New image of NGC 346, the Small Magellanic Cloud. Credit: ESO
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It’s not Earth, Wind and Fire*, but light, wind and fire in this dramatic new image of the Small Magellanic Cloud (NGC 346) that will make you want to Keep Your Head to the Sky**. The light, wind and heat given off by massive, Mighty Mighty ** Shinging Star(s)** have dispersed the glowing gas within and around this star cluster, forming a surrounding wispy nebular structure that looks like a cobweb. As yet more stars form from lose matter in the area, they will ignite, scattering leftover dust and gas, carving out great ripples and altering the face of this lustrous object. But, That’s the Way of the World** in this open cluster of stars, that we just Can’t Hide Love** for.
The nebula containing this clutch of bright stars can really Sparkle **. It is known as an emission nebula, meaning that gas within it has been heated up by stars until the gas emits its own light, just like the neon gas used in electric store signs.
This image was taken with the Wide Field Imager (WFI) instrument at the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. Images like this help astronomers Turn It Into Something Good** by helping to chronicle star birth and evolution, while offering glimpses of how stellar development influences the appearance of the cosmic environment over time.
If you want more information about this image, you can Let Your Feelings Show** by visiting the ESO website.
*The band Earth, Wind and Fire is sometimes known as Elements of the Universe
** indicates song titles recorded by Earth, Wind and Fire
Are you looking for a computerized telescope that’s designed for the more serious amateur astronomer? Then you need to take a look at the Celestron NexStar 130SLT Computerized Telescope. This reflector telescope is both advanced in size and in capabilities! Let’s take a look at what makes the NexStar 130 SLT tick…
Celestron NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope – Optical Tube Assembly – The popularity of the Celestron NexStar 114 models inspired Celestron to go bigger and they are proud to introduce NexStar 130 SLT. The 130 mm (5.12 in) aperture size has 30% more light-gathering power than the NexStar 114 SLT telescope and 345 times more light grasp than the human eye alone. This means an outstanding limiting stellar magnitude of 13.1! With a 650 mm (25.59 in) focal length, the Celestron NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope operates at a focal ratio of f/5 – giving it a total useful magnification factor of 307X. The 130mm primary mirror is crafted from the finest optical glass and precision ground to exacting tolerances – then given durable aluminum coatings for years of care-free reflective performance. It has an outstanding resolution of 0.89 arc seconds and a photographic resolution of 400 line/mm. The Celestron NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope also has an upgraded 2″ rack and pinion focuser, too!
Celestron NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope – Mount – Driving the Celestron NexStar 130 SLT is a single arm fork mount with nine slew speeds: 4°/sec, 2°/sec, 1°/sec, .5°/sec, 32x, 16x, 8x, 4x, 2x. It works in both hemispheres and tracks in Sidereal, Solar and Lunar rates. A clamshell scope ring with a captive bolt holds the optical tube assembly securely and attaches to the sturdy stainless steel tripod via a captive, ergonomic center bolt. No worries about anything getting tangled during use… the battery compartment is internalized so there’s no “cord wrap” issues and it even includes an auxiliary port for additional accessories such as GPS. There’s no wingnuts to get lost in the dark on the tripod either… Just clamp the tublar legs at the desired height and add the accessory tray for additional stability. Now that’s a quick and easy no tool setup!
Celestron NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope – NexStar Hand Control – The brains behind the brawn is the patented Celestron NexStar system. The SkyAlign feature allows you to align on any three bright celestial objects, making for a fast and easy alignment process. Simply input the date, time and your location (the CPC models have built-in GPS that does this for you) and then align the telescope to three bright stars of your choosing. You do not need to know the names of the stars — you could even pick the moon or bright planets! The NexStar Computer telescope system will automatically figure out which stars were chosen and then align the telescope. There is no need to point the telescope North or to level the optical tube – the initial position of the telescope is irrelevant. The computerized hand control gives you the ability to automatically slew to any of its 4,000+ objects, including over 600 galaxies, 300 clusters and dozens of beautiful binary stars. But it doesn’t stop there… The Celestron NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope can also locate comets, geostationary satellites and asteroids, too! The flash upgradeable hand control software and motor control units are always ready for downloading product updates over the Internet and adding an optional GPS unit makes things even easier. The NexStar 130SLT includes NSOL telescope control software for basic control of your telescope via computer (with optional RS-232 cable) and it’s compatible with optional NexRemote telescope control software, for advanced control of your telescope via computer.
