The Space Shot

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--The shuttle Discovery's planned launch early Wednesday on a space station resupply mission was called off during fueling Tuesday when a valve in a liquid hydrogen feedline apparently failed to close properly. Launch was tentatively reset for Friday, assuming the problem can be resolved in time.

Engineers plan to test the suspect hydrogen fill-and-drain valve Wednesday to determine if the valve or a sensor system that measures its position is to blame for the readings that forced NASA to order Discovery's second delay in a row. Bad weather blocked a launch attempt early Tuesday.… Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Florida's hard-to-predict weather threw the shuttle Discovery's crew a curve ball early Tuesday, worsening when forecasters predicted improvement, generating unexpected lightning and offshore storms.

While conditions improved as the morning wore on, the launch team ran out of time and NASA managers were forced to order a 24-hour delay.

"Well, looks like everything else was cooperating except for our local area weather," Launch Director Pete Nickolenko said to Mike Moses, chairman of NASA's Mission Management Team, during a final hold in the countdown.

"Yep, if we had 30 more minutes … Read more

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston--A presidential panel wrapping up a review of future U.S. manned space flight options delivered a grim assessment Wednesday, showing NASA's current plan to retire the shuttle, finish the space station and return to the moon by the early 2020s is not remotely feasible without a significant restoration of previously cut funding.

In the absence of a major spending increase, "our view is that it will be difficult with the current budget to do anything that's terribly inspiring in the human spaceflight area," said Norman Augustine, chairman of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee.

Augustine's committee was set up by the Obama administration to examine NASA's current plans for retiring the shuttle, completing the space station, and returning to the moon as well as alternative strategies for moving beyond low-Earth orbit.

The committee also is assessing how long NASA and its partners should operate the International Space Station. NASA currently has no money in its projected downstream budget to operate the $100 billion lab complex beyond 2015.

The Augustine committee believes the station cannot be operated without direct U.S. mission control and management and that it will cost some $1.5 billion to safely drive the huge complex out of orbit at the end of its life, whenever that might be.

NASA's current long-range plan, developed by the Bush administration in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster, is to complete the space station, retire the shuttle fleet, and develop a Apollo-like Orion crew capsule that will be launched to the station by new Ares 1 rockets.

During the gap between shuttle operations and the debut of Ares-1/Orion, U.S. astronauts will have to hitch rides to the station aboard Russian Soyuz rockets. NASA managers have assumed all along the station program would be extended and Ares 1/Orion would be used to deliver crews and supplies.

NASA also plans to develop a huge new unmanned heavy lift rocket called the Ares 5 that eventually will boost Orion capsules and Altair lunar landers to the moon for long-duration exploration. The Orion capsule, Ares rockets and lunar landers are the central pieces in NASA's Constellation program.

But during a final public hearing Wednesday in Washington, the Augustine panel provided a sobering look at NASA's projected budget and the requirements of various manned space flight scenarios.

Considering the Constellation program as the "program of record," panel member and former astronaut Sally Ride said NASA would need an additional $50 billion or so through 2020 to implement the program as currently planned. This scenario is known as the "unconstrained budget" case.

It assumes the shuttle is retired on schedule and that the space station is deorbited in early 2016, an option no one on the panel seems to favor. In that scenario, the new Orion/Ares 1 system would have no destination until the Ares 5 heavy lifter debuted and moon flights began after 2021.

"In the unconstrained budget, Orion and Ares 1 arrive shortly after ISS is deorbited," Ride said. "And then you get human lunar return in 2021."

Assuming NASA is forced to live within the 2010 budget guidelines provided by the Obama administration, the Ares 5 heavy lift moon rocket would not be ready until the 2028 timeframe.… Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--The shuttle Endeavour dropped out of orbit and glided back to Florida Friday, wrapping up a 16-day space station construction mission and bringing Japan's first long-duration astronaut back to Earth after four and a half months in weightlessness.

Descending through a partly cloudy sky, commander Mark Polansky pulled the shuttle's nose up just before reaching the runway, pilot Douglas Hurley deployed the spaceplane's landing gear and Endeavour settled to a picture-perfect landing at 10:48:08 a.m. EDT.

Barreling down the runway at more than 200 mph, Hurley released a red-and-white braking … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Space station commander Gennady Padalka aborted the automated approach of the unmanned Russian Progress supply ship Wednesday after a malfunction left it in the wrong orientation.

Instead, he took over the manual controls and remotely guided the craft to a picture-perfect docking.

"Everything is centered and I'm closing," Padalka reported as he orchestrated a slow approach to the Zvezda command module's aft port. "Point zero seven... contact...very soft contact, very nice...capture."

"All right, Gennady, congratulations," a Russian flight controller radioed. Docking was confirmed at 7:12 … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--With pilot Douglas Hurley at the controls, the shuttle Endeavour undocked from the International Space Station Tuesday and slowly pulled away after a five-spacewalk construction mission, leaving the lab complex with a new Japanese experiment platform, fresh solar array batteries, critical spare parts, and a new flight engineer.

"Houston, station, (this is) Endeavour on the big loop, we have physical separation," an astronaut reported at 1:26 p.m. EDT as hooks and latches in the station's docking mechanism disengaged.

Joining Hurley aboard Endeavour were commander Mark Polansky, Canadian flight engineer Julie Payette, … Read more

The combined 13-member crew of the shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station can enjoy a joint meal when time permits, but getting everyone around the table is a bit of a challenge in the cramped confines of the lab complex.

Luckily, the absence of gravity makes "sitting down to dinner" a different sort of experience. No word yet on whether the last one to the table has to do the dishes.

The Endeavour crew arrived at the space station on July 17 and are set to leave Tuesday.

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston--Despite problems that forced spacewalk replanning, an impromptu toilet repair and work to fix the space station's carbon dioxide scrubber, the shuttle Endeavour's ongoing assembly mission is going well, the commander said Sunday, with most major objectives now accomplished. A fifth and final spacewalk is planned for Monday.

During four earlier spacewalks and near daily use of three robot arms on the shuttle and the space station, the astronauts have attached a large experiment platform to the Japanese Kibo lab module, installed research instruments and critical spare parts, replaced aging solar array batteries and deployed … Read more

Streaking through space at 5 miles per second, the International Space Station is the largest satellite ever built, massing 670,000 pounds and stretching 357 feet--longer than a football field--from one end of its main solar power truss to the other.

An hour or two before sunrise and after sunset, when you are in Earth's shadow and the space station--orbiting 220 miles up--is still illuminated by the sun, the ISS outshines Jupiter and rivals Venus as it sails across the sky.

The space station is by far the easiest satellite to see--it's impossible to miss if you're … Read more