on Earth are working to make the complicated switch to revive Hubble's science relay capabilities. But the move will leave the telescope without the redundancy to withstand another failure should one occur, making a repair for the Side A string vital, mission managers said.
"We do not really understand the precise location of the failure inside of the Science Data Formatter," said Preston Burch, NASA's Hubble program manager at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "And we won't until we bring it down to the ground."
Spare in hand
NASA does have a spare unit at Goddard, but will have to put it through a series of tests to ensure it is in good health.
Burch said that there is high confidence that the spare box, which is relatively brand new despite being 18 years old, is viable for the Hubble repair. But the tests required to prove its spaceworthiness will take months.
"I think we'd be hard-pressed to be ready any earlier than, say, January," Burch said, adding that even mid-January could be a bit of a stretch. "It's looking more like a mid-February timeframe is the right time for us."
Replacing the 136-pound (62-kg) data formatter box should be relatively straightforward for Atlantis's crew, requiring about two hours during one of the mission's five back-to-back spacewalks to perform, Burch said. One cable connector and 10 bolts need to be freed to remove the box from its mount, he added.
Commanded by veteran spaceflyer Scott Altman, Atlantis astronauts plan to install a new camera, replace gyroscopes and batteries, upgrade Hubble's guidance equipment and add a docking ring during their 11-day mission. Tricky repairs to instruments never designed to be fixed in space are also on tap. The mission will mark NASA's fifth and final shuttle flight to Hubble.
The astronauts were in the middle of an intense simulation on Monday when news of the delay broke, Shannon said.
NASA has not formally set a new launch target, though the agency has called off a planned flight readiness review that would have done so at the end of this week. In the off chance that the spare data formatter fails to pass muster, Atlantis could be primed to launch toward Hubble as early as late November.
Shannon said that by the end of next week, shuttle mission managers should have a better sense of what Atlantis' launch target will be.
A lucky failure
For every month NASA delays Atlantis' flight to Hubble, it adds an extra $10 million to the space telescope program's cost. But, mission managers said, the cost could have been much higher.
"Think about if this failure had occurred two weeks after the servicing mission. We'd just put to brand new instruments in and thought we'd extended the life from five to 10 years and this thing failed after the last shuttle mission to Hubble," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for science missions. "We could have lost the mission in six, 12, 18 months.
"So in some sense, if this had to happen it couldn't have happened at a better time," he added.
Atlantis' planned October flight was slated to mark NASA's fourth of up to five shuttle missions planned for this year. The mission was initially slated to launch in early October, but slipped several days due to a series of setbacks caused by Hurricane Ike and payload delivery issues.
The agency launched three shuttle flights earlier this year to continue construction of the International Space Station, with the Endeavour orbiter slated to continue that work with a planned Nov. 16 liftoff. Shannon said that if Atlantis' mission slips into 2009 for sure, NASA will prepare Endeavour for its own STS-126 mission to deliver new life support and other equipment that will allow the station to double its current three-astronaut crew size.
Meanwhile, NASA engineers at Goddard and their shuttle mission counterparts will work together to determine the best repair plan for Hubble. It was a similar effort, mission managers said, that allowed astronauts to fix Hubble's blurry vision in space after a mirror defect nearly doomed the space telescope in the early 1990s.
"Hubble has a habit of coming back from adversity," said Weiler, adding that the Hubble and space shuttle team "works miracles." "I'm not too concerned about this, we'll find a way to get this fixed. Luckily, we have a spare."
NASA TO REPAIR HUBBLE AND KEEP IN EARTH ORBIT UNTIL NEW LUNAR SPACE STATION AND MOONBASE IS COMPLETE
FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!!
Madonna News
Credit: Mike Marsland/WireImage; Frank Micelotta/Getty
Published: Monday September 29, 2008 06:00 AM EDT
2008
No one has ever accused these style icons of blending into the crowd! Christina Aguilera and Madonna show off their fierce signature style with exaggeratedly feline eyeliner.
