The Space Shot

Making a bigger splash than expected, the crash of an empty rocket stage in a permanently shadowed crater near the moon's south pole last month kicked up a surprising amount of water ice and vapor, confirming the presence of a potentially valuable resource for future space travelers.

"I'm here today to tell you that indeed, yes, we found water," said Anthony Colaprete, the project scientist and principal investigator for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. "And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount."

Holding up water jugs to make the point, he said "if you remember, a month ago we were talking about teaspoons going into glasses over football fields. Well, now I can say today that in the 20- to 30-meter (65- to 100-foot-wide) crater LCROSS made, we found maybe about a dozen of these two-gallon buckets worth of water."

And more than water. Data from the LCROSS instruments show signs of other compounds that may shed light on the moon's evolution.

"It's a whole lot more beyond the water," Colaprete said. "That's the exciting part in my mind, it's not only about the water now. There's actually a lot more here that we're going to be talking about in the months ahead, looking at the LCROSS data."

Said Greg Delory, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley: "This is not your father's moon. Rather than a dead and unchanging world, it could in fact be a very dynamic and interesting one that could tell us unique things about the Earth-moon system and the early solar system."… Read more

After months of tests and analysis, engineers plan to beam commands to NASA's Spirit Mars rover Monday, kicking off a long-awaited attempt to free the hardy craft from the talcum powder-like soil of a hidden crater that trapped it last April.

"Spirit's facing the most challenging situation it's seen yet on the surface of Mars," Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars exploration program, said Thursday. "We know a lot of people around the world...view Spirit with great affection, exploring the Red Planet along with it, experiencing the excitement, seeing new and exciting … Read more

Ongoing analysis of the trajectory of a piece of space junk that was believed to pose a possible threat to the International Space Station showed the debris would not pass close enough to the lab complex to force the crew to seek refuge in their Soyuz lifeboats, a NASA official said late Friday.

An agency spokesman said the station's six-member crew would be awakened early, at 10 p.m. EST as planned, but the astronauts would be told to go back to bed and not to press ahead with a tentative plan to shelter in place aboard the station'… Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--A preliminary look at data from NASA's Ares I-X test flight Wednesday shows the towering rocket performed as well or better than computer modeling predicted during the climb out of the dense lower atmosphere, a senior NASA manager said Friday.

One of three huge parachutes failed to inflate during the spent booster's descent to the Atlantic Ocean and a second chute only inflated halfway, resulting in a hard splash down that caused the rocket's case to buckle.

But Mission Manager Bob Ess said the parachute system, flying for the first time, was designed for NASA's planned Ares 1 rocket, which is 15 percent lighter than the test version, and that engineers will have plenty of time to correct whatever went wrong.

"No one is concerned about it," Ess said. "In fact, the parachute guys were ecstatic, was their words, (about) the information they got from this flight. They really wanted to test this out."

The Ares I-X rocket was designed to match the characteristics of NASA's planned shuttle replacement, the more powerful Ares I. The test version featured a four-segment shuttle booster, a dummy fifth segment housing guidance and control equipment and an unpowered mockup of the rocket's upper stage and crew capsule.

The 327-foot-tall test rocket was launched Wednesday from shuttle complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. The major goals of the unmanned six-minute flight were to collect engineering data on how the tall, slender rocket flew through the lower atmosphere, how the structure responded to aerodynamic and acoustic forces and how the new parachute system, scaled for the planned Ares I, performed.

During the initial seconds of flight, the rocket's nozzle moved 1 degree as planned to help the booster "walk off" the pad, preventing its hot exhaust plume from hitting the upper sections of the shuttle service gantry. As expected, the plume caused minor damage to the lower sections of the gantry, but Ess said that would not be a problem for the new service tower that will be used for Ares rockets.… Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Running a day late, NASA launched its 33-story Ares I-X rocket on a $445 million unmanned test flight Wednesday, a spectacular six-minute sub-orbital mission to collect data needed for the design of NASA's proposed shuttle replacement.

"Oh, man! Well, how impressive is that?" Program Manager Jeff Hanley told the launch team after the spent rocket fell back to the Atlantic Ocean. "I hope you appreciate that you've accomplished a great step forward for exploration."

Said Launch Director Ed Mango: "Think about what we just did. Our first flight test, … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Launch of NASA's Ares I-X rocket on a planned $445 million test flight was delayed 24 hours Tuesday because of bad weather and an errant freighter that briefly strayed into the off-shore danger area.

"For everyone, great job today. You gave it a great shot," Launch Director Ed Mango told the team. "We had some opportunities and just couldn't get there, weather didn't cooperate. But good work today."

Launch was rescheduled for 8 a.m. Wednesday. Forecasters are predicting a 60 percent chance of acceptable weather during a four-hour … Read more

Amid work to ready NASA's Ares I-X rocket for a long-awaited test flight next week, a presidential panel charged with reviewing the nation's manned space program submitted its completed report Thursday, concluding NASA's planned shuttle replacement will cost too much and take too long to build to be a viable option.

Even so, panel members said they looked forward to the $445 million test flight Tuesday and the data it will generate to help validate computer models and processes that will be useful in any future rocket design efforts.

"We do think it's appropriate to … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--NASA's towering Ares I-X rocket was hauled to the launch pad early Tuesday for blastoff October 27 on a $445 million unmanned test flight that likely will play a major role in the ongoing debate about NASA's post-shuttle manned space program.

The slow trip to pad 39B began at 1:39 a.m. EDT Tuesday when a powerful crawler-transporter carrying the Ares I-X rocket and its mobile launch platform slowly pulled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. Powerful spotlights illuminated the vehicle as it emerged from the VAB, providing … Read more

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying commander Gennady Padalka, flight engineer Michael Barratt, and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté undocked from the International Space Station on Saturday and plunged to a successful landing in Kazakhstan early Sunday.

Descending under a big orange-and-white parachute, the Soyuz TMA-14's descent module settled to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown at 12:32 a.m. EDT (10:32 a.m. local time) Sunday to close out a 50-minute descent from orbit. Russian recovery forces, including U.S. and Russian flight surgeons, monitored the final stages of the descent before moving in to provide assistance, … Read more