MESSENGER fará a maior aproximação a Mercúrio dentro de poucas horas

Clique para aumentar.

Durante esta aproximação serão tiradas cerca de 1200 fotografias. Na foto acima já são visíveis crateras, e serão de esperar detalhes muito melhores nas próximas horas.

Fonte: MESSENGER

Today, January 14, 2008, at 19:04:39 UTC (2:04:39 pm EST), MESSENGER will experience its closest approach to Mercury, passing just 200 kilometers (124 miles) above the planet's surface. As the MESSENGER spacecraft continues to speed toward Mercury, the Narrow Angle Camera, part of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument, acquired this crescent view of Mercury. The image was taken on January 13, 2008, when the spacecraft was at a distance of about 760,000 kilometers (470,000 miles) from Mercury. Mercury is about 4880 kilometers (about 3030 miles) in diameter, and the smallest feature visible in this image is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) across.

During the historic flyby encounter today, extensive scientific data will be gathered. The MDIS instrument will acquire over 1200 images of Mercury, including images of portions of the surface never before viewed by a spacecraft. The MDIS instrument is just one member of a whole suite of instruments that will be used to study Mercury during the flyby. The Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS) will observe Mercury's surface as well as its tenuous atmosphere. The MESSENGER Magnetometer (MAG) will accurately measure Mercury's magnetic field, and the Energetic Particle and Plasma Spectrometer (EPPS) will characterize Mercury's space environment and interactions with the solar wind. The Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) will sense surface topography along a narrow profile. The Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer (GRNS) and X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) will make the first measurements of Mercury’s surface elemental composition.

MESSENGER will begin to transmit the new data to Earth once all of the scientific measurements are completed, about 22 hours after the spacecraft's closest approach to Mercury. These flyby data will shed light on fundamental scientific questions related to the formation and evolution of the planet Mercury. As scientists analyze the data, the MESSENGER spacecraft will continue on its planned journey, which includes two more encounters of Mercury in October 2008 and September 2009, before entering an orbit around Mercury in March 2011.

Image acquired on January 13, 2008, 06:34 UTC.

O Telescópio Espacial Hubble ficará 90 vezes mais potente!

Após a futura missão de reparação do Hubble, nos próximos meses, calcula-se que a capacidade do Hubble se torne 90 vezes maior do que aquela que tem tido até à avaria da ACS - Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Adicionalmente, a ACS também irá ser reparada, embora esta operação seja extremamente delicada, e nunca tentada no espaço, pelo que as possibilidades de sucesso são impossíveis de calcular neste momento.

A ACS é a 'camera principal' do Hubble, que obteve as imagens espetaculares que todos nós estamos habituados a ver nos meios de comunicação social.

Resta-nos esperar que o intenso treino a que os astronautas da missão de serviço estão a ser sujeitos seja suficiente para levar a bom porto tão importante missão.

Fonte: New Scientist Space

Upgraded Hubble telescope to be 90 times as powerful

• 17:58 08 January 2008
• NewScientist.com news service
• David Shiga, Austin

Space shuttle astronauts will attempt an unprecedented in-orbit repair of key Hubble Space Telescope (HST) instruments during the servicing mission scheduled for August 2008. The repairs, along with the addition of two new instruments, will make Hubble 90 times as powerful as it was after its flawed optics were corrected in 1993.

In October 2006, NASA announced plans to carry out a fourth and final servicing mission for Hubble, in which it would install two new scientific instruments and replace the observatory's batteries and gyroscopes. But previously the agency has not said whether it would attempt a difficult repair of two key instruments that have broken down in recent years.

The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which died in January 2007, was Hubble's highest resolution camera and its most-used instrument. And the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), which failed in 2004, measured light spectra in the ultraviolet, allowing it to gauge the distance and composition of distant galaxies.

Now, the space agency says it will try something never attempted in the three previous Hubble servicing missions – a finicky electronics repair job in space, where astronauts have the challenge of doing everything while wearing bulky spacesuit gloves.