The attacks, which triggered the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Bush administration's "war on terror", are regarded as the defining moment of the president's time in office.
In downtown Manhattan, thousands of people gathered as relatives of victims from more than
90 countries read out a roll call of the 2,751 people killed
in New York.
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened the memorial event, describing 9/11 as a day that "lives forever in our hearts
and our history".
Rivals' unity
Silences were observed at the moments each of the Twin Towers was struck and fell.
Barack Obama and John McCain, the Democratic and Republican nominees in November's presidential election, are attending a ceremony at Ground Zero in New York to lay wreathes in honour of the victims.
In a joint statement, the two men vowed to come together "as Americans" and suspend their political campaigns for 24 hours.
Mr McCain earlier attended a ceremony at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where he paid tribute to the bravery of the United Flight 93 passengers who took on the hijackers.
He said: "The only means we possess to thank them is to try to be as good an American as they were. We might fall well short of their standard, but there is honour in the effort."
11 September 2001 is a day many around the world will never forget
Mr Obama said in a statement "the terrorists responsible for 9/11 are still at large, and must be brought to justice," in a reference to the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, who the US believes masterminded the attacks.
The presidential rivals' joint appearance is to be followed by another in the evening at a Columbia University forum to discuss their views on public service.
For Mr Bush, however, it is the last time he marks the anniversary as president.
"The president thinks about 9/11 every single day when he wakes up and before he goes to bed," White House press secretary Dana Perino said on the eve of the anniversary.
Seven years after the attacks which shocked the world, Ground Zero is a construction site.
After years of delays and disagreements over how to commemorate the dead, work has finally begun on a memorial
and a new skyscraper - the Freedom Tower - which is due to be completed by 2012?
Didn't this "event" happen in 2001 under the George W. Bush administration?
Did President Bush Jr. lie to the world and Colin Powell, the UN and Americans now fighting in Iraq about "Weapons of Mass Destruction"?
(World mourns deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Theresa)
From the BBC
Mother Teresa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who devoted her life to helping the sick and the poor, has
died at the age of 87.
She died of a heart attack at the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity
in Calcutta shortly before 1700 BST.
The nun from Skopje, Macedonia, had been battling ill health for some years, and in March stepped down
as head of the order of nuns she founded.
She was revered by many around the world as a living saint for her work with the dispossessed.
The Pope often praised her work and a Vatican spokesman told reporters he was "deeply hurt" by the news
of her death.
"The Pope believes she is a woman who has left her mark on the history of this century," he said.
The head of the Catholic church in England and Wales, Cardinal Hume, said she was an "enormously
significant figure - everyone knows who Mother Teresa is".
Conservative stance
Born Agnes Bojaxhiu in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire later Macedonia, she took the name Sister Teresa in Ireland, where she began her training as a nun with the Loreto Sisters.
She founded her order in 1948 and went out to work in the slums of Calcutta.
She was sometimes accused by Hindus in her adopted country of trying to convert the poor to Catholicism by "stealth" and criticised by liberals who disliked her conservative stance on abortion and contraception.
But her biographer and friend Navin Chana said she would be remembered as someone who "gave the word compassion a new dimension".
HURRICANES CONTINUE TO HIT GULF COAST AND NEW ORLEANS
September 3, 2008
From the BBC
Storm force winds hit New Orleans
Hurricane Gustav batters U.S. towns
Hurricane Gustav is advancing inland from the US Gulf coast, bringing with it torrential rain and severe winds.
The eye of the storm, which left nearly 90 people dead last week as it crossed the Caribbean, is bearing down on the Louisiana community of Lafayette.
The worst of the storm made landfall west of New Orleans, apparently sparing it from the kind of devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.
An estimated two million people have fled inland from the Louisiana coast.
Hurricane Gustav is quickly losing strength after making landfall in Louisiana, and has been downgraded to a Category One storm, with winds of 90mph (145km/h).
The storm is expected to move into Texas overnight, dumping as much as 20in (50cm) of rain there by Thursday.
