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Upcoming Conferences & Events
5 - 8 Jan 2009 - Orlando, Florida
47th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting Including The New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition More info > See Complete List » industry headlines
A piece of space trash the size of a refrigerator plunged into the Earth's atmosphere late Sunday to burn up over the South Pacific Ocean, more than a year after it was jettisoned from the ISS. The debris crashed down somewhere between Australia and New Zealand Sunday night. The tank had served as a reserve supply of spare coolant at the space station since 2001. Known as an Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS), the coolant tank was the largest piece of trash ever disposed of by hand from the space station. NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson junked the tank during a 23 July 2007 spacewalk. (Image Credit: NASA)
NASA confirmed Thursday that Endeavour is set to launch 14 November at 7:55 p.m., but said the final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope would be delayed until at least May. More time is needed to prepare spare parts that astronauts will take to the observatory. They will replace a Hubble computer system that crashed last month and forced the postponement of Atlantis' planned 14 Oct. liftoff. Endeavour had been standing by as a rescue shuttle for the Hubble crew if necessary, but is now on track for a 15-day mission to supply and repair the International Space Station. (Image Credit: NASA)
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business. Only two days after being brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. The image demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, scoring a "perfect 10" both for performance and beauty. The galaxy pair was photographed 27-28 October. Arp 147 lies in the constellation Cetus, and it is more than 400 million light-years away from Earth. (Image Credit: NASA)
NASA unveiled its next-generation space capsule Wednesday at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base. Unlike the space-plane shape of the shuttles, the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle looks similar to the old Apollo space capsule. However, the test module is substantially bigger -- 16.5 feet in diameter compared with Apollo 11's 12.8 feet. The larger size will allow it to carry six astronauts instead of Apollo's three. There are years of development still to go, but if things go as planned, the capsule could begin carrying astronauts to the International Space Station as early as 2014. (Image Credit: NASA)
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