Without the repair mission, Hubble would likely die by 2011, when its last functioning gyroscope is expected to fail. But with new gyroscopes and batteries installed on the upcoming servicing mission, HST should last at least until 2013, and possibly into the 2020s.

Early galaxies

Two powerful new instruments will be installed on the mission. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) will allow Hubble to see fainter and more distant galaxies than anything it has seen before, shedding light on the early universe.

This could allow Hubble to see galaxies so far away that we see them as they were just 400 million years after the big bang, says Sandra Faber of the University of California in Santa Cruz, US, a member of the panel that recommended that NASA carry out the final servicing mission.

To date, the most distant galaxies seen by Hubble appear to be from about 800 million years after the big bang, which occurred 13.7 billion years ago. "The universe evolves extremely rapidly at these early times, so a [time] difference like this makes a huge difference in the structure and size of galaxies [that exist in those eras]," Faber said at a press conference on Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas, US.

Another new instrument, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), can obtain ultraviolet light spectra of very faint, distant objects such as quasars – huge black holes that are glowing as they gobble up surrounding gas. COS can measure much fainter objects than STIS, although STIS can get more detailed spectra of the objects it can see.

'90 Hubbles'

With its new instruments, Hubble will be 90 times as powerful as it was supposed to be when first launched – it will be like having 90 of the original Hubble Space Telescopes, astronomers say. The improvement comes from a combination of increased sensitivity and wider fields of view, allowing Hubble to see 900 galaxies where its original instruments would have revealed only 10. HST will be about 60% more powerful than it was right after the third servicing mission, before ACS and STIS failed.

The most challenging part of the mission will be to repair ACS and STIS. "We're going to do something that has never been done in space," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's lead spacewalking astronaut for the servicing mission.

Both repairs involve astronauts unfastening dozens of tiny screws to replace some circuit boards on each of the instruments – all while wearing bulky spacesuit gloves. Such a feat has never been attempted before in space.

The astronauts will also have to cut through metal layers to reach the circuit boards, creating sharp edges that could be hazardous to spacesuits. In the case of ACS, Grunsfeld may not even be able to see the screws he is working with because of the way the instrument is angled inside HST.

Risky business

Grunsfeld has been practicing this tricky manoeuvre in a "neutral buoyancy laboratory" – a water tank designed to simulate the weightlessness of orbit. "Amazingly ... training in a neutral buoyancy lab in the spacesuit, I've been able to do this," he said.

He added that he is willing to put his life on the line for the risky mission. "I still believe that Hubble science and the Hubble programme is still something worth risking my life [for], and I know I have six other crew members who believe that as well," he said.

NASA science chief Alan Stern said although the mission is still scheduled for August 2008, it could slip because of the launch delays the space shuttle has been experiencing in its missions to assemble the International Space Station. "Our watchword in all of this is safety," he said, adding that if the servicing mission needed to wait until October or even later to make sure the shuttle is safe, then NASA would wait.

During the mission, new insulation blankets will be wrapped around Hubble to make up for cracks in existing insulation and a fine guidance sensor will be added to help HST point itself precisely. Astronauts will also install a "soft capture mechanism" to allow a future robotic mission to grab onto Hubble at the end of its lifetime so that it can safely re-enter the atmosphere and crash into the ocean.

Sonda MESSENGER a dias de encontro histórico com Mercúrio!

Imagem de Mercúrio obtida ontem, 10 de Janeiro de 2008.
Serão de esperar imagens bastante mais detalhadas nos próximos dias.
Clique para aumentar.

A MESSENGER é uma sonda que deverá entrar em órbita do planeta Mercúrio em 2011. Para tal terá de efectuar uma série de manobras, entre as quais várias passagens pelo planeta. A primeira será na segunda-feira, por volta das 18:00. Poderá obter mais detalhes no site oficial da missão MESSENGER. Será a primeira vez, desde há 3 anos, que uma sonda passará por Mercúrio!

