Space shuttle Atlantis Sunday arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) for one final visit.
It docked at the station at 1507 GMT, space.com reported. The hatches between the shuttle and the station will be opened after the crews complete checking for any leaks between the seals, it said.
Atlantis was launched Friday from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Its four astronauts will be joined by six others currently working at the orbiting station.
The shuttle's 12-day mission is to deliver food and equipment. It is carrying a system called the Robotic Refuelling Mission, which will test methods to robotically refuel and repair satellites in orbit. The refuelling mission will be installed on the exterior of the station.
Shuttle commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley, and mission specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim plan to remain at the space station till July 18, when they are due to undock Atlantis and head home to Earth.
Thousands of people, including some who came to the Kennedy Space Centre three decades ago for the first launch, had gathered Friday to witness Atlantis' final mission.
Atlantis will be on display at the Kennedy Space Centre after it returns to Earth, ending the US' 30-year space shuttle programme. Other retired shuttle orbiters will also be displayed at various scientific institutions in the US.
NASA launched the Space Shuttle Discovery on its last journey into space today. Six crew members commanded by NASA astronaut and Air Force officer Steven W. Lindsey, will stay in space 10 days and 19 hours and land at the Kennedy Space Center on 7 March 2011 at approximately 16:50 UTC. Discovery will spend two days heading toward its rendezvous with the International Space Station. On the second day of the flight, the crew will perform the standard scan of the shuttle’s thermal protection system using the orbiter boom sensor system attached to the end of Discovery’s robotic arm. On the third day of the flight, Discovery will approach and dock with the space station.
The mission will transport the Permanent Multipurpose Module Leonardo and the third of four ExPRESS Logistics Carriers (ELC4) to the ISS. The Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) is a large, reusable pressurized element, carried in the space shuttle’s cargo bay, originally used to ferry cargo back and forth to the station. For STS-133, the PMM, known as Leonardo, was modified to become a permanent module attached to the International Space Station. Once in orbit, the PMM will offer 70 additional cubic meters of pressurized volume for storage and for scientific use. The module is carried in the cargo bay of Discovery and will be connected to the Unity node on the station.
Almost 200 people from 15 countries have visited the International Space Station, but so far the orbiting complex has only ever had human crew members – until now. Robonaut 2, the latest generation of the Robonaut astronaut helpers, is set to launch to the space station aboard space shuttle Discovery on the STS-133 mission. It will be the first humanoid robot in space, and although its primary job for now is teaching engineers how dexterous robots behave in space, the hope is that through upgrades and advancements, it could one day venture outside the station to help spacewalkers make repairs or additions to the station or perform scientific work.
Discovery was NASA’s third space shuttle orbiter to join the fleet at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Discovery also is known inside the space agency by its designation Orbiter Vehicle-103, or OV-103. Construction of Discovery began on Aug. 27, 1979 and was completed four years later. Discovery rolled out of the assembly plant building in Palmdale, California, October 1983 and was first launched Aug. 30, 1984 (STS-41D).
Discovery flew its maiden voyage on Aug. 30, 1984, on the STS-41D mission. Later missions included NASA’s return to flight after the loss of Challenger (September 1988) and Columbia (July 2005), launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in April 1990, the final Shuttle/Mir docking mission in June 1998 and Senator John Glenn’s shuttle flight in October 1998.
When first flown, Discovery became the third operational orbiter, and it currently is the oldest orbiter in service. It was named after two historic, Earth-bound exploring ships of the past. One was a vessel used by Henry Hudson in the early 1600s to explore the Hudson Bay and search for a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The other was one of two ships used by the British explorer James Cook in the 1770s. Cook’s voyages in the South Pacific led to the discovery of the Hawaiian Islands. Another of his ships was the Endeavour, the namesake of NASA’s newest shuttle.
After STS-133 Discovery will be the first space shuttle to retire from NASA’s fleet, having flown in space 39 times – more than any other shuttle.
NASA's Kepler space telescope, in an Earth trailing Solar Orbit, designated Kepler-11 about two thousand light years from Earth.
Five of the planets, ranging from 2.3 to 13.5 times the mass of the Earth, are orbiting Kepler-11 in a tight orbit that has a period of only about fifty days, closer to the their star than Mercury is to the Sun. The sixth planet is larger and farther out with an orbital period of 118 days and has a mass yet to be determined.
