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The night before the 1986 explosion, Boisjoly and four others argued that joints in the shuttle's boosters couldn't withstand a cold-weather launch.

Explanation: Why would the shadow of a space shuttle launch plume point toward the Moon? In early 2001 during a launch of Atlantis, the Sun, Earth, Moon, and rocket were all properly aligned for this photogenic coincidence. First, for the space shuttle's plume to cast a long shadow, the time of day must be either near sunrise or sunset. Only then will the shadow be its longest and extend all the way to the horizon. Finally, during a Full Moon, the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the sky. Just after sunset, for example, the Sun is slightly...

Exceptionalism: While the American space program is in a museum, Beijing orbits a nearly 9-ton space station module. Soon men will return to the moon, but they will likely be speaking Chinese. While America was scanning the skies waiting for an aging satellite to fall to earth, China was looking to the skies and seeing its future. On Thursday, Beijing launched into space aboard a Long March 2F rocket a space station module weighing 8.5 metric tons that will serve as a prototype for a 60-ton Chinese space lab to be in orbit by 2020. Americans may yawn and say...

WASHINGTON — The risk of an unprecedented evacuation of the International Space Station will spike if Russian craft cannot resume their missions and return by November, a senior NASA official has warned. "There is a greater risk of losing the ISS when it's unmanned than if it were manned," Michael Suffredini, the ISS program manager for the US space agency, said in a conference call with Russian officials. "The risk increase is not insignificant," he added. Russia on Monday delayed its next manned mission to the ISS by at least a month after an unmanned cargo vessel crashed into Siberia...

NASA says astronauts may need to abandon the International Space Station this fall. If Russian Soyuz rockets remain grounded beyond mid-November, there will be no way to launch new crews before the current residents are supposed to leave. A Russian supply ship was destroyed during liftoff last week. The rocket is similar to what's used to launch astronauts. NASA space station program manager Mike Suffredini said Monday that flight controllers could keep a deserted space station operating indefinitely.

I know this isn't news, but many FR'ers will enjoy this. It is an astounding 360 degree view of the Space Shuttle Discovery flight deck during decommissioning. Space Shuttle Discovery Flight Deck 360VR

A piece of the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia has surfaced in eastern Texas, where a severe drought has dried up a lake and exposed debris from the 2003 accident, NASA said Tuesday. The globe-shaped object that turned up in Lake Nacogdoches, north of Houston, was one of 18 tanks on Columbia that helped power the shuttle, said NASA spokeswoman Lisa Malone. Member of NASA's Columbia Reconstruction Team is pictured at the Kennedy Space Center in 2003 "Late last week, we were contacted by the Nacogdoches sheriff's office letting us know that they had found an item of what they thought...

The state's worst drought since the 1950s has led to the recovery in East Texas of a large piece of debris from space shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated over there nearly a decade ago. Officials in Nacogdoches made the discovery Friday as waters in Lake Nacogdoches receded during a relentless drought that began last October. “The lower water level has exposed a larger than normal area on the northern side of the lake,” said Nacogdoches Police Department Sgt. Greg Sowell. The Nacogdoches officials sent photos to NASA and the space agency confirmed the debris on Tuesday as a fuel tank that...

Space Shuttle Atlantis made its final landing today at the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, Florida officially marking the end of NASA’s 30 year-long space shuttle program that included 5 vessels, 135 missions and millions of gallons of fuel. We are sad to see the space shuttle go — it is endlessly amusing to watch people float in zero-gravity — but we are a little relieved to know that the blast of emissions from each shuttle launch will no longer be spewing into the atmosphere adding to the effects of global warming.

The final Space Shuttle mission ended last week, amidst calls for Washington to cut spending. The Shuttle program cost over $200bln, not to mention 14 lives, while giving little in return. Clearly a Shuttle launch was a majestic site; no one had ever assembled a machine so complicated that had to perform perfectly. Still, at over $400 million per pop, these are expensive warm-fuzzy moments. The Shuttles’ accomplishments were few. They launched satellites that could have been delivered to orbit cheaper by unmanned rockets. They built a space station that replaced an existing station – both of which served no...