Fonte: MSNBC

Mercury probe closes in for historic flyby

Messenger to map previously uncharted regions of closest-in planet

By Tariq Malik

Space.com

updated 6:54 p.m. ET Jan. 10, 2008

A NASA spacecraft has a date with Mercury next week for a flyby that will return the first detailed views of the small planet in more than 30 years.

The Messenger probe will skim just 124 miles (200 kilometers) above Mercury's uncharted hemisphere during its closest pass at 2:04 p.m. ET Monday, marking the first of three flybys to bleed off speed and enter orbit around the planet.

"Our spacecraft is lined up and ready to go," Marilyn Lindstrom, NASA's Messenger program scientist, said during a Thursday briefing, adding that the probe has already returned its first images of its target. "Mercury, here comes Messenger."

Launched in August 2004, Messenger — short for the bulky moniker MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging — is the first spacecraft to visit Mercury since NASA's Mariner 10 probe swung past the planet three times between 1974 and 1975. But unlike its predecessor, Messenger will rendezvous with Mercury four times, making three flybys before ultimately entering orbit in 2011 for a one-year science campaign.

The $446 million mission is aimed at probing the secrets of Mercury, ranging from its wispy thin atmosphere to an unusually dense interior. The mission will also generate the first maps of the 55 percent of the planet's rocky surface that Mariner 10 missed during its three planetary passes.

"More than half the planet's never been seen before," said Messenger principal investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "That will change on Monday."

Messenger's Mercury flyby actually begins in earnest around midday Sunday, when the probe will turn itself away from Earth to bring its science instruments to bear on its planetary target. The spacecraft will snap more than 1,200 photographs of Mercury during its first rendezvous while a protective sunshade keeps its cameras and other instruments at room temperature. The sun-facing side of the shade may reach temperatures of around 600 degrees Fahrenheit (315 degrees Celsius), researchers said.

For 14 minutes, the probe's power-generating solar panels will be in Mercury's shadow, forcing the spacecraft to briefly rely solely on its batteries, said Eric Finnegan, Messenger systems engineer. The probe will use the gravitational pull of Mercury to slow its speed by about 5,000 miles per hour (8,046 kilometers per hour) during the flyby, he added.

Messenger is expected to re-establish contact with Earth about midday on Tuesday, 22 hours after the closest Mercury approach, and then beam back images to its eager science team. The probe has already flown past Earth once and Venus twice as it spiraled down the solar system on the 4.9 billion-mile (7.9 billion-kilometer) trek to Mercury.

"Now, we're just a few days away from our first glimpse of Mercury in 33 years," said Solomon. "It is an understatement to say that the science team is extremely excited."

Telescópio espacial Hubble poderá ficar em óbita mais uma década!

A missão de 'reparação' do HST deverá ocorrer durante este ano, e aparentemente já inclui a reparação da Advanced Camera for Surveys, a camera que obtém as imagens espetaculares que estamos habituados a ver.

Fonte: MSNBC


Space telescope could stay up for a decade

Plan would keep Hubble working through 2013, with disposal around 2020

By Jeanna Bryner

Space.com

updated 12:38 p.m. ET Jan. 8, 2008

AUSTIN, Texas - The orbiting space telescope that just won't quit collecting gobs of celestial data well beyond its expected twilight is set for a major tune-up and upgrade, NASA scientists said Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

This servicing mission will be the Hubble Space Telescope's fifth and last.

The latest word is that the space shuttle Atlantis could lift off in August with a crew of seven astronauts and a cargo of equipment, tools and new instruments for Hubble. But that launch date could change. "That's dependent upon the shuttle flights between now and the servicing mission," said Alan Stern, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. He added that safety always comes first.

Orbiting at about 350 miles (563 kilometers) above Earth, Hubble is above the atmosphere and doesn't have to contend with shifting pockets of air that distort images made by ground-based telescopes. This atmospheric distortion is the reason stars appear to twinkle.

