nasa

NBC and the cable companies are teaming up to make it really annoying for you to watch the Winter Olympics onlione. Brian Cooley sums up their plans well, and it's today's title. We also discuss fiber-eating alien insect and solar power beamed down from space.

Episode 952

Amazon ‘adult’ book-delisting fail: Error or troll? http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10218626-83.html

Cut fiber line knocks out state courts’ communications http://www.wral.com/news/news_briefs/story/4949649/

Report: KKR, Warburg, others join founders for Skype buyback from eBay http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10218837-93.html… Read more

NASA managers are meeting this week to discuss the impact of ending projects that have been keeping open the possibility of an extension of the shuttle program, which is currently planned to end in 2010.

NASA faces several challenges, including a tight budget, a 2010 deadline to end space shuttle operations, and a lack of concrete political support to fund additional flights or extend the current manifest. In a note to shuttle managers and engineers that was obtained by CBS News, shuttle program manager John Shannon outlined the issues in stark terms:

You have heard me say that 'hope is … Read more

Chalk one up for Steven Colbert, kind of.

NASA announced Friday afternoon that astronaut Sunita Williams will appear Tuesday on "The Colbert Report" to unveil the name of the newest node for the International Space Station.

From everything NASA has indicated, the node probably won't be named for the comedian. It likely will be dubbed "Serenity," based on the official voting results on NASA's site.

NASA ran an online contest earlier this year to name the node. The agency's official suggestions: Earthrise, Serenity, Venture, and Legacy. But NASA also (naively, perhaps) stated that … Read more

The space shuttle Endeavour, the designated rescue ship for next month's Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission in case something goes awry, was hauled from its processing hangar to the vehicle assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, Fla., early Friday.

Inside the vehicle assembly building, the shuttle will be attached to an external tank and solid-fuel boosters. Rollout to pad 39B is planned for April 17.

The shuttle Atlantis already is mounted atop pad 39A for work to ready the ship for blastoff on May 12, at 10:31 a.m. PDT, on a fifth and final … Read more

Dropping to Earth under a huge parachute, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying outgoing space station Commander Mike Fincke, Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov, and space tourist Charles Simonyi settled to a jarring landing in Kazakhstan on Wednesday after a descent from the International Space Station.

With Lonchakov at the controls, the central descent module of the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft touched down at 3:16 a.m. EDT northeast of Dzhezkazgan, coming to rest on its side.

Russian recovery forces were staged nearby to assist the returning space fliers, as required, and by 3:30 a.m., all three were resting comfortably … Read more

Outgoing International Space Station Commander Mike Fincke, Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov, and space tourist Charles Simonyi bid farewell to their station crewmates Tuesday and boarded a Soyuz ferry craft for re-entry and landing Wednesday in Kazakhstan.

Fincke and Lonchakov, launched to the International Space Station on October 12, are wrapping up a 178-day stay off planet as the core members of the lab's 18th full-time crew. Simonyi, a wealthy software developer making his second paid trip to the station, took off March 26 with Expedition 19 commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Michael Barratt.

After a busy day of … Read more

Arctic sea ice is not only shrinking in coverage area; it's also thinning, according to a report and satellite images jointly released on Monday by NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.

The Arctic basin is covered in a thick semipermanent sea ice, which is covered in thin seasonal ice caps that are built up each winter, only to melt away again each summer.

The 2009 Arctic summer-melting season is starting out with a substantial amount of thin seasonal ice and an unusually small amount of the thick sea ice, making … Read more

It's been a long hiatus since the last time a human strode across the lunar terrain, and we're still some years out from the next planned mission to the moon.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't tinker around with notions of how astronauts in the not-too-distant future might get around the Sea of Tranquility or some other lunar destination. That's part of the driving force behind NASA's Great Moonbuggy Race, an annual event geared toward college and high school students.

The mission: design and build a lightweight, human-powered buggy, then race it around a … Read more

Snow and soggy conditions at the primary landing site in Kazakhstan prompted Russian flight planners on Friday to order a 24-hour delay, from April 7 to 8, for the return to Earth of a Soyuz capsule carrying outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchakov, and space tourist Charles Simonyi.

The mission had been scheduled to conclude with a touchdown on April 7 northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, but the landing zone has been moved to a backup site about 180 miles to the southeast, where conditions may be more favorable. Touchdown now is targeted for 3:15 a.… Read more