Celestron NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope – Accessories – The Celestron NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope is ready to go just as soon as you are. The package includes a StarPointer red dot reflex finderscope and two eyepieces: a 25 mm (0.98 in) that provides 26X magnification and a 9 mm (0.35 in) eyepiece that delivers 72X. You won’t be left “in the dark” either. The package also includes “The Sky” Level 1 planetarium software and the NexStar Observers List (v2.6.4c).
Weighing in at right around 18 lb (8.16 kg), Celestron’s most affordable NexStar 130 SLT Computerized Telescope turns starry nights into space odysseys. Set it up in your own backyard or travel to a dark sky location with ease. You can see breathtaking views of the lunar landscape, Venus and its phases, Mars resolved as an orange disc, Jupiter and its 4 moons, Saturn resolved as a disc, with its rings plainly visible at medium and high magnification. Add to that beautiful star clusters and distant galaxies and you have a tool you’ll use for many, many years to come!
The mass of the proton, proton mass, is 1.672 621 637(83) x 10 -27 kg, or 938.272013(23) MeV/c2, or 1.007 276 466 77(10) u (that’s unified atomic mass units).
The most accurate measurements of the mass of the proton come from experiments involving Penning traps, which are used to study the properties of stable charged particles. Basically, the particle under study is confined by a combination of magnetic and electric fields in an evacuated chamber, and its velocity reduced by a variety of techniques, such as laser cooling. Once trapped, the mass-to-charge ratio of a proton, deuteron (nucleus of a deuterium atom), singly charged hydrogen molecule, etc can be measured to high precision, and from these the mass of the proton estimated.
It would be nice if the experimentally observed mass of a proton were the same as that derived from theory. But how to work out what the mass of a proton should be, from theory?
The theory is quantum chromodynamics, or QCD for short, and is the strong force counterpart to quantum electrodynamics (QED). As the proton is made up of three quarks – two up and one down – its mass is the mass of those quarks and the mass of binding energy. This is a very difficult calculation to perform, in part because there are so many ways the quarks and gluons in a proton interact, but published results agree with experiment to within a percent or two.
More fundamentally, the proton has mass because of the Higgs boson … at least, it does according to the highly successful Standard Model of particle physics. Only trouble is, the Higgs boson has yet to be detected (the Large Hadron Collider was built with finding the Higgs boson as a key objective!).
Want to know the “official” value? Check out CODATA. And how does the proton mass compare with the mass of the anti-proton? Click here to find out! And how to determine the proton mass from first (theoretical) principles? This article from CNRS explains how.
And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let Fraser know if you can be a host, and he’ll schedule you into the calendar.
Finally, if you run a space-related blog, please post a link to the Carnival of Space. Help us get the word out.
Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed "tiger stripes" near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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Newly released images from last November’s close flyby over Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus the Cassini spacecraft reveal geyser jets spraying all along the prominent fractures, or “tiger stripes” that cross the moon’s south polar region. Additionally, a new detailed temperature map of one fracture reveals warmer temperatures than what was expected. “Enceladus continues to astound,” said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “With each Cassini flyby, we learn more about its extreme activity and what makes this strange moon tick.”
The new images from the imaging science subsystem and the composite infrared spectrometer teams include the best 3-D image ever obtained of a tiger stripe fissure that sprays icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds. There are also views of regions not well-mapped previously on Enceladus, including a southern area with crudely circular tectonic patterns. In this unique mosaic image combining high-resolution data from the imaging science subsystem and composite infrared spectrometer aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft, pockets of heat appear along one of the mysterious fractures in the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Image credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC/SWRI/SSI
For Cassini’s visible-light cameras, the Nov. 21, 2009 flyby provided the last look at Enceladus’ south polar surface before that region of the moon goes into 15 years of darkness, and includes the most detailed look yet at the jets.
