Universe Today

Columbia Launch Aborted For the Second Time

Bad weather at Cape Canaveral scrubbed the launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia for the second time. Thunderstorms surrounded the launch facility, and the director held the countdown at the five-minute mark throughout their entire window of opportunity, but eventually the launch was called off. They’ll try again on Friday.

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Hawking Working On a Theory for “Everything”

Physicist Stephen Hawking has been working for the last 20 years on the string theory as a unified explanation for all matter and energy for the universe. And he admits that the progress is going a little slower than he would have hoped at a recent conference in Germany.

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New NASA Mission will Capture the Solar Winds

Genesis is a new NASA Mission to recover particles of the solar wind. Expected to cost $216 million, the spacecraft will launch in January 2001, orbit the sun several times collecting solar particles, and finally return to Earth in 2003.

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New Photos of Mars Cause Controversy

New images of the Red Planet, taken by the Mars Global Surveyor, show an amazing diversity of features – including frost-covered sand dunes, water ice clouds and heavily eroded craters. Debates center around water: is it on the surface and how could it sustain life?

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Shuttle Launch Aborted at Last Second

Everything was ready to go, but a hydrogen leak detected in the last few seconds caused NASA to abort the launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia. It turned to be a false alarm, and the shuttle is being prepared for another window on Thursday.

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Pluto Contains Natural Gas

Pluto has been found to contain deposits of frozen natural gas, in large deposits on the surface of the planet. Composed of ethane, a simple hydrocarbon, the gas was discovered using the newly commissioned Japanese Subaru telescope in Hawaii.

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Grissom’s Capsule Brought to the Surface

Gus Grissom’s Liberty Bell capsule, sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, was finally raised to the surface by the salvage team today. The team was plagued by delays, including storms, malfunctioning equipment, and navigational problems, but the recovery was timed almost perfectly with the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

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Kazakhstan Wants More Control Over Launches

The recent launch mishap at the Baikonur cosmodrome gave the Kazakh government the opportunity to flex its political muscles. Now it wants to be more involved in the launch process, and plans are in place to negotiate a tougher deal with Russia that gives Kazakhstan more control over launches, as well as a larger share in the profits.

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Shuttle Ready for Historic Launch on Apollo 11’s 30th Anniversary

Space Shuttle Columbia sits ready on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral for its historic launch on Tuesday. Carrying the space-based Chandra X-Ray observatory, and led by NASA’s first female commander, the launch marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. The shuttle will launch shortly after midnight and remain in space for 5 days.

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United Nations Believes All Countries Should Profit From Space Exploration

Nations from around the world are meeting at the third annual UN Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, UNISPACE III. The purpose of the conference will be to discuss how to make space flight accessible to developing nations, as well as how to deal with increasing space junk.

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Friends and Colleagues Pay Tribute to Conrad

Pete Conrad, the third man to walk on the moon, was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on Monday. Conrad died in a motorcycle crash while driving along a winding road in Southern California. Several astronauts attended the funeral, including Neil Armstrong, James Lovell, and John Glenn.

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Astronauts Get Sick from Space Station Atmosphere

Although it wasn’t widely publicized by NASA, a recent report published to NASA Watch said that several members of the last space shuttle Discovery mission came down with symptoms of “sick building syndrome”, including headaches, irritated eyes, flush face, nausea and vomiting.

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Progress Supply Ship Docks with Mir

Russia was finally able to successfully launch the Progress supply ship to restock Mir for its final days. The launch was in jeopardy because of a launch ban by the Kazakhstan government at the Baikonur cosmodrome after a rocket mishap with a Russian satellite. Progress docked with Mir early Sunday.

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Chandra Launch Only Days Away

The Chandra X-Ray observatory is only days away from joining the Hubble Space Telescope – outside the obscuring atmosphere of the Earth. Chandra will launch on the Space Shuttle Columbia, the first US space mission ever commanded by a woman, Lt. Col. Eileen Collins.

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Apollo 11’s 30th Anniversary Approaches

The 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon will be on July 20th. Many space-related websites are paying tribute to this achievement with special reports, and reprints of 30-year old articles.

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Launch Ban Ends, Zenit Launches from Baikonur

Now that the Kazakhstan government have lifted the ban on rocket launches from the Baikonur cosmodrome, it should be business as usual again. After the Progress launch on Friday, a Ukrainian Zenit 2 booster carried an Okean-o remote sensing satellite into orbit early Saturday.

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Merging Galaxies Found by Hubble

Recent images caught by the Hubble Space Telescope show more than a dozen distant galaxies merging together. The galaxies are 8 billion light-years away, and the merging process will take less than a billion years.

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New Evidence Refutes Antigravity

Recent observations that exploding stars in distant galaxies seemed fainter than expected suggested that the expansion of the Universe was speeding up – caused by a mysterious force called antigravity. But astronomers from the University of California at Berkley have recently refuted these conclusions.

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Mir Prepared to Be Abandoned

It appears that the current Mir crew will be its last. When the cosmonauts leave the station on August 23rd, the 130-ton station will be readied for its final, fiery descent. Although the Mir’s final days are nearing, the station has survived almost three times as long as its original mission.