Explanation: The Parkes 64 meter radio telescope is known for its contribution to human spaceflight, famously supplying television images from the Moon to denizens of planet Earth during Apollo 11. The enormous, steerable, single dish looms in the foreground of this early evening skyscape. Above it, the starry skies of New South Wales, Australia include familiar southerly constellations Vela, Puppis, and Hydra along with a sight that will never be seen again. Still glinting in sunlight and streaking right to left just below the radio telescope's focus cabin, the space shuttle orbiter Atlantis has just undocked with the International Space...

Well this is it folks.. It has been a fun ride. It is a shame that I didn't get to see those birds launch in person. Oh well should have moved to Florida.

Explanation: What's that astronaut doing? Unloading a space shuttle -- for the last time. After the space shuttle Atlantis docked with the Mike Fossum underwent a long spacewalk that included carrying a Robotics Refueling Mission (RRM) payload from Atlantis' cargo bay to a platform used by the space station's famous robot DEXTRE. On Earth, the RRM box would have the weight of about three people and be much more difficult to carry. Pictured above on the far left, DEXTRE prepares to help move a failed space pump back to Atlantis. Visible behind the astronaut is the space station's Kibo Experimental...

Friday marked the space shuttle's swan song, as the Atlantis lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center for the program's 135th and final flight. It was President George W. Bush who announced the shuttle's retirement with his 2004 "Vision for Space Exploration," which included a moon base and "human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond." But it was President Obama who put the kibosh on that vision, canceling the moon project and leaving "worlds beyond" in doubt. "We are retiring the shuttle in favor of nothing," Michael Griffin, Bush's NASA administrator, wailed to the Washington Post recently. Here, as...

Explanation: Space shuttle orbiter Atlantis left planet Earth on Friday, July 8, embarking on the STS-135 mission to the International Space Station. The momentous launch was the final one in NASA's 30 year space shuttle program that began with the launch of the first reusable spacecraft on April 12, 1981. In this reflective prelaunch image from July 7, Atlantis stands in a familiar spot on the Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A, after an early evening roll back of the pad's Rotating Service Structure. The historic orbital voyages of Atlantis have included a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, deployment of Magellan,...

As NASA prepares to launch its last space shuttle — ending 30 years in which large teams of creative scientists and engineers sent winged spaceships into orbit — it is facing what may be a bigger challenge: a brain drain that threatens to undermine safety as well as the agency’s plans. Space experts say the best and brightest often head for the doors when rocket lines get marked for extinction, dampening morale and creating hidden threats. They call it the “Team B” effect. “The good guys see the end coming and leave,” said Albert D. Wheelon, a former aerospace executive...

CAPE CANAVERAL — The last shuttle, Atlantis, sits on Pad 39A, ready for its valedictory flight. It is the nature of a shuttle to look kind of lonely out there on the pad, kept at a safe remove from the control room, the hangars, the observation platforms. The pad is not far from the beach, one of the last stretches of Florida coastline unblemished by hotels and condos. Beach houses were torn down years ago when the federal government showed up with rockets. Old-timers talk of 11 graveyards and an old schoolhouse lurking somewhere out there, the remnants of the...

On the eve of the final mission of the U.S. space shuttle program, most Americans say the United States must be at the forefront of future space exploration. Fifty years after the first American manned space flight, nearly six-in-ten (58%) say it is essential that the United States continue to be a world leader in space exploration; about four-in-ten say this is not essential (38%).... Majorities in nearly all demographic groups say it is essential that the U.S. continue to be at the vanguard of space exploration. And partisan groups largely agree that American leadership is vital, although this view...

