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Upcoming Conferences & Events
21 - 23 Jul 2008 - Hartford, CT
44th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit More info > See Complete List » industry headlines
NASA has tentatively scheduled the final space shuttle mission for 31 May 2010, four months before the shuttle fleet is set to retire. Following the Columbia accident in 2003, the White House had set 30 September 2010 as the date for the shuttle's retirement. Currently, a bipartisan effort is under way in Congress to add at least one more shuttle mission, a flight that would carry the $1.6 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station. The announced schedule by NASA provides for five shuttle flights this year, five in 2009, and three in 2010. (Image Credit: NASA)
Dozens of wildfires continue to burn throughout California, many of which were ignited in late June by a series of lightning storms. NASA’s Terra satellite captured images of several of the fires as it passed over California on 6 July. The images show the largest and most active fires in the state are the Basin Complex Fire near Big Sur (south of Salinas). NASA’s MODIS Rapid Response Team provides twice-daily images of Northern and Southern California in additional resolutions and formats, including an infrared-enhanced version that highlights burned ground. (Image Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team)
Space shuttle Atlantis is undergoing preparations in the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center for its STS-125 mission, also known as SM4. This is the facility where technicians configure the vehicle, the crew compartment and the cargo bay for flight. Atlantis' flight crew will participate in a Crew Equipment Interface Test (CEIT) inspection of the cargo bay in early July. Atlantis will be attached to the external fuel tank in Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building in late August before the entire stacked vehicle is rolled out to Launch Pad 39A. (Image Credit: NASA)
The analyses of data from the January 2008 flyby of Mercury by the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft, released Thursday, shows that volcanoes were involved in plains formation and suggests that its magnetic field is actively produced in the planet's core; and that the planet may have at least one source of water. In addition, the results show a startling contraction of Mercury’s surface. The new discovery regarding Mercury's shrinking will be reported Monday in the journal of Science along with a wide variety of other discoveries. (Image Credit: NASA)
NASA plans to conduct the first test flight of a new carrier rocket with an advanced launch vehicle in the spring of 2009. The Ares I-X flight will provide NASA an early opportunity to test and prove hardware, as well as facilities and ground operations associated with the Ares I crew launch vehicle. The reusable Aries I rocket is part of NASA’s Constellation program developed to maintain a U.S. presence in low Earth orbit, to return to the Moon and establish a base there, and to lay the foundation to explore Mars and beyond in the first half of the 21st century.
(Image Credit: NASA) |
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