February 09, 2010

Russia wants to charge more for rides to space: report Moscow (AFP) Feb 9, 2010 - Russia, which is set to hold a monopoly on flights to the international space station (ISS), wants to charge more for rides on its Soyuz rocket, the space agency head said Tuesday. "At a meeting of the space agency chiefs in Tokyo, I want to discuss the maintenance of transport to the station," Roskomos head Anatoly Perminov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying. "We have an a ... more NASA Launches Endeavour On Fifth Last Shuttle Mission Cape Canaveral, Florida (AFP) Feb 8, 2010 - The US space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts blasted off Monday and headed for the International Space Station to deliver a module dubbed Tranquility. The picture-perfect nighttime lift-off came at 4:14 am (0914 GMT), after a 24-hour delay caused by heavy cloud cover over Cape Canaveral early Sunday. The spacecraft successfully reached orbit about eight and a half minu ... more Conservation From Space York, UK (SPX) Feb 09, 2010 - Rugged, hilly landscapes with a range of different habitat types can help maintain more stable butterfly populations and thus aid their conservation, according to new findings published in the journal Ecology Letters. The research, carried out by scientists from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Butterfly Conservation and the University of York, has implications for how we might design ... more Panoramic Dome On Its Way To ISS Bonn, Germany (SPX) Feb 09, 2010 - Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) will soon be able to enjoy a special view. The 130th shuttle mission (STS-130) lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on 8 February 2010 at 10:14 Central European Time. Space Shuttle Endeavour carried the 'Cupola' (Italian for 'dome') and the 'Tranquility' (Node 3) station module into space. The Cupola has seven windows and will offer a previo ... more The Shoulders Of Giants Moffett Field CA (SPX) Feb 09, 2010 - Visible from space, the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral rears out of the thick, moist air of the Florida swampland like a leviathan from a prehistoric age. A few miles away is the NASA Apollo/Saturn V Center, surrounded by tour buses which periodically disgorge a throng of people who stream into a mock-up of Mission Control and then into a giant auditorium where they can gaze i ... more European Technology To Complete ISS Paris, France (ESA) Feb 09, 2010 - Space Shuttle Endeavour was launched at 10:14:08 CET and is heading for the International Space Station carrying two sophisticated European modules: Node-3 (Tranquility) and Cupola. Their installation will mark the completion of the non-Russian part of the ISS, with more than a third of the pressurised Station elements designed and built in Europe. Node-3 is part of the Columbus laboratory ... more DMCii Welcomes UK-Indonesia Climate Change Partnership London, UK (SPX) Feb 09, 2010 - British satellite imaging company DMCii welcomes International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander's announcement that the UK has joined forces with the Indonesian government to tackle deforestation and prepare Indonesians for the impacts of climate change. Managing Director Dave Hodgson commented, "We are in the unique position of having systems in place to measure deforestation in In ... more Endeavour Launch Sparks Early Monday Sunrise Cape Canaveral FL (SPX) Feb 09, 2010 - Space shuttle Endeavour lit up the predawn sky above Florida's Space Coast on Monday with a 4:14 a.m. EST launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The shuttle's last scheduled night launch began a 13-day flight to the International Space Station and the final year of shuttle operations. Endeavour's STS-130 mission will include three spacewalks and the delivery of the Tranquility node, the ... more SES WORLD SKIES Cooperates With Andean Community The Hague, Netherlands (SPX) Feb 09, 2010 - SES WORLD SKIES has announced that it has reached an agreement with the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) regarding the long-term use of the 67 degrees West orbital position. The 67 degrees West orbital position offers an extensive Ku-band satellite frequency range and excellent viewing angles for coverage of the Americas and the Caribbean. The Andean Community consists of Bolivia, C ... more Iran To Unveil Five Space Projects Moscow, Russia (RIA Novosti) Feb 09, 2010 - Iran will unveil five space projects at ceremonies starting on Monday to celebrate the victory of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Fars news agency said. On the third day of the festivities, known as the "Ten Days of Dawn", Iranian authorities will hold on Wednesday a presentation of the Tolou (Rise) satellite, the Mesbah-2 and Mehdi research satellites, and the engine for the Simurgh boost ... more

