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This is the official launch live thread of the Kepler Mission.

The Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center recently received and interesting visitor on an unannounced tour. I used to do work out there, and there were always hogs, deer, manatees, rattlesnakes, eagles, schools of redfish and gators all over the place. There was a lake just a few blocks southeast of the HQ building where I counted over 40 gators one summer. Just thought including the notes that accompanied the picture (below) would be interesting. They're in reverse chronological order. "for those who used to work here, see what you are missing?" "for those who still work here, see...

The space shuttle Discovery returned to its home spaceport Sunday, landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) after a weekend flight across the country. A modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet ferried Discovery to KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility at the orbiter’s Cape Canaveral, Florida home, touching down at about 9:58 a.m. EDT (1358 GMT) after a 2.5-hour flight from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The third hurricane to hit NASA's spaceport in just over a month blew out more panels and left more gaping holes in the massive shuttle assembly building, but overall damage was not as severe as feared, a space agency official said Sunday. "Where there's obviously some more damage, it doesn't look appreciably worse than it did," said NASA spokesman George Diller, part of a 206-member team that spent the night barricaded inside the Kennedy Space Center. "We just had a prayer service with the base chaplain because we all felt so relieved that we came out...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Hurricane Frances did more damage to the Kennedy Space Center than any other storm in history, tearing an estimated 1,000 exterior panels from a giant building where space vehicles are assembled, officials said Monday. No space shuttles were inside the 525-foot-high building, a familiar landmark at the space center. But center director James Kennedy said he feared the damage could set back NASA's effort to resume shuttle launches next spring. Monday marked the first time anyone from NASA had seen the damage from the storm because the agency completely evacuated the space center — the first...

UPDATE: NASA to Make (Kerry) Photos Available Again After a legal review by NASA lawyers, the photos of Sen. John Kerry in the famous ,"bunny suit" will be posted sometimes this evening on http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov.Check back for more details as they become available. Freeper comment: (This is from a certain Floridian newspaper this afternoon....developing.....) The full story is at: http://www.floridatoday.com/topstories/072904bunny.htm

Here is the Sunday Evening FReep report for: Central Florida FReepers: Man the Ramparts! Kerry is coming to Town! Kerry was a no show much to his own lament as it turns out JFK diverted his plane to Boston (itinerary flip-flop!) to "throw" out the pitch at the Sox / Yankees game. As you can read in a great thread, Kerry didn't pitch from the mound but still couldn't get the ball all the way to the home plate! This is better than the Dukakis tank incident. After the press gave up at the local airport, people started arriving across...

As part of his pre-convention getting to know him tour, John Kerry is coming to the Kennedy Space Center on Monday July 26th accompanied by ex-astronaut John Glenn to talk about ... healthcare![I'm posting this as a vanity since Florida Today refuses to allow us to post even headlines. Since this is the hometown paper for the Kennedy Space Center, it is the only one carrying this local story with national import. Go figure. You can go there to read the article but why give a Gannett paper the hits?]

Hey Central Florida FReepers! The Brevard County GOP'ers are planning the following... (If you can't go on Monday and want to be at the airport for kerry's arrival, stay tuned for more info...) John Kerry is coming to Brevard this Sunday evening (25 July) and staying at the Radisson in Cape Canaveral. He will be going to a private function at the NASA Visitors Center on Monday morning. We want to have a sign waving rally for him on A1A in Cape Canaveral around the Radisson from 8:30am to 9:30am on Monday morning. We will have a Flipper costume, flip...

Lockheed Martin and International Launch Services are preparing for [Wednesday's] lift-off of an Atlas 3B rocket with a Navy communications satellite aboard. It's the last of the Navy's "UFO" or ultra high-frequency follow-on satellites, which allow people in all branches of the military to talk securely between the ground, ships and airplanes, often with small, portable terminals. ... 8:24 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2003 In the words of a seasonal song, baby, it's cold outside. However, cold won't hinder the launch. Winds might, but now, both surface and upper-level winds are below limits. The countdown is proceeding toward the...

CAPE CANAVERAL - If you want to experience the real United States, visit John F. Kennedy Space Center as a tourist. I did so on Saturday. KSC is not about making war. It is about space exploration. As a high school junior, I was at the Cape on Feb. 20, 1962, when John Glenn blasted into space for the first time on Friendship 7, and I was here in October 1998, when, at age 77, Glenn went up the second time on the shuttle Discovery. Between those two flights, I saw eight other liftoffs at the site, all as a...

Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial Service Remarks by FL Gov. Jeb Bush They were supposed to return here. After orbiting the earth for sixteen days, after traveling more than six million miles, after seeing every corner of our beautiful world, they were supposed to return here. You -- their coworkers, their colleagues, their friends -- were ready to greet them with their families, to congratulate them on their successful mission, to honor them as the newest standard bearers of the great American tradition of exploration and discovery in space. They were supposed to return here, to the Kennedy Space Center at...