Explanation: In the final move of its kind, NASA's space shuttle Atlantis was photographed earlier this month slowly advancing toward Launch Pad 39A, where it is currently scheduled for a July launch to the International Space Station. The mission, designated STS-135, is the 135th and last mission for a NASA space shuttle. Atlantis and its four-person crew will be carrying, among other things, the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Raffaello to bring key components and supplies to the ISS. Pictured above, the large Shuttle Crawler Transporter rolls the powerful orbiter along the five-kilometer long road at less than two kilometers per hour....

Deorbit burn scheduled for 1:29am (weather permitting). Landing at Kennedy Space Center scheduled for 2:35am.

[Credit: NASA] Explanation: What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. If you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time last week, you could have seen something very unusual -- the space shuttle Endeavour launching to orbit. Images of the rising shuttle and its plume became widely circulated over the web shortly after Endeavour's final launch. The above image was taken from a shuttle training aircraft and is not copyrighted. Taken well above the clouds, the image can be matched with similar images of the same shuttle plume taken below the clouds....

The picture at right isn't something you see every day, and it's something there'll only be one more chance to capture: a Space Shuttle launch photographed from an in-flight passenger jet. Stefanie Gordon shot this image of the Space Shuttle Endeavour's launch with her iPhone as her plane descended for a landing. The shot itself is a rare enough event, but what happened next was an eye-opener for the photographer. According to Mashable, within a few hours of uploading the launch pics to Twitter from her iPhone, Stephanie was getting phone calls from ABC, CNBC and the BBC. Her...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – While NASA is already planning the particulars of how to retire its space shuttles —– including announcing this week which museums will get to display them — a bid to continue flying the orbiters as a commercial service is still in the works, even if it is considered a long shot, SPACE.com has learned. United Space Alliance (USA), a prime NASA contractor, is working on a plan to commercially fly the Atlantis and Endeavour space shuttles twice a year following the construction of a new external fuel tank. The idea was first discussed in February but...

President Obama plans to bring his family to the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour on April 29 to see Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's husband lead six astronauts into space. Giffords wrote on Twitter: "We are very happy that Pres. Obama is coming to Mark's launch! This historic mission will be Endeavour's final flight." The Orlando Sentinel reports that Obama decided to attend for a few reasons, one of which was that he was going to be in the state already to speak at Miami Dade College's

When President Obama speaks, don't interrupt. That's what the president told a Texas reporter after a brief but contentious interview in which he was challenged about his unpopularity in the state. "Let me finish my answers next time we do an interview, all right?" he told WFAA News 8 reporter Brad Watson. During the interview, one of four that Obama held with Texas media in the White House on Monday, the president argued that even though the Lone Star state was historically Republican, his election meant that the politics there was changing. "We lost by a few percentage points in...

The battle over those retired space shuttle orbiters is getting nasty. And personal. That's good news for the news business. The most recent combatants are New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a liberal Democrat who is considered one of the leading "camera hogs" on Capitol Hil", and Texas Rep. Ted Poe, a conservative Republican who spent more time at the House microphone than any other lawmaker in 2010. This latest tiff started when Schumer had a one-word response to Texans (and their allies) who are pushing legislation to overturn NASA director Charles Bolden's decision to award New York City (and not...

Congressman Ted Poe is demanding answers from NASA. The Texas Republican says he was shocked to hear that Houston was denied one of the four retired space shuttles. On Tuesday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced Atlantis will go to Florida, Endeavour will be sent to California and Discovery was awarded to the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport. The prototype orbiter Enterprise, which was used for testing but never flew in space, will be sent to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City. "NASA made a mistake," Poe said during a Sunday...

NASA: Instead of awarding our retired space fleet to museums, we should be awarding contracts to go to Mars and beyond. Once we triumphed over the vacuum of space. Now we face a vacuum of leadership. A nation whose world leadership was unquestioned once held its breath as an American spacecraft placed American astronauts on the surface of the moon. It was a triumph of exceptionalism that was officially laid to rest this week as a nation held its breath to see which museums our space shuttle fleet would be awarded to. In these difficult economic times and with a...