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Boeing Plans New Experimental Plane

NASA and Boeing have announced plans to build a new experimental space plane, called the X-37, which will serve as a test bed for a range of technologies, including flight at Mach 25 while demonstrating aircraft-like operations.

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Kazakhstan Permits Launch

Kazakhstan officials have decided to permit the launch of a Russian Progress supply ship to restock Mir – but only after Moscow agrees to pay the $115 million price to use the Baikonur cosmodrome launch facility. The current Mir crew would have need to leave the station early if the ship hadn’t launched by July 20th.

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Weather Satellite Launch Delayed

Originally planned for launch in May, an American weather satellite, the GOES-L, has been delayed until October. The satellite would have used the same upper stage as the recent string of launch failures, so officials have decided to wait as the GOES-L’s upper stage is investigated and repaired.

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Amateur Rocketeers Keep Trying

The X-Prize will award $10 million to the first private rocket to launch a human into space, 100km above the Earth’s surface. Two amateur rocketeers lost their rocket when it exploded on the pad. Designed to fly above 20,000 feet, the rocket was their first step on the long road to the X-Prize.

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Progress May Launch to Mir After All

Kazakhstan officials are considering allowing a Progress supply shuttle to reach the beleaguered Mir spacestation. They had originally cancelled all flights from the Baikonur cosmodrome due to a satellite crash, but appeals from the Russian government have caused them to reconsider their position. These supplies are need to keep Mir from reentering orbit uncontrollably.

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Russia Considered Launching Nuclear Bomb at Moon

Once it was clear they were going to lose the space race, Russian officials considered launching a nuclear missile at the moon, to allow scientists around the world to photograph it. As the 30th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing approaches, new insights into the Russian side of the race are made available to the public.

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Asteroid Threat Reduced to Zero

Although initial calculations showed a slight possibility that asteroid 1999 AN10 could crash into the Earth in 2028, this chance has now been reduced to zero. These recalculations come thanks to previously unknown 44-year old photographs of the asteroid, giving astronomers more information to calculate the asteroid’s trajectory.

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Chinese Manned Flight Becomes Distinct Possibility

The Chinese government has embarked on a serious and public program to develop manned spaceflight missions. Although they had hoped to place a man in orbit by October, recent delays with their rocket systems have pushed this back 12-18 months.

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New Space Station Supply Vessel in Development

DaimlerCrysler Aerospace and French aerospace company Aerospatiale Matra Lanceurs have signed a contract to develop a supply vessel for the International Space Station. Designed to transfer supplies to the station, and to remove trash, the Automated Transfer Vessel (ATV) will be built by 2003.

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Mobile Phones and Satellites Interfere with Radio Telescopes

An international conference in Vienna has highlighted a new fear among radio astronomers, that their sensitive equipment will be drowned out by Earth-based radio equipment, such as mobile phones and communications satellites.

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Teledisc Announces New Contracts

Recent fundraising efforts of $1.5 billion have allowed Teledisc to announce a new set of contracts with Motorola and International Launch Services to launch a constellation of new satellites.

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Launch Ban Continues to Jeopardize Mir

With the recent ban of all launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Mir is in jeopardy of coming back to Earth sooner than expected. A Progress supply shuttle, planned to launch on Wednesday, is carrying vital equipment to help mothball Mir, as well as resupply the crew. Without this resupply, Mir’s descent won’t be controlled, and it could crash almost anywhere.

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Nixon was Prepared for Grim Moon Landing Speech

Almost 30 years ago, the Apollo moon landing was a complete success, but Nixon was ready with an alternate speech in case astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin never made it from the surface. After a courtesy call to the astronauts’ wives, the speech was to be delivered to the American public.

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Mir Leaking Air

Cosmonauts on board Mir have realized that their island in space is starting to lose its atmosphere. Air pressure on the spacestation has been steadily dropping, and so far the crew has been unable to find the source of the leak. Russian space officials say that the station has adequate air, and the crew is in no danger.

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Another Successful Launch for Globalstar

The latest batch of Globalstar satellites have made it to orbit, bringing the communications consortium’s total to 28 satellites. This latest group was launched on board a Boeing Delta II rocket after a two-day delay due to high wind.

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Mir May Suffer from Launch Ban

Mir cosmonauts may have to return home early if the launch ban at the Baikonur Cosmodrome isn’t lifted. A Progress supply ship was originally scheduled to link with Mir and resupply the spacestation, but the recent launch ban due to a Russian satellite crash may place the entire mission in jeopardy.

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NASA Approves New Comet Mission

Named Deep Impact, a new NASA spacecraft will meet with comet Tempel 1 in July, 2005. Once the probe catches up with the comet, it will fire a 1,100-pound copper bullet at the nucleus, blasting out an enormous crater. It will then close within 300 miles of the surface to survey the damage.

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X-38 Tests Continue

The International Space Station’s X-38 Crew Return Vehicle prototype was tested again at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, California. Designed to ensure the crew of the ISS can safely return to Earth in case of an emergency, the X-38 was test-dropped from an altitude of 31,500 feet. More tests from higher altitudes are planned.

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Astronaut Dies in Motorcycle Crash

Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr., the third person to walk on the surface of the moon, was killed in a motorcycle accident on Thursday. He was riding with his friends when he crashed going around a turn, and died later in the hospital.

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