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Posts Tagged ‘NASA’

The news from KSC, Florida – it that NASA faces the prospect of more stormy weather today as it tries again to launch shuttle Endeavour to the international space station. Thunderstorms prevented Endeavour and seven astronauts from blasting off Sunday evening. Forecasters said there was a 60 percent chance the weather would force yet another delay Monday evening for the space station construction mission.

NASA has until Tuesday, possibly Wednesday, to launch Endeavour with the final piece of Japan’s space station lab. Otherwise, it will have to wait until the end of July because of a Russian supply ship that’s awaiting liftoff. Sunday’s countdown, at least, made it all the way to the nine-minute mark. Saturday’s launch attempt was foiled several hours in advance by a series of lightning strikes around the pad that required extra checks of the many critical shuttle systems. Back in June, hydrogen gas leaks held everything up.

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Some not so good news in from Space Coast in Florida. Stormy weather could stall this weekend’s launch of space shuttle Endeavour. NASA will try to launch Endeavour on Saturday night, following a pair of delays last month caused by a hydrogen gas leak. The leak has since been plugged; a fueling test validated the repairs last week. But now, NASA will have to deal with thunderstorms. Forecasters on Wednesday put the odds of acceptable weather at just 40 percent for a Saturday evening launch. Conditions improve only slightly on Sunday.

The seven astronauts assigned to the 16-day mission returned to Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday. They will deliver and install the final piece of Japan’s lab at the international space station.

Five spacewalks are planned, more than usual, to complete work on the Japanese lab, replace space station batteries and unload spare parts carried up on Endeavour. The linked shuttle-station will be home to 13 people for nearly two weeks, a record number of astronauts.

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Despite the problems with the launch of the shuttle from Florida – the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, successfully completed its most significant early mission milestone Tuesday with a lunar swingby and calibration of its science instruments. The satellite will search for water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon’s south pole. With the assist of the moon’s gravity, LCROSS and its attached Centaur booster rocket successfully entered into polar Earth orbit at 6:20 a.m. PDT on June 23. The maneuver puts the spacecraft and Centaur on course for a pair of impacts near the moon’s south pole on Oct. 9.

“The successful completion of the LCROSS swingby proves the science instruments are functioning as expected. It is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the entire team” said Dan Andrews, LCROSS project manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. “We are elated at the results from the maneuver and eagerly anticipate the impacts in early October.”

During its swing by the moon, the spacecraft’s instruments were turned on and calibrated by scanning three sites on the lunar surface. These sites were the craters Mendeleev, Goddard C and Giordano Bruno. They were selected because they offer a variety of terrain types, compositions and illumination conditions. The spacecraft also scanned the lunar horizon to confirm its instruments are aligned in preparation for observing the Centaur’s debris plume

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It was reported over the weekend by NASA engineers in Florida that they may have finally found the cause of the leaks that have been plaguing the shuttle Endeavour – and that they might even resolve the issue very quickly. Engineers will conduct a fuel-loading test by the start of July to prove that the problem has actually been solved. The leaks have prevented the last two launch attempts of the space shuttle, which must lift off before 14 July so that astronauts can get to the International Space Station in time for a complex, time-sensitive mission. It has been reported that the next launch attempt is 11 July.

Endeavour and its seven astronauts would have to launch no later than 14 July to get to the International Space Station and complete a complex assembly mission before the arrival of a um-manned Russian space freighter carrying critical supplies. Any delay past 14 July would push the launch to no earlier than 27 July and have a significant ripple effect on an International Space Station assembly mission set for launch on Discovery on 18 August.

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The two-in-one mission — called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/Lunar Crater Observation Sensing Satellite, or LRO/LCROSS — is perched atop an Atlas V rocket at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Florida. Weather permitting, this will be launched on Thursday. NASA are calling the mission the agency’s “first step back to the moon.” The mission will see the LRO map the moon with high-definition photographs. And the Lunar Crater Observation Sensing Satellite is a $79-million self-sacrificing probe that will crash into a polar crater to see if there is any evidence of water-ice hidden in the moon’s shadowy recesses.

The agency considers the project its most exciting moon mission in nearly 40 years. The mission coincides at the start of a major review of NASA’s plans to actually return astronauts to the moon by 2020. A White House-appointed committee kicked off its first public hearings in Washington on Wednesday of this week.

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