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NASA...repeated during public comments about the incident that the orbiting lab tilted about 45 degrees... Zebulon Scoville, the NASA flight director leading mission control in Houston during the event, says the station tilted far more severely than just 45 degrees. According to Scoville...after Nauka incorrectly fired up, the station "spun one-and-a-half revolutions — about 540 degrees — before coming to a stop upside down. The space station then did a 180-degree forward flip to get back to its original orientation,"... Scoville took over mission control after the docking. It was actually his day off, but he was on site because...

The first glitch in Nauka’s journey happened yesterday, when the spacecraft didn’t complete its first orbit-raising burn. This meant that the uncrewed Nauka wasn’t on track to actually intercept the ISS, which it’s scheduled to dock with on Thursday, July 29. The problem was attributed to a software issue in a computer aboard Nauka, which prevented the spacecraft’s main engines from firing. Nauka’s team was able to manage a remote course correction, but a second bout of course corrections were deemed necessary, and scheduled for today. One early report from journalist Anatoly Zak indicated that one of the spacecraft’s engines...

BREMEN, Germany (AFP) - Engineers formally handed over the Columbus science module, the European Space Agency's biggest contribution to the problem-dogged International Space Station (ISS). The 13-tonne lab was transferred to ESA at a ceremony attended in this northern German city, where a small army of technicians had spent four years fitting out its shell with control, communications and research equipment. German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the scheme as a "fascinating example" of European cooperation in hi-tech. Columbus, in gestation for 10 years and costing around a billion euros (1.25 billion dollars), is designed to enable European scientists to carry...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 June 28 Lunar Module at Taurus-Littrow Credit: Daniel D. Durda (SwRI), Space Imagery Center, LPL, Apollo 17 Explanation: Can the Hubble Space Telescope take a picture that shows the Apollo lunar modules on the Moon? With its 2.4 meter diameter mirror, the smallest object that the Hubble can resolve at the Moon's distance of around 400,000 kilometers is about 80 meters across. So, from low Earth orbit...