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WHEN the space shuttle Discovery touched down at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Monday - recurring six souls securely to Earth - it left one of its team behind in orbit, to watch events unfold from space.
But the victorious outcome of the shuttle mission has raised the hopes of superior officials at the US National Aeronautics and Space...
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PARIS, France (UPI) -- The European Space Agency says Hans Schlegel of Germany would fly on the October 2007 space shuttle mission to the International Space Station.
ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain announced the task Thursday during German Chancellor Angela Markel’s visit to ESA's Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.
Veteran NASA astronaut Stephen Frick is planned to authority the STS-122 Shuttle mission, with U.S. Navy Cmdr. Alan Poindexter helping as pilot. Mission specialists would comprise Air Force Col. Rex Walheim, Stanley Love and Leland Melvin.
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HOUSTON—With a bit of poetic flair, space shuttle Discovery's astronauts thanked numerous hundred people Tuesday who welcomed them home to Texas.
Astronaut Piers Sellers told the mass what the view was like from the shuttle "barreling around the Earth at five miles per second."
"Sunrises and sunsets are like watching a small, soft atomic explosion go off in the horizon and stream through and warm your face every time it happens," Sellers said. "Part of me is still up there floating around the world."
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Space Shuttle Discovery lands securely at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:14 a.m. EDT (1314 GMT) Monday, after finishing a 13-day flight mission, NASA television showed.
The orbiter landed on agenda under overcast skies at the Kennedy Space Center, and just after the safe and sound return, NASA hailed this as a extremely successful mission.
"Welcome back Discovery and congratulations on a great mission," Mission Control told Commander Steve Lindsey after Discovery rolled to a stop.
"It was a great mission, a really great mission, and enjoyed the entry and the landing," Lindsey replied.
The mission designated STS-121, marks a critical step for the U.S. space plan's recovery from the 2003 Columbia disaster.
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The six member crew of space shuttle Discovery was woken up to the sounds of The Cure on Sunday.
The family of Mission expert Piers Sellers requested the song to wake the astronauts on their last complete day in space.
Except for a 30 percent chance of intolerable weather conditions, everything looks good for Monday's scheduled landing at the Kennedy Space Center.
On Sunday, Commander Steve Lindsey and Pilot Mark Kelly would check out all the flight control systems to make certain everything is ready to go for Monday's scheduled landing.
Discovery's astronauts and mission managers now say a hydraulic power unit with a drip checked out okay Sunday morning, clearing the shuttle to return to Earth.
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HOUSTON - Astronauts aboard shuttle Discovery ready to leave the International Space Station on Friday as ground control teams revamped landing plans to handle a tiny leak in one of the ship's power generators.
Managers consider the leak is unimportant but because there is not enough proof, they are proceeding cautiously.
"It's a coin flip," said deputy space shuttle plan manager John Shannon.
The shuttle has three power units wanted to move the body flaps, speed brakes and other grave landing gear. It could securely land with just one, though two or more make for greater control, Shannon said.
"We don't have enough information to say whether the leak is hydrazine or nitrogen,"Shannon said. "If it got bigger, it would be an issue. You just don't want hydrazine in the aft (engine compartment). You don't want it anywhere."
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Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum tested materials and tools developed after the Columbia tragedy to see if a damaged warmth shield could be fixed during flight. Despite trailing time after one astronaut dropped an instrument, the repairs were idea to have gone well.
The question is whether the repairs, made with a caulking gun and particularly developed sealant, could withstand temperatures as lofty as 1,700C when the shuttle returns to Earth.
A crack in the wing can reason the same catastrophe that hit the seven astronauts of Columbia, who died in 2003 when fiery gases penetrated the shuttle.
The repair technique was plan by NASA to make sure such a tragedy never happens again. A similar test was conducted in a spacewalk in last year’s Discovery mission.
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WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- NASA scientists said that they are ready to test 'smart' satellites that could fly in precision formation and are comparatively inexpensive to make and operate.
David Miller, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Space Systems Laboratory, says such satellites may be used for such tasks as building huge space telescopes and closely monitoring Earth.
The shuttle Discovery last week delivered the second of three satellite examination 'droids' that are undergoing experiments at the International Space Station.
'I rented the first 'Star Wars' movie and showed (a) class the scene where Luke is practicing the use of the Force with a floating droid,' Miller told the Christian Science Monitor. 'I said: 'I want three of those. How do we start doing this?'