Hubble's clear view has meant, for one, that over its 16-plus years in orbit, the telescope has sent back a spectacular photo album of sci-fi-like jets from black holes, galaxies in all stages of evolution and snapshots of planets in our own solar system.

"Hubble is, without exaggeration, a national treasure," Stern said, "and all of NASA is looking forward to seeing it receive this tune-up and upgrade."

The public's love for Hubble, along with political pressure, has played a role in NASA's decision to service the observatory, a mission deemed risky compared to other shuttle ventures.

Hubble hugger
During the 11-day Hubble service mission, which will include five spacewalks, shuttle astronauts will install two new science instruments plus a set of gyroscopes to help stabilize the telescope, as well as batteries and thermal blankets to keep the observatory operating until at least 2013.

Astronauts will also install a soft capture mechanism that will allow a future unmanned spacecraft to dock with Hubble in about 2020 and deorbit it for a controlled plunge and disposal in the ocean.

Leading the spacewalks will be self-labeled "Hubble Hugger," astronaut John Grunsfeld, who had told Space.com last year he wanted to be on the mission.

"As both an astronaut and an astronomer, the opportunity to go back to Hubble is more than a dream come true," said Grunsfeld. "When we left Hubble in 2002, I was convinced it would be the last time I would see my friend Hubble Telescope," said Grunsfeld, wearing a NASA flight suit and space gloves.

However, he noted, "this mission promises to be quite challenging."

For instance, astronauts will attempt the first-ever on-orbit repair of two existing instruments, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, or STIS, and the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which failed a year ago this month.

Installed on Hubble in February 1997, the STIS separates incoming light into its constituent colors, giving astronomers a chemical map of distant objects. Since its deployment, STIS has been critical in the confirmation of black holes at the centers of galaxies, made the first discovery of an atmosphere around an exoplanet and helped confirm the age of the universe.

Better science
Two additions to Hubble's science cargo will include the Wide Field Camera 3, a panchromatic camera that is expected to provide sharp images over a wide range of colors; and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.

The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph will probe the large-scale structure of the universe, the so-called cosmic web, in which strands of galaxies transect seemingly empty space like a gargantuan 3-D spider web. The universe's invisible "glue," called dark matter and thought to make up about 85 percent of all matter in the universe, gives the web its structure, astronomers say.

Astronomers infer the existence of the cosmic web just as a child might know a Christmas tree exists by looking at the colorful lights that outline its branches. Instead of little bulbs, the stars and galaxies trace out the cosmic web.

In the end, scientists expect to breathe new and improved life into Hubble.

"Our goal for this mission is to leave Hubble at the apex of its scientific capabilities," said David Leckrone, Hubble senior project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The addition of new instruments along with repairs of others should give astronomers a full "toolbox" for resolving many cosmic conundrums, Leckrone said.

Asteroide poderá colidir com Marte

Durante o último mês têm vindo a ser refinados os cálculos da probabilidade de um asteróide colidir com o planeta Marte. Embora esta probabilidade ainda seja baixa, já é razoavelmente alta para que se estejam a planear observações da cratera que irá deixar, e que poderá trazer novos dados sobre a estrutura do planeta. Com as várias sondas que actualmente orbitam o planeta, e os dois rovers na superfície, a quantidade e qualidade dos dados que poderão ser obtidos é incrível.

Fonte: MSNBC

Actualização a 11 de Janeiro: ontem foram recalculadas as probabilidades de impacto para 0,01%, ou seja, é altamente improvável que o asteróide caia em Marte. Pelo menos agora. Link.

Asteroid’s Martian impact: What might happen

Collision could prove to be a valuable boon for planetary science

By Leonard David and Tariq Malik

Space.com

updated 6:57 p.m. ET Jan. 3, 2008

The possibility of an asteroid walloping the planet Mars this month is whetting the appetites of Earth-bound scientists, even as they further refine the space rock's trajectory.