US President George W Bush is in Austin, Texas, to oversee the government response.
He said Gustav was a "serious event" and insisted that the emergency response was "a lot better than during Katrina".
Mr Bush praised those who had heeded the warnings to evacuate, saying he understood how hard it was for citizens to "pull up stakes".
Ghost town
The exodus from the Louisiana coast is the largest evacuation in state history.
Many New Orleans residents have fled, with only 10,000 left from a population of 200,000.
We're still seeing storm surge. There's lots of rain, tornado threats... We are nowhere near out of danger yet
Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin
Tens of thousands are also reported to have left coastal Mississippi, Alabama and south-eastern Texas.
The BBC's Gavin Hewitt in Lafayette says the city is being battered by fierce winds and driving winds, and every now and again there is a rumble, signifying a huge gust.
In New Orleans, a sea surge of up to 14ft (4.2m) was feared and water was clearing levees as the outer rim of the storm brought heavy rains and winds.
Waves were causing some flooding but the city's pumps were keeping up with the flow, said a spokesman for the army unit responsible for the city's flood defences.
FLASHBACK TO KATRINA
Katrina struck US Gulf Coast in August 2005 as a Category Three storm, killing more than 1,800 people
New Orleans was 80% flooded after storm surge breached protective levees
US Government was blamed for slow, botched response that exacerbated disaster
A Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) briefing heard that although the high water pressing the walls raised the potential for problems, officials were "confident in the resilience" of the levees.
The Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, has urged caution.
He said: "We're still seeing storm surge. There's lots of rain, tornado threats... We are nowhere near out of danger yet."
The mayor asked people to "resist the temptation to say we're out of the woods", adding that heavy rainfall could still flood the city over the next 24 hours.
He told CNN that the city would not know until late afternoon if vulnerable areas would "stay dry".
Fema officials warned that the damage wrought by Gustav would be "a catastrophe".
"We don't expect the loss of life, certainly, that we saw in Katrina," Fema spokesman Harvey Johnson said, "But we are expecting a lot of homes to be damaged, a lot of infrastructure to be flooded, and damaged severely."
In 2005, three-quarters of New Orleans was flooded by a storm surge that claimed more than 1,800 lives in coastal areas.
The Category Three storm Katrina swept away the city's levees under a wall of mud and water.
Few remain
In New Orleans, a dusk-to-dawn curfew is in force.
The Louisiana National Guard has been mobilised and support requested from other states.
The storm threatened protective walls as it approached New Orleans
Crime was a major problem in the New Orleans area in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Concern for those facing the hurricane has prompted the Republican party to scale back its national convention where Senator John McCain is due to accept the party's nomination for president at the event in St Paul, Minnesota later this week.
Mr McCain told his party that "this was one of those moments in history where you have to put America first. We will not see the mistakes of Katrina repeated".
Out in the Gulf of Mexico, most oil production has been shut down. Three years ago, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the region's oil infrastructure and sent oil prices soaring.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Hanna has strengthened into a hurricane east of the Bahamas in the Atlantic ocean, US officials reported.
Hanna is on track to skirt Florida before making landfall on Friday in South Carolina, near its state border with Georgia, US weather experts said.
NASA PROTECTS SHUTTLE FROM HURRICANE DAMAGE/ QUESTION PRESIDENTS GOAL OF RETIRING SHUTTLE BY 2010
September 2, 2008
NASA Holds Space Shuttle Move for Tropical Storm By Tariq Malik Senior Editor posted: 2 September 2008 3:34 pm ET
NASA is holding off on moving the space shuttle Atlantis to its Florida launch pad this week to ensure it is not threatened by Tropical Storm Hanna, the agency said Tuesday.
While the shuttle could make the 3-mile (4.8-km) trek to the seaside launch pad as early as Thursday, it's more likely to move on Saturday after Hanna has passed, said NASA spokesperson Allard Beutel of the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
"We're watching and protecting our options," Beutel told SPACE.com. "I think we're all pretty much figuring it will be Saturday."