Scientists planned to use this flyby to look for new or smaller jets not visible in previous images. In one mosaic, scientists count more than 30 individual geysers, including more than 20 that had not been seen before. At least one jet spouting prominently in previous images now appears less powerful.
“This last flyby confirms what we suspected,” said Carolyn Porco, imaging team lead based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. “The vigor of individual jets can vary with time, and many jets, large and small, erupt all along the tiger stripes.”
A new map that combines heat data with visible-light images shows a 40-kilometer (25-mile) segment of the longest tiger stripe, known as Baghdad Sulcus. The map illustrates the correlation, at the highest resolution yet seen, between the geologically youthful surface fractures and the anomalously warm temperatures that have been recorded in the south polar region. The broad swaths of heat previously detected by the infrared spectrometer appear to be confined to a narrow, intense region no more than a kilometer (half a mile) wide along the fracture.
In these measurements, peak temperatures along Baghdad Sulcus exceed 180 Kelvin ( – 92 C, -135 F), and may be higher than 200 Kelvin (- 73 C, -100 F). These warm temperatures probably result from heating of the fracture flanks by the warm, upwelling water vapor that propels the ice-particle jets seen by Cassini’s cameras. Cassini scientists will be testing this idea by investigating how well the hot spots correspond with the jet sources.
“The fractures are chilly by Earth standards, but they’re a cozy oasis compared to the numbing 50 Kelvin (-223 C, -370 F) of their surroundings,” said John Spencer, a composite infrared spectrometer team member based at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. “The huge amount of heat pouring out of the tiger stripe fractures may be enough to melt the ice underground. Results like this make Enceladus one of the most exciting places we’ve found in the solar system.”
Some of Cassini’s scientists infer that the warmer the temperatures are at the surface, the greater the likelihood that jets erupt from liquid. “And if true, this makes Enceladus’ organic-rich, liquid sub-surface environment the most accessible extraterrestrial watery zone known in the solar system,” Porco said.
The Nov. 21 flyby was the eighth targeted encounter with Enceladus. It took the spacecraft to within about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) of the moon’s surface, at around 82 degrees south latitude.
Here are some pictures of moons, from across the Solar System. You can make any of these images into your computer desktop wallpaper. Just click on an image to enlarge it. Then right-click and choose “Set as Desktop Background”.
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Here’s an image of Mars’ moon Phobos, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The orbit of Phobos is slowly spiraling inward, and astronomers think it will collide with Mars in the next few million years.
Io
Here’s a global view of Jupiter’s moon Io captured by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. Because of the powerful tidal gravitational forces from Jupiter, Io is extremely volcanic, and can blast lava hundreds of kilometers into space.
Mimas Blues
Here’s an image of Saturn’s moon Mimas with Saturn as a backdrop. This photo was taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, currently orbiting around Saturn. Mimas has a huge crater from an asteroid impact that almost destroyed it millions of years ago; this makes it look like the Death Star.
Montage of Neptune and Triton
Here’s a montage of Neptune and Triton captured by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew past the planet in 1989. Voyager 2 was the first and still only spacecraft to ever reach Uranus and Neptune, and have given us the only close up pictures taken of the planets.
Moon Aglow
This is a familiar moon… it’s the Moon, seen from the International Space Station. You can see how the Earth’s tenuous atmosphere transitions from the planet into the blackness of space.
Hickson 31 (Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Gallagher (The University of Western Ontario), and J. English (University of Manitoba))
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Have you heard of ‘living fossils’? The coelacanth, the ginko tree, the platypus, and several others are species alive today which seem to be the same as those found as fossils, in rocks up to hundreds of millions of years old.
Now combined results from the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer, Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), and Swift show that there are ‘living galaxy fossils’ in our own backyard!
