BEIJING, China -- China has permitted reporters inside its space launch control room at Aerospace City close to Beijing as part of an attempt to join in the world’s space projects.
The unusual visit by foreign reporters occurred as China seeks way in to the International Space Station, too to assuage fears its space program is driven by military requirements, The Independent reported Thursday.
China's next manned launch -- to engage three astronauts -- is designed for next year, as is the nation’s first satellite launch.
China has said it requirements to discover the moon and build a space station within 15 years and needs to have the technology for a space walk and space wharf by 2012, the newspaper said.
Although senior Chinese scientists persist their nation's space plan is a peaceful one, Western nations are anxious about the program’s military applications, such as spy satellites.
BEIJING - China opened up the control room at Aerospace City in the Beijing suburbs - the nerve centre since where it has run its two manned space launches -- to foreign observers yesterday as part of its labors to be built-in in joint space projects.
The rare visit by foreign reporters was allowable as China is keen to gain way in to the International Space Station and other joint projects and assuage fears that its space programmer is driven by military needs.
The country's primary astronaut, or taikonaut as they are known in China, Colonel Yang Liwei met Western reporters for the first time as he path the Earth in 2003 on China's maiden manned space flight, Shenzhou V.
"We hope to further our exchanges with our counterparts in foreign countries and learn from each other. Let's join hands and work together to create a bright future for the peaceful use of space," he said.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The seven astronauts planned to fly aboard the space shuttle Discovery inwards at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday to prepare for Saturday's planned liftoff.
The flight, which is bound for the International Space Station, would be the shuttle's second since the Columbia accident killed seven astronauts more than three years ago. The launch is planned for 3:49 p.m. EDT (1949 GMT).
"It's really great to lastly be here in Florida for the launch," said Discovery's flight engineer Lisa Nowak, one of three recruit astronauts on the crew, which flew to Florida from Houston.
"I'm hoping the weather is going to improve over the next couple of days," said astronaut Piers Sellers, who is planned to make at least two spacewalks during Discovery's 12-day mission to the space station.
NASA was to begin forecasting the weather for launch day on Wednesday.
Computer model begins "new era in space weather prediction," scientists say
Washington – Mainly true-to-life computer imitation ever made of the sun's multimillion-degree outer atmosphere, the aura, productively predicted the corona’s actual look during the March 29 solar eclipse.
Funded by NASA and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the computer replica marks the start of a new era in space-weather forecast, solar scientists said.
Space weather is the name for situation and procedure that occur in space and that could affect the near-Earth environment.
These comprise changes in the interplanetary attractive field; coronal mass ejections from the sun that could send dangerous, high-energy charged particles to Earth; and turbulence in Earth's magnetic field.
NASA is sponsoring a competition in which charming companies would get $500 million in seed money to expand space vehicles that the US space agency would never design, build or own. Like a U-Haul truck rental, NASA instead would just lease them on a per-trip basis for sending cargo and finally crew to the international space station.
The arrangement is extraordinary in the nearly 50-year history of the space agency that usually oversees the development and construction of its own space vehicles instead of purchasing trip from private companies.
NASA would pay out the money incrementally for each milestone achieved in the vehicles' development. After that, the company or companies who win the competition would have to finance the vehicles on their own.
Rubbish from the International Space Station has been fallen into the Pacific Ocean, around 4,000 kilometers off the coast of New Zealand.
NASA says the majority of the trash was packed in the earlier supply craft, the Russian owned Progress M-55, which de-orbited.
A spokesperson says the debris that did not blaze in the atmosphere fell into the sea, 3900 kilometers southeast of New Zealand.
Astronauts, Pavel Vinogradov and Jeffrey Williams are at present onboard the space station.
The dumped rubbish would make room for the next shipment of fresh food, fuel and equipment, due to dock at the station at the weekend.
During a practice journey through space, astronauts spend their days hovering in micro-gravity, the virtual lack of gravitational pull. That weightlessness affects a lot of systems in the human body. One established effect is the provisional impairment of the immune system. Wounds, for example, take longer to cure in space.