Arianespace Heads Into Another Busy Year Paris, France (SPX) Feb 09, 2010 - Arianespace is laying the groundwork for another busy year with its workhorse Ariane 5, as the first mission of 2010 moves into its second phase of preparations and the follow-on flight's launch vehicle is delivered to French Guiana. The heavy-lift Ariane 5 ECA for Arianespace's kick-off mission of 2010 was transferred from the Spaceport's Launcher Integration Building to the Final Assembl ... more US shuttle delivers panoramic dome to space lab Cape Canaveral, Florida (AFP) Feb 8, 2010 - The US space shuttle Endeavour on Monday soared into orbit carrying an observation deck for the International Space Station, a seven-windowed dome offering breathtaking views. The picture-perfect launch lit up the night sky at 4:14 am (0914 GMT), after a first attempt was scrubbed on Sunday due to heavy clouds over the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The spacecraft and its crew o ... more Atom Smasher To Jump Straight To Maximum Energy Moscow, Russia (RIA Novosti) Feb 09, 2010 - The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will jump straight to its maximum energy without any medium-energy proton collisions, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has said on its website. Experts, who gathered in Chamonix last week, revised the previous schedule according to which first physicists at the LHC were to switch to medium-energy beam collisions of 10 TeV this summer, fo ... more Soyuz 100 Times More Reliable Than Shuttle Moscow, Russia (Pravda) Feb 08, 2010 - Richard Garriott, a videogame developer, who once boarded Russia's Soyuz rocket for a space flight said that the Russian-made ship was much more reliable than its foreign analogues. Garriott, whose father is a former NASA astronaut, paid $30 million for a flight to the iInternational Space station. He said in a televised conference that Soyuz was 100 times more a reliable spacecraft than U ... more Solar Dynamics Observatory: The 'Variable Sun' Mission Huntsville AL (SPX) Feb 08, 2010 - For some years now, an unorthodox idea has been gaining favor among astronomers. It contradicts old teachings and unsettles thoughtful observers, especially climatologists. "The sun," explains Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters in Washington DC, "is a variable star." But it looks so constant... That's only a limitation of the human eye. Modern telescopes and spacecraft have pene ... more Progress Docks With ISS Moscow, Russia (SPX) Feb 08, 2010 - Approach to the space station, its fly-around, stationkeeping and docking were performed in automatic mode. The initial contact with the docking port on the instrumentation and propulsion compartment of the Zvezda Service Module of the ISS Russian Segment (RS) occurred at 07:26 Moscow Time. The crew of Expedition 22 to ISS working on-board the space station monitored the process of rendezv ... more First Journey For Alphabus Toulouse, France (SPX) Feb 08, 2010 - The service module of the new Alphabus generation of telecommunication satellites has completed its first journey - from Cannes to Toulouse, in France. The three-day trip was completed last Friday. The exceptional convoy was made up of a 20 m-long lorry carrying the satellite container, several escort cars and a police escort to close off streets and redirect traffic as they passed through ... more US shuttle to bring Tranquility to space station Washington (AFP) Feb 6, 2010 - The US space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts are preparing for a weekend mission to deliver a space module dubbed Tranquility to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission comes as NASA begins to reevaluate its future after President Barack Obama effectively abandoned the US space agency's plan to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020. The Constellation progra ... more ISS Primed For New Era Of Scientific Discoveries Cape Canaveral FL (SPX) Feb 08, 2010 - NASA and its international partners are looking forward to unprecedented scientific opportunities aboard the International Space Station, or ISS. With station assembly nearing completion, the ISS Partnership is looking forward to using the station to its fullest capacity. The U.S. administration's fiscal year 2011 budget proposal calls for continuing station operations to at least 2020, wh ... more No Soup For You London UK (SPX) Feb 08, 2010 - For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life. "Textbooks have it that life ... more