NASA administrator Charles Bolden announced today the four museums -- the Smithsonian Institution (Discovery), the California Science Center (Endeavour), Kennedy Space Center (Atlantis) and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum (Enterprise) -- that will receive space shuttles for public display after the fleet retires this summer. As expected Houston, the home of human spaceflight, was snubbed. It's a shame. Houston's campaign, Bring the Shuttle Home, probably deserves some blame for being late to the game in terms of politicking for an orbiter. But I'm not sure any campaign could have saved Houston. The politics of this decision were pretty...

The one. The only. The last

Skywatcher Rob Bullen of Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England caught this snapshot of shuttle Discovery as it approached the International Space Staiton on Feb. 26, 2011. Discovery was flying its final mission, STS-133.

Well this is final live thread of the Space Shuttle Discovery. I'm going to miss seeing those birds..

Space shuttle Discovery docked with the International Space Station for the final time at 2:14 p.m. EST Saturday, where it will make a last delivery to the orbiting space lab -- before parking ultimately at a museum. The two spacecraft were flying about 220 miles above western Australia at the time they docked for the 11-day mission to deliver supplies, spare parts, an extra storage module and a humanoid robot assistant to the International Space Station. Two spacewalks are also planned during the shuttle's week-long stay at the orbiting lab. The shuttle and station crews will open hatches and hold...

follow the shuttle as it disappears into the outer atmosphere. This can create some truly stunning footage, especially as the rockets fire and the initial launch happens. On Thursday Discovery got its last ascent into space, but this time instead of just seeing it from the ground, one lucky passenger flight also saw it from the air. The flight was from Orlando, Florida, and it happened to be passing by the Kennedy Space Center just as the launch happened. We’re also lucky that one of the passengers had the sense to pull his camera out and start recording. The footage...

NASA Managers: It's a "Go" for LaunchAt today's pre-launch news conference NASA's mission management team have given their unanimous approval for space shuttle Discovery's launch tomorrow at 4:50 p.m. EST. "Everything is on track and going beautifully with the countdown," said Mike Moses, mission management team chair. "We're really looking forward to a very action-packed, successful mission and everything is on track." Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director, agreed that everything is going extremely well with the launch countdown. He also acknowledged the processing teams who worked on Discovery, its flight systems and ground elements. "As we're powering up (the systems)...

Record crowds by the thousands are expected to turn out Thursday (Feb. 24) to watch NASA's space shuttle Discovery soar to space for the last time. Luckily, a shuttle launch is such a bright spectacle that anyone on Florida's Space Coast can get a decent view. The shuttle is poised to blast off on Feb. 24 at 4:50 p.m. EST (2150 GMT) to make one last delivery trip to the International Space Station.

Private industry could be prepared to go where NASA fears to tread and develop a spaceplane to replace the space shuttle and ferry crews to and from the International Space Station. But if industry succeeds, it will be thanks to decades of work by the space agency on lifting-body reentry vehicles. While its plans for replacing the shuttle are in flux, NASA has a small program underway intended to stimulate private-sector efforts to develop commercial human spaceflight services. While most of those involved are pursuing Apollo-style capsules similar to NASA’s Orion crew vehicle, one is designing a spaceplane. The Dream...

NASA's space shuttle orbiters may not be destined for a museum in five months, after all. Agency officials are conducting a "what-if budget exercise" that could keep the orbiters potentially flight-worthy for several more years, NASA says. The option may offer a tantalizing alternative to the space shuttle workforce, who now must find new jobs before mid-year. Currently, NASA plans to retire all three orbiters - including Discovery after a scheduled flight in February, Endeavour after a planned trip in April and finally Atlantis after it returns from a scheduled launch in June. Meanwhile, NASA has asked the space industry...

February 1, 2003 - Explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia. As memorable as the 9/11 tragedy, so was the explosion and destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia over Louisiana, February 1st, 2003. History has given special notice to Space Shuttle Challenger's destruction 25 years ago, but why hasn't the disintegration of Columbia been as noteworthy? Maybe, it has something to do with Political Correctness and the EPA, proving again how our daily lives are excessively affected by by Political Correctness and the EPA. We have seen the deadly effects of the enviromentally obsessed: The banning of DDT which has promoted...