Shuttle workers at KSC had initially planned to move Atlantis to Launch Pad 39A early Monday but held off a day to monitor Hanna, which as of Tuesday had weakened back to a tropical storm after reaching hurricane status over the weekend. NASA hoped to attempt the shuttle move early Wednesday, but later shifted to no earlier than Thursday at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT) with Saturday a more likely target.
Until Hanna passes, Atlantis and its attached external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters will stay in the shelter of NASA's 52-Vehicle Assembly Building at the spaceport.
As of 2:00 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT) Tuesday, Hanna was headed for the southeastern Bahamas with maximum sustained winds of about 70 mph (110 kph) and higher gusts, according to a National Hurricane Center status report. The storm is expected to strengthen over Wednesday and Thursday, with current forecasts predicting it to move northwest off the eastern coast of Florida.
"We're expecting tropical force winds," Beutel said.
NASA is targeting an Oct. 8 launch for Atlantis and a crew of seven astronauts to pay one last service call on the Hubble Space Telescope.
Last week, mission managers were weighing options to push the mission to Oct. 10 or 11 due to processing delays caused by the last month's Tropical Storm Fay, which prompted NASA to close its KSC spaceport for three days. A further launch delay appears likely the longer Atlantis remains inside the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building.
Beutel said today that the spaceport was operating at Hurricane Condition Four, the center's lowest alert level, to secure loose debris in anticipation of wind speeds reaching 50 knots (58 mph) in the next 72 hours.
According to NASA's hurricane plan, space shuttles cannot remain at a launch pad if winds are forecast to reach top speeds of 70 knots (79 mph). The plan also forbids space shuttles to move between launch pads and NASA's cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building after winds reach sustained speeds of 40 knots (46 mph) with gusts up to 60 knots (69 mph) and lightning within a 23-mile (37-km) radius.
Atlantis' October spaceflight is the fourth of five NASA shuttle flights planned for 2008. The year's final scheduled mission, a planned Nov. 10 launch aboard Endeavour to deliver supplies and equipment to the International Space Station, must fly before Nov. 25, when NASA would stand down due to unfavorable lighting and heating concerns at the orbiting outpost, agency officials have said.
ASTRONAUTS READY FOR LAUNCH OF U.S.A. SHUTTLE AND REPAIR MISSION OF HUBBLE TELESCOPE
Mission Information
STS-125: Final Shuttle Mission to Hubble Space Telescope
These seven astronauts take a break from training to pose for the STS-125 crew portrait. From the left are astronauts Michael J. Massimino, Michael T. Good, both mission specialists; Gregory C. Johnson, pilot; Scott D. Altman, commander; K. Megan McArthur, John M. Grunsfeld and Andrew J. Feustel, all mission specialists. Image credit: NASA
Veteran astronaut Scott D. Altman will command the final space shuttle mission to Hubble. Navy Reserve Capt. Gregory C. Johnson will serve as pilot. Mission specialists include veteran spacewalkers John M. Grunsfeld and Michael J. Massimino and first-time space fliers Andrew J. Feustel, Michael T. Good and K. Megan McArthur.
Altman, a native of Pekin, Ill., will be making his fourth space flight and his second trip to Hubble. He commanded the STS-109 Hubble servicing mission in 2002. He served as pilot of STS-90 in 1998 and STS-106 in 2000. Johnson, a Seattle native and former Navy test pilot and NASA research pilot, was selected as an astronaut in 1998. He will be making his first space flight.
Chicago native Grunsfeld, an astronomer, will be making his third trip to Hubble and his fifth space flight. He performed a total of five spacewalks to service the telescope on STS-103 in 1999 and STS-109 in 2002. He also flew on STS-67 in 1995 and STS-81 in 1997. Massimino, from Franklin Square, N.Y., will be making his second trip to Hubble and his second space flight. He performed two spacewalks to service the telescope during the STS-109 mission in 2002.