At the same time, certain bacteria could transform and become more powerful--a bad mixture. Even if risks are slight during a 12-day mission like the future shuttle flight, they merit to be explored said Cecilia Wigley, load manager of a new immunity research project at NASA.
"We are looking down the road to the president's vision of eventually going to Mars," she said. "As we go into longer-duration flight, as well as longer distances, the body's ability to fight off infection becomes quite critical to the health of astronauts."
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA managers on Saturday chosen July 1 to launch the first space shuttle in approximately a year, despite recommendations beside a lift-off attempt by the space agency's chief engineer and security offices.
The decision to open Discovery on a trip to the International Space Station was made after two days of meetings by NASA's top managers and the engineers at the Kennedy Space Center.
The flight will be only the second shuttle mission since the Columbia disaster in 2003.
During a census of top managers, representatives from NASA's Office of Safety and Mission Assurance and the Office of the Chief Engineer optional against flying until additional design changes are made to the external fuel tank.
Despite their recommendations, the rebel managers did not object to making a launch, NASA officials said.
Washington D.C. - Amid lingering concerns about the shuttle's fuel tank, NASA officials have determined to launch the space shuttle Discovery as intended on July 1 for a 12-day assignment to the International Space Station. It will be just the second flight since the Columbia tragedy in 2003.
During a two-day assembly at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida the open date was decided upon. Michael Griffin, administrator of NASA, said that the assembly involved a "spirited exchange over safety issues.
Shuttle authorities gave the go-ahead on Saturday in spite of the reservations of two senior officials.
The result was announced Saturday after the agency's senior managers engaged in a lengthy Flight Readiness Review; a discussion that was labeled "spirited."
"We were really careful to evaluate everything as thoroughly as we could," said NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations Bill Gerstenmaier, who chaired the Flight Readiness Review. "But the review of the ice/frost ramp was one of the most vigorously discussed."
By reaching for the moon and Mars, NASA is let go of aviation research that was the foundation for the nation's journey into space.
Some contend that cuts to aeronautics research — long one of the agency's cornerstones - would endanger the country's lead in aviation. NASA's role in the industry goes mainly unseen by the public, but is knowledgeable by nearly anyone who boards an airplane. Its contributions comprise deicing technology and engine research that has led to safer, quieter and more fuel efficient airplanes.
The agency's aeronautics program is organism efficient to meet President Bush's focus on the human looking at of space. The president's 2007 budget proposal for NASA might cut 18% from aeronautics research, leaving it $724 million, down from more than $1 billion in 2004.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin compared aeronautics' fate to that of glide rule makers in the United States.
"The last slide rule maker went out of business I think in 1975," he said June 5 when announcing work for several centers on a space vehicle. "We simply are not doing all of the things that all of our centers once did."
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The team set to fly aboard space shuttle Discovery twisted into the spaceship on Thursday for a practice count-down ahead of next month's launch.
The U.S. space agency NASA has not launched a shuttle since July 2005 when Discovery pesky off to test safety upgrades imposed after the 2003 Columbia disaster.
Though the mission to the International Space Station was talented without major problems, the shuttle's external fuel tank, which had been re-designed to stem the loss of potentially deadly debris, flunked its entrance test flight.
NASA removed more foam and now considers there is no risk of large pieces falling off the tank during launch and arresting the spaceship, as happened throughout Columbia's liftoff.
The International Space Station (ISS) would pass through South African skies this evening. The ISS, traveling at a speed of 500km per minute, takes just more than an hour to circle the entire globe.
It would be temporarily visible in our skies shortly after sunset today.
"The international space station has grown so big, that it's almost the size of two tennis courts. Tonight one would see a bright satellite, much brighter than stars, moving through our sky. This happens about once every few months and the one today at 6:24pm this evening is coming from the South Atlantic," says Werner Kirchhoff, a retired Gauteng astronomer.
Associate flags flown aboard the international space station — and apparently signed by a NASA astronaut — showed up last week on the online auction site eBay.