The space rock in question — Asteroid 2007 WD5 — is similar in size to the object that carved Meteor Crater into northern Arizona some 50,000 years ago and is approaching Mars at about 30,000 miles per hour (48,280 kph).

Whether the asteroid will actually hit Mars or not is still uncertain.

Such an impact, researchers said, could prove to be a valuable boon for planetary science since NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and a flotilla of other spacecraft are already in position to follow up any impact from orbit.

"An impact that we could witness/follow-up with MRO would be truly spectacular, and could tell us much about the hidden subsurface that could help direct a search for life or life-related molecules," said John Rummel, NASA's senior scientist for astrobiology at the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters.

Observations of the asteroid between Dec. 29 and Jan. 2 allowed astronomers to slightly lower the space rock's odds of striking Mars to about 3.6 percent (down from 3.9), giving the object a 1 in 28 chance of hitting the planet, according to a Tuesday report from NASA's Near Earth-Object program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

More observations may further reduce the asteroid's impact chances to nil, NEO officials said. The space rock's refined course stems from observations by astronomers at New Mexico Tech's Magdalena Ridge Observatory.

But if WD5 does smack into Mars, some astronomers have a fair idea of what havoc it may spawn. The likely strike zone would be near the equator, but to the north of the current position of NASA's Opportunity rover at Victoria Crater, NASA officials have said.

Mark Boslough, a collision dynamics expert at New Mexico's Sandia National Laboratory, said the atmosphere at Mars' surface is similar to that of Earth at an altitude of 12 miles (20 km). Some space rocks that target Earth explode under the pressure created as they stream into our atmosphere. But they tend not to explode until much below the 12-mile mark.

"So this won't be an airburst," Boslough said. "It will either hit the ground intact and make a single crater, or break up and generate a cluster of craters."

The collision, were it to occur, could also create a visible dust plume as ejecta is lofted high into the Martian atmosphere, he said.

The resulting crater could reach more than a half-mile (0.8-km) in diameter, or about the size of the Opportunity rover's Victoria home, NASA added.

Boslough's break-up scenario is reminiscent of Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9, which broke into more than 20 fragments as it neared Jupiter in 1994, then repeatedly pummeled the gas giant over the course of six days. The resulting impact scars were visible to telescopes on Earth, in orbit and NASA's Galileo probe, which was en route to Jupiter at the time of the collision.

Like Galileo at Jupiter, NASA's MRO probe and its High-Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera would be in prime position for a martian collision. With its ability to resolve objects three feet (one meter) across, HiRISE has been billed as the most powerful camera ever sent to study Mars.

"If the asteroid hits Mars, we'll get a great look at the crater within a few days of impact," said HiRISE principal investigator Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson.

Actualização em 23 de Janeiro de 2008: As probabilidades deste asteroide caír em Marte foram reduzidas por cálculos posteriores, mas ainda são superiores a 0.

E uma animação do possível impacto, como poderia ser visto em Marte:

Os tamanhos dos planetas e das estrelas

Mãe de astronauta a bordo da ISS falece em acidente de viação.

A mãe de um dos astronautas actualmente a bordo da Estação Espacial Internacional ISS, Dan Tani, faleceu ontem num acidente de viação.

Se a missão do Space Shuttle tivesse sido lançada como previsto, no início deste mês, Tani estaria já na Terra, mas assim terá de esperar pelo lançamento, que será em Janeiro, na melhor das hipóteses. Não há forma de o fazer regressar antes.

Uma situação difícil e inédita para um astronauta da NASA.

Fonte: Email da CBS Space News

Tani's mother killed in car-train collision

Space station astronaut Dan Tani's 90-year-old mother, Rose, was killed today when her car was struck by a train in Lombard, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, police said.

In a statement, the Lombard Police Department said a preliminary investigation showed Rose Tani went around a school bus that was stopped at a railroad crossing, "going past the downed crossing gate at which time the westbound train struck the passenger side of the vehicle."