The Kepler space telescope's mission is to find Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, which would be about the same size and mass as the Earth with an orbit around a star similar to the Sun in the "zone of habitability", far enough out to not be too warm, but not so far as to be too cold. While Kepler has been, it has yet to discover another Earth. The discovery at Kepler-11 comes close and is, in itself, scientifically significant.
The Kepler detects planets by measuring the slight decrease in a star's brightness when a planet transits in front. The size is determined by the amount of decrease. The orbital period is determined by the time between transits.
Usually when a new planet is discovered, its mass is measured with Doppler spectroscopy which determines the amount of star's wobble that the gravitational pull of the planet causes. But Kepler-11 is too far away and the planets too small to use this method. Instead scientists measured the variations of the orbital periods caused by gravitational interactions among the planets.
Most new planets that have been discovered orbiting other stars have been gas giants, some of them much larger than Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and mostly just one planet per star. The Kepler-11 discovery is remarkable in the number, size, and orbits of the newly discovered planets. Though none of Kepler-11's world could sustain life (at least as we know it) the discovery will allow scientists to study the interactions of a multi planet solar system, other than our own, for the first time in history.
The Kepler-11 discovery, while remarkable, is still short of the hoped filled detection of an Earth-like world orbiting another star. When that happens, whether it is on the Kepler mission or by some other means, the perception of humankind's role in the universe will change. Other Earth-like planets have been a staple of science fiction for many decades and scientists, simply by the law of averages, believe that other Earths exist. But the confirmation of one would be the most significant scientific discovery of this century so far.
CREDIT : Mark Whittington,Yahoo Contributors Network
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals
This year was a big one for spaceflight, with governmental agencies and the private sector alike marking many key milestones.
During this watershed year, for example, NASA changed course to pursue new goals, the first private space capsule was launched into orbit and the International Space Station reached the 10-year mark of continuous human habitation.
A decade of Continuous Occupation in International Space Station
The first live-in crew arrived at the International Space Station on Nov. 2, 2000. Since then, individuals have come and gone, but NASA and its international partners have been occupying the station uninterrupted. This year, they reached the 10-year anniversary of continous human presence on the orbital laboratory.
The fact that humanity has an established, on a space outpost 220 miles (354 kilometers) above Earth's surface is a big deal, NASA officials have said. It highlights the progress we've made in becoming a true spacefaring civilization, and it hints at bigger achievements to come.
Assembly of the station began in 1998 and is almost complete. The station, now nearly as long as a football field, has hosted more than 600 science and technology experiments over its lifetime, NASA officials have said. That number should rise substantially as the station transitions fully from its assembly phase to a fully-functioning research laboratory.
NASA plans to operate the space station until at least 2020.
First Successful Solar Sail Mission
For years, engineers have dreamed about powering a craft through space using nothing but the constant stream of photons from the sun. That dream finally became a reality this year with the launch of .
Ikaros lifted off on May 20 along with Japan's troubled Akatsuki Venus probe. In June,Ikaros successfully deployed its solar sail, which catches photons the way a ship's sail catches wind. The probe is now riding that photon wind, speeding toward the far side of the sun.
Ikaros is demonstrating the viability of solar sail technology, showing that probes can travel through space without relying on costly (and heavy) chemical propellant. Its success could lead to the development and launch of many more solar sail craft.
Japan's space agency, for example, is planning to launch a solar sail mission to Jupiter around 2019 or 2020, officials have said.
Space Shuttle Program Winds Down
Three of the last-ever space shuttle missions lifted off this year, as NASA prepares to shut down the shuttle program in 2011.
All of the 2010 shuttle missions delivered key parts and supplies to the International Space Station, helping put the finishing touches on the orbiting outpost. On Feb. 8, the shuttle Endeavour blasted off on mission STS-130, ferrying a cupola with seven windows and a robotic control station.
The STS-131 mission of the shuttle Discovery launched April 5, bringing up racks for scientific experiments, as well as new sleeping quarters for the station's crew. Then Atlantis launched May 14 on the STS-132 mission to deliver the Russian-built module known as Rassvet. Rassvet provides additional storage space and serves as a new docking port for Russia's Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.