Feustel, Good, and McArthur were each selected as astronauts in 2000. Feustel, a native of Lake Orion, Mich., was an exploration geophysicist in the petroleum industry at the time of his selection by NASA. Good is from Broadview Heights, Ohio, and is an Air Force colonel, weapons systems officer and graduate of the Air Force Test Pilot School, having logged more than 2,100 hours in 30 different types of aircraft. McArthur, born in Honolulu, Hawaii, considers California her home state. She has a doctorate in oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California-San Diego.
MORE NASA NEWS
NASA TO REVIEW SHUTTLE TIMETABLE OF THE COMPLETION OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION BEFORE "RETIRING" THE U.S.A. SHUTTLE FLEET OF 3 BEFORE OR AFTER 2010 AS PROPOSED BY YALESMAN AND BONESMAN GEORGE W.BUSH
Nasa 'reviews shuttle shelf-life'
By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News
Could this sight continue for several years to come?
Nasa will study whether the space shuttle can operate beyond its planned retirement in 2010, reports say.
The agency will look at what might be required to delay the retirement of its fleet until the shuttle's replacement - Ares-Orion - begins flying in 2015.
The exercise is aimed at answering questions it expects on the matter from Congress and the incoming president.
News of the study comes from a leaked internal email obtained by a Florida-based newspaper.
Nasa chief Michael Griffin, who is reported to have ordered the study, had previously opposed extending the shuttle programme.
The agency's administrator argued that the money and effort required to do so would stymie progress on the Ares rockets and the Apollo-style Orion capsules that will succeed the shuttle.
These are being developed by Nasa as part of its "Constellation" programme. The system is expected to carry astronauts to the Moon under the Vision for Space Exploration plans announced by President George W Bush in 2004.
Russian flights
In April, Dr Griffin told a Senate sub-committee: "The shuttle is an inherently risky design. We currently assess the per-mission risk as about one in 75 of having a fatal accident.
"If one were to do, as some have suggested, fly the shuttle for an additional five years - say two missions a year - the risk would be about one in 12 that we would lose another crew."
But an e-mail obtained by the Orlando Sentinel suggests Nasa will now research this option.
In it, John Coggeshall, manifest and schedules manager at Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston, writes: "The [shuttle] programme in conjunction with [Constellation] and [space station] have been asked by the administrator to put together some manifest options to assess extending shuttle flights to 2015.
He added: "We want to focus on helping bridge the gap of US vehicles travelling to the [space station] as efficiently as possible."
But Nasa spokesman John Yembrick described the e-mail as "premature".
"The parameters of the study have not yet been defined," he said.
The agency remains committed to retiring the shuttle in 2010.
Five-year gap
In the five-year gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the first flights of the Orion capsule, Nasa will be reliant on Russia's Soyuz system for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
But some are now concerned about the wisdom of this plan to purchase seats aboard the Soyuz, given the diplomatic tension between the US and Russia over the conflict in Georgia.
Nasa's Orion ship will not be ready until 2015
Last week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and other senators, sent a letter urging President Bush to "direct Nasa to take no action for at least one year from now that would preclude the extended use of the space shuttle beyond 2010".
This letter said Russia's conduct during the Georgia conflict "raised concerns about the reliability of Russia as a partner for the International Space Station".
It added: "Our concern is that we do not have a guarantee that such co-operative and mutually beneficial activity will continue to be available, and the successful utilisation of the ISS may thus be jeopardized."
The Democrats' presidential candidate Barack Obama has also talked about the possibility of additional shuttle flights to close the five-year gap.
Nasa currently has an agreement with Russia to fly astronauts to the ISS aboard the Soyuz spacecraft until 2011. After that, the agency would have to seek approval from Congress for an extension.
Nasa has previously said it would cost between $2.5bn and $4bn per year to keep the shuttles flying past 2010.
The agency has also given seed money to a commercial venture to develop a spacecraft for transporting crew and cargo to the space station.
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We're still seeing storm surge. There's lots of rain, tornado threats... We are nowhere near out of danger yet 