She was transported to Good Samaritan Hospital where she was pronounced dead, police said.

Launched to the international space station aboard the shuttle Discovery Oct. 23, Dan Tani was originally scheduled to return to Earth this week aboard the shuttle Atlantis. Liftoff originally was planned for Dec. 6, which would have resulted in a landing today. But Atlantis was grounded twice by suspect fuel sensors and the flight is now on hold until Jan. 10 at the earliest.

Tani and his two station crewmates - Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko - can return to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule in a life-threatening emergency, but that is not an option for the death of a friend or family member.

"This is something we consider," former astronaut Jim Voss told CBS Radio. "NASA understands there is a possibility of things like this happening while someone is on orbit. And they actually get the crew member's permission to either tell them or not tell them when something happens like this."

Most astronauts, Voss said, choose to be informed.

"It's particularly difficult to have a loss like that when you're in orbit because you're kind of helpless, you can't do anything, you can't be there to be with the family, you feel very, very isolated," Voss said. "And I think for Dan, this will be just a very, very difficult thing because of the closeness of the family member and not being able to return.

"Even in the military, when people are very isolated and far away, they make every effort possible when there's a death in the family to return the service member to be back with their family. And that probably is not a possibility in this case. You just can't do that. It's something you just have to endure."

Tani has trained with Whitson and Malenchenko for years and Voss said the closeness of the crew will be a comfort.

"And of course, NASA will offer any assistance that they can," he said. "They have flight surgeons who have worked very closely with the crew and know them extremely well and they're trained to assist in cases like this. ... It'll just be a very hard time for him for a while on orbit."

Tani's father, Henry N. Tani, is deceased, according to Dan Tani's NASA biography. Rose Tani lived in Lombard. During World War 2, Tani's parents and a brother were forced to leave their home and move to a California internment camp. They were U.S. citizens, but like 100,000 other Japanese-Americans, they had no choice.

In an interview with CBS radio station WBBM-AM before Tani's launch aboard Atlantis, Rose said she was proud of her son, adding "he was lucky to be picked as an astronaut."

Senador Norte Americano propõe prolongar o programa Space Shuttle para além de 2010.

Para tal propõe um aumento de 10 biliões de dólares ao orçamento da NASA, o que permitirá, na sua opinião, realizar mais algumas (5 ou 6) missões do Shuttle, e evitar o recurso da NASA a naves russas, até às naves Orion estarem operacionais, por volta de 2015. No entanto, o administrador da NASA afirma que esse volume de fundos é irrealista para o número de missões que seriam necessárias, além de reafirmar o risco que é voar com o Shuttle para além de 2010.

É a minha opinião, porém, que o risco existirá sempre, e missões deste tipo serão sempre extremamente caras, mesmo com as futuras naves Orion. Acho que a NASA está a fazer um trabalho satisfatório no controlo dos riscos inerentes à operação do Shuttle, e deveria considerar sériamente esta possibilidade.

Fonte: MSNBC

Lawmaker wants space shuttle extension
Weldon proposes $10 billion to keep ships flying past 2010
By Irene Klotz
Reuters
updated 7:55 p.m. ET Dec. 17, 2007

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The United States should keep flying the space shuttles past their 2010 retirement date to avoid depending on Russia to fly astronauts to the international space station, a Florida congressman said Monday.

U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, a Republican whose Florida district includes NASA's Kennedy Space Center, proposed extending the shuttles’ lifetime to close the gap until their replacement ships, called Orion, are ready for their first manned flights in 2015.

His proposal, which would cost about $10 billion, would have the shuttles make six or seven additional flights between 2010 and 2013 and speed up development of the Orion ships to be ready by then.

A second proposal would keep the shuttles flying until 2015 and leave Orion’s schedule alone.

“This is an issue of priorities,” said Weldon, who announced his plan at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center on Monday.