The original eBay catalog indicated that the 4-by-6-inch flags were brought aboard the space station by Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov in 2004, and a supplementary photo showed a sample flag that appear to bear Sharipov’s signature as well as that of Leroy Chiao, his NASA coworker on the station. Yet another photo showed numerous of the rebel flags floating in a space station module.
The item was drag from the auction on Monday by the seller, Alex Panchenko of USSR-Russian Air-Space Collectibles Inc. in Los Angeles — and on Tuesday, Panchenko told MSNBC.com that he detached the items from sale because he had finished the flag and the authentication documents were forgeries.
CAPE CANAVERAL - The clock was marking for the two spacewalkers to end up their maintenance jobs on the international space station. All was finished apart from for put back a video camera on a transport platform used to construct the course outpost.
Last week, NASA controllers awarded with their Russian counterparts about whether to call off that task or proceed as planned and risk running out of time. They decided to go ahead after the Russians decided to tack on an extra 50 minutes for spacewalking, allowing the crew members to successfully finish their actual tasks
The spacewalk took 6 1/2-hours, longer than predictable, but nowhere near had the evidence of eight hours and 56 minutes set in 2001
Russian commander Pavel Vinogradov said at 6:48 p.m. EDT as he and USA trip engineer Jeff Williams exited the Russian side of the station in their bulky suits while the settlement soared more than 220 miles above Earth.
BEIJING, June 12 -- U.S. Space Agency NASA has maintain that after huge safety upgrades and design changes, the space shuttle Discovery is finally prepared to fly on its latest mission.
NASA has installed a new predestined fuel tank on the shuttle and added some new sensors and windows to make the launch and the assignment more secure. However, it additional that there are still engineering questions to resolve and some risks are still there.
Space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale spoke to the media personals: "We are ready to go into what I think will be a rapid succession of flights in the next few months."
Discovery is due to fly on its mission a little bit next month in a window that opens July 1 and closes July 20.
NASA is claiming that this next flight would mark "the largest aerodynamic change to this vehicle that has been made since we started flying 25 years ago." A lot has distorted since the Columbia disaster which killed the entire crew onboard and NASA has taken huge initiatives to make sure that every Space Shuttle flight to space is as safe as it can be.
Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke ‘Dice-K’ Enomoto has been established to the Soyuz TMA-9 crew which is at present planned to launch to the International Space Station this September from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, according to Space Adventures. Mr. Enomoto would be joining the 14th Expedition Crew which would also include NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Algeria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin.
"We offer our sincere congratulations to Dice-K for being named to the Soyuz TMA-9 crew. Space Adventures' staff strives, with each of our orbital spaceflight candidates, to assist them in preparing themselves for spaceflight," said Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures. "Dice-K is now even closer to achieving his goal of spaceflight. We wish him the best as he continues his training and begins the preparations for launch."
The backup crew named to support the Soyuz TMA-9 mission comprises a sari X-Prize title sponsor, Anousheh An sari, who would become the world’s first female spaceflight participant, if required, along with NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.
Cape Canaveral, Florida - A Japanese businessman set to be the world's fourth space tourist would fly to the International Space Station in September, according to the business arranging the trip.
Daisuke "Dice-K" Enomoto, 34, will be launched in a Russian Soyuz automobile from Kazakhstan with the next space station crew of US commander Miguel Lopez-Algeria and Russian flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin.
Enomoto would return from his 10-day space voyage in a Soyuz with the space station's current occupants, Russian commander Pavel Vinogradov and US flight wangle Jeff Williams.
Previous guide to the space station were Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttle worth and Greg Olsen, whose trips brokered by Virginia-based Space Adventures was estimated to cost $20-million each.
Billionaire software entrepreneur Charles Simonyi has signed a agreement to be the fifth tourist to trip the space lab orbiting 355km above Earth, although a date has not been set.
NASA has announced the Kennedy Space Center would play a big role in the space agency's future.
Yesterday we learned launches and landings for the next generation of spacecraft might be managed from the Cape.
What we did not study though is if any jobs will be cut.