Discovery was supposed to make another trip to the station this year. Its STS-133 mission — which will deliver a storage room and a humanoid robot called Robonaut 2 — was slated to launch in November, but the discovery of cracks in the shuttle's external fuel tank pushed the mission back to February 2011.
SpaceShipTwo's First Flights
Space tourism made some big strides in 2010, as Virgin Galactic's suborbital space plane SpaceShipTwo took to the skies for the first time.
SpaceShipTwo will eventually ferry customers on joyrides to suborbital space, at $200,000 a pop. The space plane is designed to ride a mothership known as WhiteKnightTwo up to about 50,000 feet (15,240 meters); at that altitude, it will drop off, fire its own rocket engines and cruise up to the edge of space.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson publicly unveiled SpaceShipTwo in December 2009. In March 2010, it made its first flight, staying firmly anchored to WhiteKnightTwo the entire time. Then, on October 10, the space plane , detaching from WhiteKnightTwo and gliding back down to Earth.
Next up is a powered test flight, giving SpaceShipTwo the chance to fire its rocket motors. That could take place in early 2011. If all goes well, tourists could be flying to the edge of space by late 2011 or 2012, Virgin Galactic officials have said.
SpaceX Launches, Returns Dragon Capsule
NASA will need help getting cargo to the space station after the space shuttle fleet retires in 2011, and late this year a private company served notice that it's just about ready to step up.
On Dec. 8, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) became the first commercial outfit to from low-Earth orbit — something only six nations or governmental agencies had ever done before.
The California-based company lifted its Dragon capsule into space aboard its Falcon 9 rocket. Dragon orbited Earth twice, then splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico, where SpaceX crews retrieved it.
The mission was the first test flight under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which is designed to foster the development of private vehicles capable of carrying cargo and crew to the International Space Station.SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion NASA contract to make 12 supply flights to the station with Dragon through 2016.
Dragon's next test flight could take it directly to the space station, SpaceX officials have said. The capsule could begin making bona fide supply runs as early as next year.
NASA's New Space Plan
President Barack Obama's new plan for NASA, announced as part of his administration's 2011 budget request, calls for the space agency to shift gears, goals and priorities.
Gone, for example, is the Constellation program, which aimed to take astronauts back to the moon using Ares I and Ares V rockets, along with a spacecraft called Orion. Instead of Constellation, President Obama proposed that NASA work to get by 2025 and then to Mars by the mid-2030s.
NASA's new direction isn't responsible for mothballing the shuttle fleet in 2011; that plan has been in place since 2004. But the new plan looks outside of the space agency to fill the looming hole in low-Earth orbit transportation capability that the shuttle retirement will create.
In the short term, Russian Soyuz spacecraft will ferry cargo and crew to and from the International Space Station. But NASA's new plan aims to spur the development of American commercial space capabilities, with private companies — such as SpaceX and the Virginia-based outfit Orbital Sciences — soon shouldering much of the load.
NASA would then be free to concentrate on more ambitious projects to explore deeper space — the asteroid and Mars missions, for example.
NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star.
The transit signatures of two distinct Saturn-sized planets were seen in the data for a sun-like star designated "Kepler-9." The planets were named Kepler-9b and 9c. The discovery incorporates seven months of observations of more than 156,000 stars as part of an ongoing search for Earth-sized planets outside our solar system. The findings will be published in the issue of journal Science.
Kepler's ultra-precise camera measures tiny decreases in the stars' brightness that occur when a planet transits them. The size of the planet can be derived from these temporary dips.
An artist's concept of two Saturn-sized planets in the Kepler-9 planetary system.
The distance of the planet from the star can be calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star. Small variations in the regularity of these dips can be used to determine the masses of planets and detect other non-transiting planets in the system.
In June, mission scientists submitted findings for peer review that identified more than 700 planet candidates in the first 43 days of Kepler data. The data included five additional candidate systems that appear to exhibit more than one transiting planet. The Kepler team recently identified a sixth target exhibiting multiple transits and accumulated enough follow-up data to confirm this multi-planet system.