Hubble: red, yellow-green, and blue; Spitzer: orange; GALEX: purple
Hickson Compact Group 31 is one of 100 compact galaxy groups catalogued by Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson; the recent study of them – led by Sarah Gallagher of The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario – shows that the four dwarf galaxies in it are in the process of coming together (or ‘merging’ as astronomers say).
Such encounters between dwarf galaxies are normally seen billions of light-years away and therefore occurred billions of years ago. But these galaxies are relatively nearby, only 166 million light-years away.
New images of this foursome by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope offer a window into the universe’s formative years when the buildup of large galaxies from smaller building blocks was common.
Astronomers have known for decades that these dwarf galaxies are gravitationally tugging on each other. Their classical spiral shapes have been stretched like taffy, pulling out long streamers of gas and dust. The brightest object in the Hubble image is actually two colliding galaxies. The entire system is aglow with a firestorm of star birth, triggered when hydrogen gas is compressed by the close encounters between the galaxies and collapses to form stars.
The Hubble observations have added important clues to the story of this interacting group, allowing astronomers to determine when the encounter began and to predict a future merger.
“We found the oldest stars in a few ancient globular star clusters that date back to about 10 billion years ago. Therefore, we know the system has been around for a while,” says Gallagher; “most other dwarf galaxies like these interacted billions of years ago, but these galaxies are just coming together for the first time. This encounter has been going on for at most a few hundred million years, the blink of an eye in cosmic history. It is an extremely rare local example of what we think was a quite common event in the distant universe.”
In other words, a living fossil.
Everywhere the astronomers looked in this group they found batches of infant star clusters and regions brimming with star birth. The entire system is rich in hydrogen gas, the stuff of which stars are made. Gallagher and her team used Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to resolve the youngest and brightest of those clusters, which allowed them to calculate the clusters’ ages, trace the star-formation history, and determine that the galaxies are undergoing the final stages of galaxy assembly.
The analysis was bolstered by infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and ultraviolet observations from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and NASA’s Swift satellite. Those data helped the astronomers measure the total amount of star formation in the system. “Hubble has the sharpness to resolve individual star clusters, which allowed us to age-date the clusters,” Gallagher adds.
Hubble reveals that the brightest clusters, hefty groups each holding at least 100,000 stars, are less than 10 million years old. The stars are feeding off of plenty of gas. A measurement of the gas content shows that very little has been used up – further proof that the “galactic fireworks” seen in the images are a recent event. The group has about five times as much hydrogen gas as our Milky Way Galaxy.
“This is a clear example of a group of galaxies on their way toward a merger because there is so much gas that is going to mix everything up,” Gallagher says. “The galaxies are relatively small, comparable in size to the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. Their velocities, measured from previous studies, show that they are moving very slowly relative to each other, just 134,000 miles an hour (60 kilometers a second). So it’s hard to imagine how this system wouldn’t wind up as a single elliptical galaxy in another billion years.”
Adds team member Pat Durrell of Youngstown State University: “The four small galaxies are extremely close together, within 75,000 light-years of each other – we could fit them all within our Milky Way.”
Why did the galaxies wait so long to interact? Perhaps, says Gallagher, because the system resides in a lower-density region of the universe, the equivalent of a rural village. Getting together took billions of years longer than it did for galaxies in denser areas.
A Hubble Space Telescope image of the typical globular cluster Messier 80, an object made up of hundreds of thousands of stars and located in the direction of the constellation of Scorpius. The Milky Way galaxy has an estimated 160 globular clusters of which one quarter are thought to be ‘alien’. Image: NASA / The Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA. Click for hi-resolution version.
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We’re being invaded! About one-fourth of the star clusters in our galaxy are actually invaders from other galaxies, according to a new paper. Research from a team of scientists from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia shows that that many of our galaxy’s globular star clusters are actually foreigners – having been born elsewhere and then migrated to our Milky Way. “It turns out that many of the stars and globular star clusters we see when we look into the night sky are not natives, but aliens from other galaxies,” said Duncan Forbes. “They have made their way into our galaxy over the last few billion years.”