It is feared many would be left out of work as the space agency looks to save money to disburse for ambitious plans to return to the moon and possibly on to mars.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said, "We're working as hard as we can. We are paying attention to the issue of how do we shift people who have been working on one set of tasks which are in the future not being done, onto other new and interesting work, that is exciting, and represents NASA's future, but is new."
Griffin says there is no schedule for the worker changes.
In other NASA news, NASA says it would do more work on the space shuttle Discovery.
Technicians would replace an electronics box on one of the orbiter's solid rocket boosters.
During routine testing last week, engineers establish a faulty electronics unit near some circuits. It's a device that serves as the main communications link between the booster and shuttle computers.
Electronics boxes were switched during at least two preceding missions.
The work shouldn't affect the July 1st launch date.
MUMBAI: Engineering major Larsen and Toubro is building satellite tracking radars for the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), which would be used in the country's future space missions.
These instrumentation grade radars would also be capable of tracking space launches and would be located at the Satish Dhawan Spaceport at Sriharikota on the Eastern coast, from where ISRO’s rockets fire satellites into space.
L&T is developing these radars with essential design and technical assistance from the ISRO’s Radar Development Center (ISRAD) and inputs from other ISRO laboratories and start stations, L&T Senior Vice President M V Kotwal told PTI here.
"We expect to complete the development work, installation commissioning and hand it over to the space agency in about two years," he said.
These radars would be equipped with advanced sensors developed by L&T at its in-house technology centre for accurate tracking of deep space satellites for ISRO.
Last year, L&T joined hands with Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) to start work on surveillance radars for the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy.
Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE), a Bangalore-based DRDO lab, is operational as the nodal agency for the project. "These surveillance radars have already entered into series production phase and orders have been placed with BEL as primary contractor," Kotwal added.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - The two astronauts aboard the International Space Station venture out of the orbital compound on Thursday to start a spacewalk aimed at conducting almost six hours of repairs and maintenance.
In the first of two spacewalks intended during their six-month stay in space, station leader Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeffrey Williams deliberate to set up a new vent for a balky Russian oxygen generator, put back a camera needed for future station meeting tasks and retrieve a science experiment for return to Earth.
Before a spacewalk, astronauts have to breathe pure oxygen to purge nitrogen from their bloodstreams. The nitrogen could cause a dangerous condition known as "the bends," which usually afflicts divers who surface from deep water too quickly.
Vinogradov, who was making his sixth spacewalk, and Williams, who has complete one previous spacewalk, spent more than two weeks collecting gear and practicing procedures for their outing. They had to resort to two backup plans when foot self-control wanted to anchor Vinogradov to a work boom and the new packaging for the science experiment could not be found.
"It's a lot like your house," said Paul Boehm, who oversaw the development of the spacewalk for NASA. "You set your car keys down somewhere and hopefully you find them when you're ready to go somewhere."
The U.S. space agency tries to keep path of the thousands of items aboard the station with a mechanized bar-code system. But sometimes crew members move things and do not put them rear in the same place, said Kirk Shire man, deputy manager of the space station program.
Two astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are leaving through the motions of a spacewalk today in preparations for the real thing afterward this week.
ISS Expedition 13 commander Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeffrey Williams donned their Russian-built Orlan spacesuits for a dress practice of the nearly six-hour June 1 tour to maintain their orbital spacecraft.
"The crew seems very comfortable and ready to go do the spacewalk," said Holly Ridings, NASA's lead trip director for the upcoming extravehicular activity (EVA), during a Tuesday press briefing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
While NASA ISS flight controllers full the Expedition 13 crew's coming spacewalk, the astronauts themselves conduct final checks on the systems and mobility of their Orlan spacesuits, NASA officials said.
Vinogradov and Williams are predictable to exit the space station's Russian-built Pirs docking compartment at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2240 GMT) for a five-hour and 40-minute spacewalk to gather experiments and maintain the ISS. The spacewalk would mark the sixth career EVA for Vinogradov - who staged five others from Russia’s Mir space station - and the second for Williams.
"The equipment that we have is very good and the training that we've been provided by the team on the ground is very good," Williams told reporters last week. "We will be very prepared when the time comes to go out the door."
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