NASA DETAILS SHUTTLE’S RETIREMENT - Nasa has announced that it intends to officially retire the aging space shuttle fleet by 2010, four years before it has a replacement craft ready.
The space shuttle fleet will make ten more flights, mainly to add modules to the International Space Station and carry out repairs and upgrades to the Hubble orbital telescope.
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(Source: ITNews.com)
TWO SATELLITES IN ORBIT AFTER GOOD RIDE FROM ARIANE 5 - An Ariane 5 rocket roared out of its jungle launch base Monday to put Arab and Asian commercial communications satellites into space, marking yet another successful ascent for the heavy-duty booster. Riding the combined power of twin solid rockets and a hydrogen-fueled main engine, the Ariane 5 lifted off at 2147 GMT (5:47 p.m. EDT) from the Guiana Space Center on the northeastern shore of South America. More
(Source: SpaceFlightNow.com)
RUSSIA LAUNCHES MILITARY SATELLITE - Russia has successfully launched a new military satellite into orbit, officials said.
The Kosmos-series satellite was launched by a heavy Proton-K booster rocket, which blasted off from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Russian Space Forces spokesman Alexei Zolotukhin said.
The Interfax news agency quoted Defence Ministry spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov as saying the satellite will be part of Russia's early missile warning system.
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(Source: The Press Association)
NEW SATELLITE WILL IMPROVE WEATHER, CLIMATE, OCEAN FORECASTS - A new NASA-French space agency oceanography satellite was lofted into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base early Friday morning on a three year mission to record sea level, a vital indicator of global climate change.
The mission is expected to return a vast amount of new data that will allow greater precision in weather, climate and ocean forecasts. More
(Source: Environment News Service)
NASA LAUNCHES NEW SATELLITE TO MAP RISING SEAS - The U.S.-European Jason-2 ocean altimetry satellite was launched successfully June 20 aboard a Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on a five-year mission to continue the uninterrupted study of ocean levels and currents that was begun in the early 1990s in a U.S.-French partnership. More
(Source: Space.com)
DATA RELAY SATELLITE CLUSTER LAUNCHED FOR ORBCOMM - Six new communications relay satellites were launched into orbit Thursday to rejuvenate a space-based messaging service operated by ORBCOMM Inc.
The six spacecraft were hauled into orbit by a Kosmos 3M rocket launched from the Kapustin Yar space base in southwestern Russia. Liftoff was at 0636 GMT (2:36 a.m. EDT). The two-stage booster was aiming for an orbit with an altitude of about 415 miles and an inclination of 48.5 degrees. ORBCOMM officials announced the launch was a success. More
(Source: Space Flight Now)
NASA UNDER PRESSURE TO EXTEND SPACE SHUTTLE'S LIFE - IT'S one of the priciest scientific instruments never used - and a thorn in NASA's side. Now the agency may be forced to delay the retirement of the space shuttle so that it can haul the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector into space. More than a decade ago, NASA agreed to lug the AMS to the International Space Station. There it will probe the origin of cosmic rays, measure antimatter, and look for hints of dark matter
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(Source: New Scientist)
NEXT MISSION SCHEDULED FOR OCTOBER TO WORK ON HUBBLE TELESCOPE - The next mission of the Space Shuttle is scheduled for October 8th when Shuttle Atlantic is scheduled to perform a servicing mission to the Hubble space telescope.
The Hubble Space telescope is in orbit around the Earth and the Shuttle Atlantis will perform maintenance on the telescope to assist it in performing its mission to peer into the heavens.
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(Source: Ontario Now)
STUDENT SATELLITE TO BE LAUNCHED - Students at Leicester University have started a project to design, build and launch a satellite into space.
Twenty undergraduates in the department of physics and astronomy are involved in the mission to detect space dust.
The main body of the satellite was donated this week by an engineering company based in Loughborough. More
DISCOVERY LANDS IN FLORIDA - With Commander Mark Kelly and Pilot Ken Ham at the controls, space shuttle Discovery descended to a smooth landing at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The STS-124 crew concluded their successful assembly mission to the International Space Station when the shuttle landed at 11:15 a.m. EDT.
The STS-124 crew arrived at the station June 2, delivering the second component of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory and a new Expedition 17 crew member – Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff – to the station. Chamitoff took the place of Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman, who is returning to Earth as a member of the Discovery crew.