Scientists refined the estimates of the masses of the planets using observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The observations show Kepler-9b is the larger of the two planets, and both have masses similar to but less than Saturn. Kepler-9b lies closest to the star with an orbit of about 19 days, while Kepler-9c has an orbit of about 38 days. By observing several transits by each planet over the seven months of data, the time between successive transits could be analyzed.
In addition to the two confirmed giant planets, Kepler scientists also have identified what appears to be a third, much smaller transit signature in the observations of Kepler-9. That signature is consistent with the transits of a super-Earth-sized planet about 1.5 times the radius of Earth in a scorching, near-sun 1.6 day-orbit. Additional observations are required to determine whether this signal is indeed a planet or an astronomical phenomenon that mimics the appearance of a transit.
For more information about the Kepler mission, visit
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has a new project manager: Phil Varghese, a native of Kerala, India.He came to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1971 to study physics, earned his doctorate at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Ore., and then worked with computer and aerospace companies. He began his work at JPL as an engineer on NASA's Mars Observer Project and has managed another veteran NASA Mars mission - the Mars Odyssey orbiter - since 2004. Varghese has worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., since 1989.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been examining Mars with six advanced instruments since 2006. It has returned more data than the total from all other NASA missions that have flown farther than the moon.
Mars Odyssey began orbiting Mars in 2001 and is the longest-active spacecraft studying the Red Planet. Varghese previously managed the Deep Space 1 technology demonstration mission, which flew past asteroid Braille and comet Borrelly using solar-powered ion propulsion.
JPL's Jim Erickson managed the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project from December 2006 to February 2010, succeeding the project's original manager, Jim Graf. Erickson now manages JPL's Deep Space Network and Mission Service Planning and Management Program. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission Manager Dan Johnston served as acting Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project manager for the past four months.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey for NASA.
This is an artist's concept of the exoplanet WASP-12b. It is the hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy, and potentially the shortest lived. The planet is only 2 million miles from its sunlike parent star — a fraction of Earth's distance from the Sun. Gravitational tidal forces from the star stretch the planet into an egg shape. The planet is so hot that it has puffed up to the point where its outer atmosphere spills onto the star. An accretion bridge streams toward the star and material is smeared into a swirling disk. The planet may be completely devoured by the star in 10 million years. The planet is too far away for the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph, but this interpretation is based in part on analysis of Hubble spectroscopic and photometric data.
The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.
The planet, called WASP-12b, is so close to its sunlike star that it is superheated to nearly 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit and stretched into a football shape by enormous tidal forces. The atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times Jupiter's radius and is spilling material onto the star. The planet is 40 percent more massive than Jupiter.
This effect of matter exchange between two stellar objects is commonly seen in close binary star systems, but this is the first time it has been seen so clearly for a planet.
A theoretical paper published in the science journal Nature last February by Shu-lin Li of the Department of Astronomy at the Peking University, Beijing, first predicted that the planet's surface would be distorted by the star's gravity, and that gravitational tidal forces make the interior so hot that it greatly expands the planet's outer atmosphere. Now Hubble has confirmed this prediction.
WASP-12 is a yellow dwarf star located approximately 600 light-years away in the winter constellation Auriga. The exoplanet was discovered by the United Kingdom's Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) in 2008. The automated survey looks for the periodic dimming of stars from planets passing in front of them, an effect called transiting. The hot planet is so close to the star it completes an orbit in 1.1 days.
The unprecedented ultraviolet (UV) sensitivity of COS enabled measurements of the dimming of the parent star's light as the planet passed in front of the star. These UV spectral observations showed that absorption lines from aluminum, tin, manganese, among other elements, became more pronounced as the planet transited the star, meaning that these elements exist in the planet's atmosphere as well as the star's. The fact the COS could detect these features on a planet offers strong evidence that the planet's atmosphere is greatly extended because it is so hot.
The UV spectroscopy was also used to calculate a light curve to precisely show just how much of the star's light is blocked out during transit. The depth of the light curve allowed the COS team to accurately calculate the planet's radius. They found that the UV-absorbing exosphere is much more extended than that of a normal planet that is 1.4 times Jupiter's mass. It is so extended that the planet's radius exceeds its Roche lobe, the gravitational boundary beyond which material would be lost forever from the planet's atmosphere.
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