The board investigating the 2003 Columbia accident recommended that the shuttle fleet be retired in 2010 unless the fleet was completely recertified, a process that NASA said would be too time-consuming and expensive to attempt.

President George W. Bush accepted the recommendation and ordered the shuttles’ retirement. He also directed NASA to complete construction of the space station and develop new spaceships and rockets that could travel to the station as well as to the moon and other destinations in the solar system as part of a program called Constellation.

“The 2010 date was really an arbitrary date that was really picked more by OMB [the U.S. Office of Management and Budget] than NASA,” said Weldon spokesman Jeremy Steffens.

“The risk [of flying the shuttle] does not increase overnight. Obviously there’s risk, and NASA is doing its best to mitigate it. The risk is worth the goals we set out,” Steffens said.

As the shuttles’ 2010 retirement nears, NASA planned on getting exemptions to a congressional ban that prohibits purchases of Russian Soyuz rockets. The ban was imposed to curb the spread of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, which Russia is accused of helping.

Steffens said that paying the Russians to ferry U.S. astronauts back and forth may not be a viable option either.

NASA hopes that U.S. commercial launch vehicles may be developed to transport cargo and perhaps eventually astronauts to the station.

Congress already rejected a proposed $1 billion boost to NASA’s 2008 budget to keep Orion’s development on schedule.

NASA says, however, it is unsafe, expensive and counterproductive to keep flying the shuttle past 2010.

“Flying the space shuttle past 2010 would carry significant risks, particularly to our efforts to build and purchase new transportation systems that are less complex, less expensive to operate, and better suited to serving both [the space station] and exploration missions to the moon, Mars and beyond,” NASA administrator Michael Griffin told a congressional oversight committee last month.

Griffin said it would cost $2.5 billion to $4 billion per year to keep the shuttles flying past 2010.

Space Shuttle Atlantis atacado por aranha gigantesca!

Pelo menos era o que parecia na NASA TV! Uma aranhita andou por momentos na objectiva de uma das cameras que irá cobrir o lançamento da próxima missão do Atlantis, adiada para 10 de Janeiro, na melhor das hipóteses, devido a vários problemas nos sensores de combustível do grande tanque externo.

NASA divulga mais emails sobre o caso de Lisa Nowak

Já há algum tempo que não tínhamos notícias da astronauta Lisa Nowak, cujo julgamento continua marcado para o primeiro trimestre de 2008.

A NASA divulgou agora, de forma bastante discreta, um conjunto de cerca de 200 páginas de emails entre Bill Oefelein, Lisa Nowak e Colleen Shipman.

Fonte: ABC News





NASA Releases Documents, E-mails in Nowak Case

Arrested Ex-Astronaut Was on Good Terms With Boyfriend Days Before Her Arrest

By GINA SUNSERI

Dec. 13, 2007 - Newly released e-mails between former NASA astronauts Lisa Nowak and Bill Oefelein indicate Nowak may have been unaware that she had competition for Oefelein's affections until a few days before she confronted the other women in a Florida airport parking lot. Following the encounter Nowak was arrested and later dismissed by NASA.

The documents, which NASA posted online quietly overnight, were released 10 months after ABC News requested them under the Freedom of Information Act. NASA released e-mails between Nowak and Oefelein since 2004 and e-mails written by Oefelein to his girlfriend, Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman. Messages that NASA deemed to be of a personal nature were excluded.

Nowak was arrested in February after allegedly confronting Shipman in Florida. Police documents say Nowak stalked Shipman at the Orlando airport and tried to get into her car, then attacked her with pepper spray. Shipman was able to drive away, and report the attack to police, who tracked down Nowak nearby and arrested her. Police didn't know until much later that she was an astronaut.

Nowak is charged with attempted kidnapping and burglary with assault which can be punishable by life in prison.

As late as Jan. 25, just a couple of weeks before Nowak's arrest on Feb. 8 in Florida, Nowak and Oefelein were still exchanging friendly e-mails and chatting about training, working out and going on bike rides together. There is no hint that she is aware of his relationship with Shipman, a woman he had met three months before while training for his shuttle mission.