Previously astronomers had suspected that some globular star clusters, which each contain between 10000 and several million stars were foreign to our galaxy, but it was difficult to positively identify which ones.
Using Hubble Space Telescope data, Forbes, along with his Canadian colleague Professor Terry Bridges, examined globular star clusters within the Milky Way galaxy.
They then compiled the largest ever high-quality database to record the age and chemical properties of each of these clusters.
“Using this database we were able to identify key signatures in many of the globular star clusters that gave us tell-tale clues as to their external origin,” Forbes said.
“We determined that these foreign-born globular star clusters actually make up about one quarter of our Milky Way globular star cluster system. That implies tens of millions of accreted stars – those that have joined and grown our galaxy – from globular star clusters alone.”
The researchers’ work also suggests that the Milky Way may have swallowed up more dwarf galaxies than was previously thought.
“We found that many of the foreign clusters originally existed within dwarf galaxies – that is ‘mini’ galaxies of up to 100 million stars that sit within our larger Milky Way,” said Forbes. “Our work shows that there are more of these accreted dwarf galaxies in our Milky Way than was thought. Astronomers had been able to confirm the existence of two accreted dwarf galaxies in our Milky Way – but our research suggests that there might be as many as six yet to be discovered.”
“Although the dwarf galaxies are broken-up and their stars assimilated into the Milky Way, the globular star clusters of the dwarf galaxy remain intact and survive the accretion process,” Forbes continued. “This will have to be explored further, but it is a very exciting prospect that will help us to better understand the history of our own galaxy.”
The final spacecraft in this series of NASA and NOAA’s “GOES” geostationary environmental weather satellites is ready for launch. GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, and in evidence that not all acronyms turn out for the best, this latest satellite in the series is GOES-P. But (to quote the Bad Astronomer) this satellite will be a whiz in helping to provide continuous observations of severe weather events on Earth and space weather, too, as well as providing an update to search and rescue capabilities. Once in orbit GOES-P’s name will change to GOES-15. “GOES are the backbone of NOAA’s severe weather forecasts, monitoring fast-changing conditions in the atmosphere that spawn hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and other hazards,” said Steve Kirkner, GOES program manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Launch is targeted for March 2, during a launch window from 6:19 to 7:19 p.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a Delta IV rocket. Universe Today will be on location to provide coverage of all the launch and pre-launch activities. Follow Nancy on Twitter for live updates.
“The latest series of satellites, GOES- N, O, and P has new capabilities in space weather,” said Dr. Howard Singer from NOAA. “This is data that arrives almost instantaneously and therefore allows us to provide very timely alerts and warnings.”
But GOES-P will be a back-up satellite. Once launched, it will be checked out and then stored on-orbit and ready for activation should one of the operational GOES satellites degrade or exhaust their fuel. Currently, NOAA operates GOES-12, (GOES East) and GOES-11 (GOES-West.) In late April, NOAA will activate GOES-13 to replace GOES-12, and move GOES-12 to provide coverage for South America as part of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). NASA handed over GOES-14, launched last June, to NOAA on December 14, 2009.
In addition to weather forecasting on Earth, a key instrument onboard GOES-P, the Solar X-Ray Imager (SXI), will help NOAA continue monitoring solar conditions.
“The SXI is improving our forecasts and warnings for solar disturbances, protecting billions of dollars worth of commercial and government assets in space and on the ground, and lessening the brunt of power surges for the satellite-based electronics and communications industry,” said Tom Bodgan, director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, Colo.
GOES P is the last in the series. The first GOES satellite was launched in 1975.
GOES-P joins a system of weather satellites that provide timely environmental information to meteorologists and the public. The GOES system provides data used to graphically display the intensity, path and size of storms. Early warning of impending severe weather enhances the public’s ability to take shelter and protect property.