The results came in the type of 9-pound spheres the size of bowling balls, each crowded with computers, sensors and thrusters that let the satellites to maneuver individually and en masse with precision.
A third satellite is to land at the ISS in December.
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HOUSTON -- The international space station could finally live up to its name, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter crowed Sunday.
His mere presence is a landmark for the continent of Europe: Reiter is the first non-American and non-Russian to take up long-term residence in the so-called "international" orbital outpost.
"The fact that there is a European representative on board makes the international space station more international," Reiter, who is from Frankfurt, Germany, said during a news conference. "Up to date it has been more kind of a more bilateral project."
Reiter joins American Jeffrey Williams and Russian Pavel Vinogradov on board the space station.
"In Europe we are waiting desperately" for the launch of a European-built module for the space station called Columbus, he said. The lab, predominantly for science, has been delayed because of shuttle problems and is set for launch in 2007.
"This mission is kind of a precursor," said Reiter, who lived aboard the Russian Mir space station for 179 days and is scheduled to be at the international space station for six months. "The international space station in the future will be indeed very international."
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Tiny fruit flies have glitch a journey aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. They're part of a tested designed by the University of Central Florida and the University of California-Davis - to better know how a prolonged stay in space can affect an astronaut's immune system.
While it is known that astronauts drop bone and muscle mass in space, scant research has been done on human illness in the almost total absence of gravity. University of Central Florida investigator Laurence von Kalm of the UCF Department of Biology says the self-contained research is carrying a small amount of a fungus that is not contagious to humans. "The questions we are going to ask are the flies that traveled in space more susceptible to infection? In other words, do they die more rapidly after infection than flies that have stayed on the ground?"
He adds that fruit flies serving as manage subjects on the ground have been infected [with the fungus] as well. "The variable that we would check, and this is why the fungus traveled into space as well, is [whether] the fungus itself can become more virulent in space. We will be able to determine that from the experiments as well."
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Space shuttle Discovery successfully ported with the International Space Station (ISS) at 10:52 a.m. EDT Thursday, according to NASA TV.
The two space behemoths linked up smoothly. The shuttle hatches would open about two hours after linkup and the seven crewmembers would go in the station.
They bring fresh supplies and a fresh station crewmember, Thomas Reiter. He would become Expedition 13's third crew member. His arrival would return the station's crew balance to three for the first time since Expedition 6 left in May 2003.
About an hour previous to this delicate linkup, the shuttle performed a nose over tail flip at a range of 600 feet (about 183 meters) below the station, so that on plank ISS Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Jeff Williams took high-resolution photos of the shuttle's underside heat shield.
The shuttle Discovery is at present listed to depart the space station on July 14 and land in Florida on the 16th.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Space shuttle Discovery, trailing a tail of yellow fire and swelling gray smoke, launched into central Florida's amazing summer sky Tuesday like an extra-large Independence Day Roman candle.
After two weather delays over the weekend and questions about lost lagging foam from the orbiter's external fuel tank, Discovery enjoyed an incident-free countdown on its method to the first-ever launch of a space shuttle on the Fourth of July.
Shuttle Project Manager Wayne Hale said the outer tank "performed very well indeed." He said there were five instances of foam loss during launch, but "we saw nothing that gives us any concern about the health of the vehicle."
A report by Astronaut Michael Fossum that heat shielding fabric had come movable from the orbiter was, Hale said, in fact ice that drifted away from the nozzles of the shuttle's chief engines that are cooled with liquid hydrogen during launch.
"We have seen it come off several times," Hale said at a news conference. "You look at it and you say it's got to be fabric, but it's clearly ice."
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The American space shuttle Discovery roared off on a journey to the International Space Station on Tuesday, marking the first-ever Independence Day liftoff.
The shuttle thundered away from its seashore Cape Canaveral, Fla. launch pad right on time at 2:38 ET in a stunning display of sound and light be suitable of the American holiday.
Cheers and applause erupted across Kennedy Space Center and along the nearby beaches of Florida's Space Coast as Discovery raced skyward.
By 2:45 p.m., Discovery was traveling at about 22,530 kilometers per hour.
"Discovery's ready, the weather's beautiful; America is ready to return the space shuttle to flight. So good luck and Godspeed, Discovery," launch director Mike Leinbach said just before liftoff.
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