On the morning the Challenger space shuttle made its final flight, Mark Letalien was sitting in his high school theatre surrounded by wildly cheering students as the spacecraft carrying their teacher, Christa McAuliffe, tore through the Florida sky. But 73 seconds into the historic mission, the raucous celebration at Concord High School in Concord, New Hampshire, was shattered by a teacher's yell to be quiet.

With the space shuttle program shutting down this year, NASA on Jan. 24 issued official notification that Kennedy Space Center (KSC) launch pads, payload processing facilities, runways and other amenities will be available for use by commercial companies and non-federal entities. In its Notice of Availability and Request for Information, NASA identified four types of facilities it expects to make available upon completion of the shuttle program: space vehicle processing and launch, off-line processing, payload processing and miscellaneous. Listed in the announcement are Launch Complexes 39A and 39B, the Vehicle Assembly Building, Launch Control Center, Orbiter Processing Facilities, Shuttle Landing...

The shocking gundown of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has left NASA reeling: Her astronaut husband was due to rocket away in just three months as perhaps the last space shuttle commander, and her brother-in-law is currently on the International Space Station. Shuttle commander Mark Kelly rushed to his wife's hospital bedside Saturday as his identical twin brother, Scott, did his best to keep updated on the Arizona shooting through Mission Control, the Internet and the lone phone aboard the space station. (snip)

Five minute time lapse of STS 131, from hangar to launch. Pretty cool! Direct Link

The second flight of the space shuttle Atlantis was almost its last. What was then NASA’s newest orbiter sustained severe damage to its fragile thermal protection system when it lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B on Dec. 2, 1988. But through a combination of military secrecy and plain old human misunderstanding, the problem went unaddressed until Atlantis returned to Earth four days later. The STS-27 mission was the second shuttle flight after the fatal Challenger mission, an urgent “black” mission to orbit the Lacrosse-1 radar-reconnaissance satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office (AW&ST July 9, 2007, p. 28)....

Space shuttle Discovery’s final mission is off until February. NASA managers announced the latest delay for Discovery on Friday. They say they need more time to analyze cracks in the shuttle’s fuel tank. The damage cropped up following a failed launch attempt in early November. Discovery remains on the launch pad, holding a load of equipment for the International Space Station. Officials want to conduct a fueling test to better understand the problem. Officials say they will tentatively aim for a liftoff on Feb. 3. That will result in a postponement for shuttle Endeavour, which had been scheduled to soar...

The wonderfully sort-of-secret X-37B is back on terra firma after a long stay in space. Very little information beyond its appearance, dimensions and the fact that the Air Force is deploying it is known about the vehicle, which looks a lot like a mini space shuttle. The vehicle can stay in orbit for at least nine months. As someone who spent five years at Space News — much of that time covering intelligence issues — I’m going to engage in some informed speculation. It could take advanced sensors into space for testing and, probably, allow sensors to operate from the...

The final launch of Space Shuttle Discovery will take place no earlier than 3 December. Weather permitting, the launch - originally set for September but postponed to 1 November because the payload was not ready and then to 30 November after a hydrogen leak was discovered while filling the external fuel tank - is now expected at 02:52 Eastern Standard Time. The current launch window will be open until 5 December. The countdown-stopping leak was at the ground umbilical carrier plate, an attachment point between the external tank and a 178mm (7in) pipe that carries gaseous hydrogen safely away from...

The aviation and space press buzzed last week with the news that NASA had quietly moved its two long-grounded X-34 space planes from open storage at the space agency's Dryden center - located on Edwards Air Force Base in California - to a test pilot school in the Mojave Desert. At the desert facility, the mid-'90s-vintage, robotic X-34s would be inspected to determine if they were capable of flying again. It seemed that NASA was eying a dramatic return to the business of fast, cheap space access using a reusable, airplane-style vehicle - something the Air Force has enthusiastically embraced...