Content about Space
CHANTILLY, Va. — NASA turned over space shuttle Discovery on Thursday to the Smithsonian Institution, the first in its orbiter fleet to be transferred to a U.S. museum.
The U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps, astronauts and several thousand visitors greeted Discovery. It will retire as an artifact representing the 30-year shuttle program.
The world’s most traveled spaceship has been lifted off its Boeing 747 carrier and towed to the museum near Dulles International Airport.
MOSCOW — Russia’s space agency says an unmanned cargo ship carrying 2.6 tons of supplies and equipment has lifted off for the International Space Station.
Roskosmos says the Progress M-14M blasted off early Thursday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Soyuz-U booster rocket.
The ship is scheduled to dock at the space station early Saturday with a cargo of oxygen, food, scientific equipment and gifts for the crew.
The space station’s six members include three Russians, two Americans and a Dutchman.
Europa, one of Jupiter’s at least 63 moons, is about 500 million miles away from earth, but comes closer to resembling our planet and providing potential for life than anything else in the solar system, researchers said.
UT researchers discovered what they said appears to be a body of liquid water the volume of the North American Great Lakes locked inside the icy shell of Europa.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA scientists are doing their best to tell us where a plummeting 6-ton satellite will fall later this week. It’s just that if they’re off a little bit, it could mean the difference between hitting Florida or landing on New York. Or say, Iran or India.
Pinpointing where and when hurtling space debris will strike is an imprecise science. For now, scientists predict the earliest it will hit is Thursday U.S. time, the latest Saturday.
The strike zone covers most of Earth.
HOUSTON — A report released by NASA’s watchdog on Thursday saying the agency acted properly when it chose not to award Houston a retired space shuttle has not soothed the bruised egos of some local officials who view the decision as a slap in the face to a city that has long tied its fortunes to the nation’s space program.
A vital piece of my world was lost Wednesday.
As a kid, many of my friends watched and idolized sports stars. Their rooms were filled with magazines, video games, T-shirts and posters of people such as Michael Jordan or John Elway. But I, like other science-minded kids all over the country, was cluttering my room with something different. My walls were covered by posters with diagrams of the space shuttle and astronauts playing golf on the moon, and my book shelves were filled with books with titles including “There’s No Place like Space!”
Last week marked the end of a chapter of American space exploration with the final mission of the shuttle Atlantis. The closing of the shuttle program is bittersweet for the nation and may be painful for many in Texas.
Nearly 9,500 workers involved in the shuttle program may lose their jobs in the coming months. Many of those jobs are in Houston, and some fear that the layoffs will create a brain drain from the city. The layoffs, reported by the Associated Press on Thursday, will affect a large swath of employees from high-ranking managers to janitorial staff.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The astronauts making NASA’s last shuttle flight gave up their off-duty time Sunday and finished packing up their gigantic suitcase for the ride home.
The 10 space travelers cheered as they put the final items in Raffaello, the Italian-made cargo canister that’s the size of a bus.
More than 5,600 pounds of old space station equipment, packing foam and other trash will return to Earth this week inside Raffaello.
“We’re full,” reported astronaut Sandra Magnus. “Everybody pitched in.”
About 100 people wander around Speakeasy on Saturday night, ordering drinks and yelling conversation over the top-40 and hip-hop tracks that are blaring from the speakers, but all attention turns to getting down on the dance floor when Captain Cosmos and his band of outer space superheroes take the stage.
Space Rockers drummer Thunderstick performs at Speakeasy. Space Rockers is a cover band from Austin that plays popular songs from the 80s and the 90s.
The U.S. Air Force will launch two satellites from Alaska this evening constructed by the UT Satellite Design Lab after seven years of development.
University graduate and undergraduate students designed the pair of “nanosatellites,” known as FASTRAC, to present more cost-effective hardware solutions to aeronautical agencies such as NASA. The satellites together cost $250,000 in hardware, paid for as part of an Air Force competition.
Physics professor Eiichiro Komatsu remembers listening to stories as a child about the late Hideki Yukawa, Japan’s first Nobel Laureate in physics. He never thought he would one day be awarded the honorary Nishinomiya-Yukawa Memorial Prize for physics.
“My father was the vice principal of an elementary school in Nishinomiya, [Japan], where a stone monument commemorating Yukawa’s achievements was,” Komatsu said. He said he often visited the monument as a child and was impressed by Yukawa’s accomplishments.
