Space

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Running four days late, the shuttle Discovery roared to life and shot into space overnight Friday, lighting up the night sky with a rush of fire as it set off on a 13-day mission to deliver 7.5 tons of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station.

With commander Frederick "Rick" Sturckow and pilot Kevin Ford monitoring the computer-controlled ascent, Discovery's twin solid-fuel boosters ignited at 11:59 p.m. EDT, kick-starting the crew's eight-and-a-half-minute ride to orbit with a rush of 5,000-degree flame.

Taking off at roughly the moment … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Running four days late, the shuttle Discovery was refueled for launch late Friday for a 13-day mission to deliver more than 7.5 tons of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station.

With forecasters predicting a 60 percent chance of good weather, Discovery was scheduled for liftoff at 11:59 p.m. EDT.

An 8-inch liquid hydrogen valve blamed for back-to-back launch delays earlier this week worked normally during fueling Friday and engineers did not have to exercise a waiver that would have permitted additional troubleshooting.

Discovery's crew--commander Frederick Sturckow, pilot Kevin Ford, flight … Read more

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada--It's Thursday night, three days before the gates officially open to Burning Man, but already a lot of people have arrived here for set-up. The arts festival is quickly taking shape.

On this night, it's oddly quiet on the Black Rock desert. Oddly because if you've ever been to Burning Man, you're used to nights being filled with noise of all kinds--music, explosions, screaming, laughing--coming from every direction. But because the only people here right now are helping to build things--art projects, theme camps, public infrastructure--people are plumb tuckered out.

But it was … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--NASA managers Thursday ordered another delay for launch of the shuttle Discovery, from early Friday morning to late Friday night, to give engineers additional time to make sure an 8-inch hydrogen valve in the orbiter's engine compartment will operate normally during fueling.

NASA's Mission Management Team plans to meet at noon EDT Friday to review the work, consider a waiver to flight rules governing how the valve system operates, and make a final decision on whether to clear Discovery for fueling and launch at 11:59:39 p.m. Forecasters are calling for a … Read more

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

OAKLAND, Calif.--Want a trip back to the romanticism and innocence with which space travel was associated in the 1940s? Then get yourself to Burning Man, starting August 31 in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.

That's where the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, a retro rocket "made" in 1944, will be on display for the thousands of participants at the annual countercultural arts festival to play in and around.

In reality, of course, the rocket wasn't made in the 1940s; It's being made as we speak in a warehouse in a run-down part of Oakland, just across … 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

During my recently completed Road Trip 2009 project, one of the biggest highlights was my visit inside the Cheyenne Mountain Complex at the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station. Recognizable from the movie, "War Games," and the "Stargate" TV series, the complex was long popularly known as NORAD, or the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

But in 2008, NORAD officially moved to the nearby Peterson Air Force Base. Still, even to this day, it maintains an alternate command center at Cheyenne Mountain that it shares with U.S. Northern Command, or USNORTHCOM.

When I visited, I was … Read more