In the e-mails, Oefelein asked Nowak's advice about what shirts to order for his space shuttle flight. He asked what did she think about the food he ordered to take into space during his shuttle mission? There is a lengthy discussion about whole wheat tortillas and granola bars, plus personal appearances at baseball games.

The e-mails between Nowak and Oefelein are neither romantic nor suggestive. They do portray a friendly, but on the surface, professional relationship.

When discussing a happy-hour party to celebrate a shuttle mission, Oefelein e-mailed Nowak on Wednesday Jan. 3, 2007 to ask, "Are you going to this?"

"Only if u r [sic]," she replies.

A week later, Jan. 31, Oefelein e-mailed Shipman about a junket to Alaska, his home state. The tone was more romantic.

"They want your size for the arctic gear for the snow machine outing. I think I can figure that out ... sexy and athletic," Oefelein wrote. ABC News also requested information from NASA on the space agency's policy for granting leave to its employees. And the documents they gave ABC News apparently show the agency did not have a policy about what to do if an astronaut was arrested.

NASA's leave policy covers sick leave, family responsibilities, military duty and jury duty. The policy does not contain a word about what to do if an astronaut is arrested and charged with a felony.

A month after Nowak's arrest, she was terminated as an astronaut by NASA. Months later, her former boyfriend, Oefelein was also let go. Nowak is now working on flight software for the Navy, and keeping a very low profile. She is still scheduled to go to trial in April, 2008.

The documents also detail some of NASA's response to the February attack. The day Nowak was arrested; Johnson Space Center Director Michael Coats briefed reporters on NASA's budget, but said nothing about the arrest of one of their astronauts, earlier in the day.

Behind the scenes, the NASA press office was scrambling to figure out what to do. Astronaut Steve Lindsey, who commanded Nowak's shuttle flight, flew to Orlando to see what he could do, along with shuttle pilot Chris Ferguson. Lindsey escorted Nowak back to Houston after she was released on bond.

"Steve, you are handling an incredibly difficult task very extremely well," Michael Coats wrote in an e-mail, also released by NASA "Let us know whatever you need. Thank you for a job well done."

It was important to many in the astronaut corps who wanted to make sure that one of their own was not abandoned, while they struggled to understand what happened to Lisa Nowak. Ten months later, despite the release of hundreds of pages of evidence, videotapes, photos and cell phone records, there are still more questions than answers.

During the legal proceedings since Nowak's arrest, Oefelein has made it a point to appear by Shipman's side. Nowak has been bolstered by a devoted circle of family and friends.

In the two weeks between chatty e-mails and the incident in the Orlando parking lot, Nowak separated from her husband, and discovered that she would not be assigned to a shuttle mission. The job went to someone else when colleagues said Nowak was "not a team player," according to documents released by the courts earlier this year.

Nowak has spoken publicly only once, outside the courtroom following a hearing.

"The past six months have been very difficult for me, my family, and others close to me," Nowak said. "I know that it must have been very hard for Colleen Shipman, and I would like her to know how very sorry I am about having frightened her in any way and the subsequent public harassment that has besieged all of us."

Nowak won a huge legal victory earlier this year week when Judge Marc Lubet granted motions to suppress her 72-page statement to police the night she was arrested and to toss out the evidence seized from her car.

The evidence seized from Nowak's BMW in a motel parking lot included maps to alleged victim Colleen Shipman's home, e-mails between Shipman and Oefelein, large garbage bags, latex gloves and some used diapers.

Nowak's defense team repeatedly denies she ever wore diapers to avoid stopping during her drive from Houston, but the detective who took her statement said Nowak told him she had done so.

Despite the suppression of her statement, authorities still have evidence against Nowak. At the time, she carried a duffel bag with a steel mallet, a buck knife, a BB gun resembling a 9mm handgun, gloves and six feet of rubber tubing.