The Space Shot

Four veteran astronauts were named Tuesday to train for a rescue flight aboard the shuttle Atlantis if the crew of NASA's final currently planned mission, scheduled for launch in February, gets stranded in orbit. If not, and if Congress approves funding, NASA hopes to launch the crew for real next June on a final flight to deliver spare parts and supplies to the International Space Station.

But it is not yet clear when differences between the House and Senate versions of NASA's fiscal year 2011 budget will be resolved or when a decision will be made about whether … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Running a day late because of a ruptured water main, the shuttle Discovery was hauled from its processing hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building Thursday for attachment to an external tank and twin solid-fuel boosters. If all goes well, the orbiter will be moved to launch pad 39A on September 21, setting the stage for launch November 1 on a space station resupply mission.

It will be the shuttle program's 133rd flight and the 39th and final voyage of Discovery before NASA's oldest shuttle is retired and put on public display, most likely at … Read more

Locked in a massive horizontal test fixture near Promontory, Utah, a huge five-segment solid-fuel booster roared to life with a torrent of flame Tuesday, generating some 3.6 million pounds of thrust in a ground-shaking $75 million test of a rocket the Obama administration wants to cancel.

With engineers and spectators looking on from a safe distance, Alliant Techsystems' Development Motor No. 2, or DM-2, ignited at 8:27 a.m. PDT, blasting out a 600-foot-long jet of 5,600-degree flame and billowing clouds of exhaust as it consumed 1.3 million pounds of solid propellant.

Unlike the first five-segment … Read more

NASA's Kepler spacecraft, hunting for distant worlds by measuring the slight dimming of starlight as planets pass in front of their parent suns, has found its first multiplanet solar system, researchers announced Thursday.

The Kepler-9 system includes two Saturn-class worlds orbiting in gravitational lockstep close to their star and a possible third planet just a bit larger than Earth that whirls through a hellish "year" in just 1.8 days.

The announcement came just a few days after a European team, using a different technique with a ground-based telescope, revealed the discovery of a solar system with … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--A $2 billion, 7.5-ton physics experiment bound for the International Space Station aboard the last planned shuttle flight in February arrived at the Florida launch site Thursday after a busy summer of work to replace the magnet at the heart of the costly particle detector.

With Nobel laureate Samuel Ting, the lead scientist of the AMS project looking on with shuttle commander Mark Kelly and his crew, an Air Force C-5 transport jet taxied to a stop at the Shuttle Landing Facility after a flight from Geneva where the payload was assembled and tested.

If … Read more

After six years of painstaking observations, astronomers have identified a distant solar system with at least five Neptune-class worlds orbiting within 130 million miles or so of the parent star--closer than Mars is to the sun. Two other planets are believed to be present, including one just 1.4 times as massive as Earth.

The presumed Earth-size planet orbits a scant 2 million miles from its star, completing a full orbit, or "year," every 1.18 days. If confirmed with additional observations, this hellish world would be the smallest yet discovered, additional proof that Earth-size planets are falling … Read more

Slamming into the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph and enduring temperatures of up to 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit, a peak deceleration of up to 15 Gs, and the jerk of a supersonic braking parachute--that's just the opening act.

For NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, the real fun will start 50 seconds before touchdown when the one-ton nuclear-powered rover falls free of its parachute for a nail-biting rocket-powered final descent to the surface. (For the main story in this package, see "On Mars, satisfaction awaits Curiosity.")

Unlike past Mars missions, the Curiosity rover will not set down atop a legged lander … Read more

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, the most scientifically powerful robotic lander ever built, will use a suite of sophisticated instruments to search for carbon compounds and the geological markers that might indicate whether ancient, once-wet environments were ever habitable.

Scientists currently are assessing four potential landing sites for the rover's August 2012 arrival at the Red Planet that offer the best chance for a successful landing and the most scientifically promising terrain. (For the main story in this package, see "On Mars, satisfaction awaits Curiosity.")

"What we know going into this is every one of … Read more

Under the watchful eyes of anxious engineers, NASA's $2.4 billion Mars Science Laboratory rover has taken its first baby steps, rolling a few feet forward and back in an environmentally controlled clean room.

It was a seemingly modest test for an unfinished spacecraft that still faces technical challenges and months of assembly and testing. But with landing on the Red Planet now just two years away, the short drive on July 23 marked a major milestone for the men and women building the car-size rover.

"It's gone from designs on napkins to PowerPoint, to CAD drawings, … Read more