Space shuttle Endeavour lands in darkness on Runway 15 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo credit: NASA/Sandra Joseph and Kevin O'Connell
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Congressional legislators in Florida are mounting a campaign to extend space shuttle operations to 2015, adding two flights each year. U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas said a bipartisan plan is in the works, which would require adding another $200 million to the NASA budget for 2010 and between $1.5 – $2 billion a year starting in the 2011-12 budget year. “We’re not going to do anything that’s not safe,” Kosmas was quoted in Florida Today, adding that securing the funding would be difficult in tight budget times, but “we’re going to go for it,” she said.
At Kennedy Space Center early Monday morning after Endeavour returned home safely following the STS-130 mission, space shuttle program managers confirmed that while the shuttles are in good shape to continue flying, extending the program is not the direction their teams have been headed.
“From a technical, engineering standpoint, there would be nothing stopping the vehicles from being able to fly,” said space shuttle integration manager Mike Moses. “They have a lot of life in them. We talk about the risks and hazards of flying, and that’s a two edged sword. Anytime you’re launching into space is a risky proposition, but this is a vehicle that we understand its risks very well, and we’ve learned how to work around the pieces that can cause us problems – the foam from Columbia is a good example. We’ve come a long way, if you look at the performance of the external tank since then, we have put a set of controls in place that have been paying off and really driving our risk numbers down.” Shuttle Program Integration Manager Mike Moses. Image: Nancy Atkinson
“So we could continue fly,” Moses continued,” and I’m confident we could fly at the rate and the risk level we have been flying and it wouldn’t be hard to do. But it becomes a political question: Is that the right thing to do? And from a budgetary standpoint can you commit the resources of NASA to go continue to fly those vehicles? The direction that we’re getting from (NASA) Headquarters is that we are going off to do bigger things and explore more. Unfortunately the budgetary realities are we can’t continue to do everything and fly the shuttles as well. So while it’s hard to let go and shut down a program, that’s the way the budget works out. But if you want to turn it around you certainly could there is nothing technically that is stopping you from doing it.”
Kosmas said the budget proposed by President Barack Obama’s is not acceptable as is because it would cede the United States’ leadership position in spaceflight in the short term — and possibly the long term. The plan being drafted would direct NASA to examine ways to build a heavy-left rocket by salvaging work done in the Constellation program. Obama’s budget called for the end of Constellation, the architecture that would return astronauts to the moon.
Additionally, another part of the plan being drafted by Florida representatives would require NASA to report to Congress in several months with specific safety requirements for manned commercial rockets. “Congress is responding to the president’s lack of specificity, lack of an action plan, lack of vision and direction,” Kosmas said.
During my time at Kennedy Space Center the past few weeks, the feeling among NASA workers and contractors is that the space shuttles are now in the best shape they have ever been, and the risks and quirks of the vehicles are understood better than ever. The cloud of job losses and a deteriorating economy now hangs over the workforce at KSC and the mood of the entire Space Coast is tentative at best.
The Augustine Commission recommended the shuttles would have to be recertified if they were to fly after 2010, and Moses said that effectively, the work to recertify them has already been done, and if production on External Tanks and other the shuttles could possibly fly until 2020. Shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach. Image credit: Nancy Atkinson
It should be noted that Moses’ and shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach did not bring up the issue of extending the shuttle program, but only were responding to questions asked by several journalists about the possibility of keeping the shuttle program going.
“You guys are really fishing for me to say I want to keep flying the shuttles!” Moses said, while Leinbach expounded more on the reality staring in the face of the workers at KSC, and warned against giving people any false hope.
“We have been very consistent as an agency over the past several years about 2010 being the end of the shuttle program,” Leinbach said. “We have not wavered from that. There were people in the system that didn’t want to believe that. But here we are in 2010 and the reality is starting to hit us. Our direction to shut down the shuttle program after we finish the station is clear. What is not clear is exactly what we are going on to next. You guys are the ones who asked about extending the shuttle program, we didn’t sit up here and mention that. We’ve been very clear with the workforce. It hurts, but they know it is coming. Any talk of extension or anything like that is just … talk.”
What are your views? Should the shuttle program be extended to avoid the lack of US access to space, as well as the loss of aerospace jobs and institutional knowledge? Or is it time to move on?
