Discovery was demated from the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft early Monday morning at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Discovery was towed late Monday afternoon to the nearby Orbiter Processing Facility, where it will be readied for mission STS-121.
Matt
(Image credit: NASA/KSC)
[Technorati tag(s): shuttle, nasa, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle Discovery, Discovery, Space, Science]
Within the last few minutes the Space Shuttle Discovery touched down safely at Kenedy Space Center in Florida.
Matt
(Image credit: NASA/KSC)
[Technorati tag(s): shuttle, nasa, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle Discovery, Discovery, Space, Science]
The shuttle Discovery has been delayed as it heads home to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center from Edwards Air Force Base in California.
The orbiter is riding piggyback on a modified jumbo jet, more than a week after it landed in the Mojave desert.
The pair arrived in Louisana on Friday for an overnight stop, but bad weather has delayed departure until Sunday.
The 3,591km (2,232 mile) trip is expected to cost the US space agency a hefty $1m (£560,000).
Matt
(NASA photo by Carla Thomas)
[Technorati tag(s): shuttle, nasa, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle Discovery, Discovery, Space, Science]
Discovery has taken off from Edwards Air Force Base in Cailifornia. The shuttle is piggy-backed on a specially modified Boeing 747-100 Jumbo. The flight will be just 3 hours as the pair have to stop to refuel Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma and should continue on to Florida over night, weather permitting.
Matt
(Image Credit: Nasa TV)
[Technorati tag(s): shuttle, nasa, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle Discovery, Discovery, Space, Science]
The US Space Shuttle Discovery will leave NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California to begin its ferry flight home to Florida at sunrise this morning (about 1300BST).
Difficulties with alignment of the aerodynamic tailcone with the aft end of the Space Shuttle Discovery lead to the dealy of the departure.
Matt
[Technorati tag(s): shuttle, nasa, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle Discovery, Discovery, Space, Science]
Nasa has announced that the shuttle fleet will remain grounded until March at the earliest,
Engineers are searching for a solution that will prevent foam being shed from the external tank and striking the orbiter during launch.
Seven members of an oversight panel also say Nasa’s latest shuttle efforts were tainted by some of the problems that caused the Columbia disaster.
Nasa didn’t look in detail at foam shedding from the tank for 113 flights – and shame on us
Dr Mike Griffin, Nasa administrator said.
“From an overall standpoint we think really March 4th is the time frame we are looking at,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, Nasa’s new head of space operations and the official overseeing the foam fix.
Nasa chief Michael Griffin told journalists at a press briefing in Washington that there had been complacency in the agency in the past. But that there was now a new culture at Nasa.
Space shuttle Atlantis was due to blast off in September. But Nasa engineers will now have to make modifications to the shuttle’s external fuel tank, particularly to an area known as the Protuberance Air Load (Pal) ramp.
Discovery will be used for STS-121 instead of Atlantis, putting NASA in a better position for future missions to the Space Station. Atlantis will fly the following mission, STS-115, carrying Space Station truss segments which are too heavy to be carried by Discovery. By changing the lineup, the program won’t have to fly back to back missions with Atlantis, as was previously scheduled.
Matt
[Technorati tag(s): shuttle, nasa, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle Discovery, Discovery, Space, Science]
A war has broken out between hackers behind viruses that exploit a recently discovered loophole in Windows 2000.
The viruses written by the competing hacker groups are fighting it out for supremacy on infected machines.
Some of the variants seek out and delete rival viruses they find on machines they manage to penetrate.
The slew of malicious programs exploiting the loophole caused trouble for many organisations early this week as the bugs began infecting computers.
It is important that anyone using Windows 2000 patch their OS as soon as possible using Microsoft Update. The viruses exploit a weakness in the Plug-and-Play component of Windows 2000.
It also looks like the vulnerablilty affects other versions of Windows. Please look at the Microsoft Security Bulletin
Its also worth making sure that your firewall blocks port 445!
Matt
[Technorati tag(s): microsoft, windows, patch, technology, software]
The final preparations for Discovery’s return flight to Florida are underway at Dryden Flight Research Center in California. The orbiter has been attached to one of NASA’s modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft return ferry flight, currently scheduled to depart in the morning Thursday, Aug. 18. The pair could arrive in Florida as early as Friday afternoon.
According to Nasa the post mission inspection of Discovery has revealed very little damage and one Nasa representative even commented that its one cleanest he has ever seen, stating that there were ‘Less than 100 “Dings” in the heat shield and only about 20 were over an inch or so in size’.
100 “Dings” in the heat shield sounds like an awful lot to me!
Matt
(Images: Nasa/Tom Tschida)
[Technorati tag(s): shuttle, nasa, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle Discovery, Discovery, Space, Science]
The record for the most amount of time spent in space have been broken by the Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev. He has clocked up 748 days in orbit as of today.
He beat a previous record of 747 days, 14 hours, 14 minutes and 11 seconds held by fellow Russian Sergei Avdeyev.
Krikalev is currently serving as the commander of the International Space Station (ISS) and will be staying on board until October.
He has also stayed aboard the Mir space station during his 20-year career.
The cosmonaut is serving out a stint on the ISS that began on 14 April. Together with Nasa astronaut John Phillips, he hosted the crew of space shuttle Discovery when they arrived at the station in July.
These guys must be really bored!
Matt
[Technorati tag(s): russia, space, ISS, cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev, Science, Nasa, John Phillips]
I recently ordered a Bluetooth card for my laptop from Dell. It arrived today in a large box, inside the box was a small plastic bag with the Bluetooth card and the screws to fit it. When I looked more closely I noticed that there was the usual warning about static sensitive parts.
The actual warning ready “Screws: Attention, Static Sensitive Devices”. Wow, this thing must be good, even the screws are static sensitive and were separately wrapped in a pink static bag!!
Apparantly the Bluetooth card itself isn’t static sensitive, that was lose in the main plastic bag. Luckily it worked ok!
Matt
[Technorati tag(s): dell, bluetooth, technology]
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