NASA Launches Latest NPP Earth-Observing Satellite from Vandenberg

It's the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, NPP.

At LAT, "NASA launches satellite from Vandenberg at night." And PC Magazine, "NASA Weather, Climate Satellite Launches Successfully."

NASA Satellite Falls to Earth

I haven't followed this that closely, but it's fascinating.

At WaPo, "As satellite slows, NASA works to peg crash site," and NYT, "It’s Safe to Go Outside: NASA Says Its Falling Satellite Will Miss the U.S."

And at Telegraph UK, "Second giant chunk of space junk heading for Earth."

Glenn Reynolds Talks with Jerry Pournelle

An fascinating interview, adding a lot of information to some of my postings on the Space Shuttle program:

Pournelle was once a professor of political science, and way back in the day, when I used to read a lot of paperback fiction, I read The Mote in God's Eye. More here.

Atlantis Landing Ends Space Shuttle Era

At Los Angeles Times.

Also, "A cloudy vision of U.S. spaceflight."

When the orbiter Atlantis lands at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, ending the 30-year-old space shuttle program, NASA will have its sights set on the next big exploration mission: sending astronauts to an asteroid in about 15 years.

But the path to that goal remains poorly defined, jeopardized by a bleak budget outlook and a weak political consensus. It has left a deep angst that U.S. leadership in space flight is in rapid decline and the very ability to fly humans off the Earth is at risk.

"I'm very disappointed about where we are today," said Robert L. Crippen, who flew on the first space shuttle mission and went on to senior leadership jobs in both NASA and the aerospace industry. "NASA's future is very fuzzy right now."

NASA has a complicated plan that would include operating the International Space Station, tapping a private launch service to ferry astronauts to orbit, and building a new launch system to send humans on deep space missions, including an asteroid by the mid-2020s.

Engineers and technicians are busy at plants across the nation, building new crew capsules, testing hardware in vibration chambers and preparing to conduct demonstration flights, all part of supporting the future steps that NASA envisions.

Nonetheless, the overall plan has failed to gain widespread support, reflecting serious concerns about the costs, risks and the lack of detail about the most difficult aspects of the exploration mission.

But see, Nicholas de Monchaux, "Spirit of the Spacesuit."

Added: A killer piece at Daley Gator, "Home At Last: Atlantis Makes Historic Final Landing As Nasa’s 30-Year Shuttle Program Comes to An End."

Father and Son Recreate Shuttle Launch Photo 30 Years Later

Saw this first at AoSHQ.

And now at WaPo, "Chris Bray and his father watch NASA history, 30 years ago and four days ago."

That's cool!

The Future of Space

We need a space program. The end of the Space Shuttle Program makes us think about our priorities and world preponderance. America's not relinquishing scientific leaderships just yet, thank goodness.

There's an appraisal at New York Times, "3, 2, 1, and the Last Shuttle Leaves an Era Behind" (via Memeorandum).

Also at USA Today, "Shuttle ends 30-year run, but U.S. will be back":

Though shuttles will have launched 135 times with unique achievements — and two catastrophic failures that claimed the lives of 14 courageous astronauts and reminded a stunned nation of the price of pioneering — the program never did vastly expand the human presence in space.

But fret not. The end of the shuttle is not a signal that America is becoming less adventurous. It is simply the latest indication that technology advances in fits and starts, and rarely along the trajectories projected by the experts.

America will be back with a new manned space vehicle at some point. This may happen for political reasons if China, or some other nation, goads us into action by embarking on an ambitious program of its own. And it will happen for a variety of reasons when engineers overcome the one barrier that has frustrated them — the prohibitive costs of getting the first hundred miles or so off the Earth's surface.

In the meantime, let's step back and consider the extraordinary age that we have created ...

Atlantis Launches on Final Shuttle Mission (VIDEO)

Mashable has video, "Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch Video: The Final Flight."

And at Los Angeles Times, "Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off":

Despite earlier weather concerns, Atlantis is launched on the final flight for NASA's space shuttle program. It is the 33rd flight for Atlantis and the 135th shuttle mission overall.

Reporting from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Atlantis lifted off Friday morning, shooting straight into a brightening sky on a 12-day mission that marks the end of the nation's three-decade space shuttle program.

There was a brief hold in the countdown at 31 seconds because of a glitch seemingly involving a piece of retractable equipment. As millions of onlookers on the ground and via television held their breaths, officials checked and reported that the equipment had, indeed, been moved.

With the last knot in the timeline unsnarled, the countdown resumed and the engines fired, sending the craft upward and out along the eastern coast of the United States.

When it returns, Atlantis will join Discovery and Endeavour as retired vessels. NASA will shift its mission to sending astronauts to asteroids and Mars while private companies take over the more mundane aspect of moving cargo and crews from Earth to orbit.

More at the link above. I'll post YouTube video later.

10:20am PST: Okay, from AP ...

Also, at Wired Science, "The Last Space Shuttle Launches Safely Into Orbit" (via Memeorandum).

The Space Shuttle Program Helped Carry Southern California's Aerospace Industry for Four Decades

At Los Angeles Times, "The space shuttle's Southland legacy."

Amid the odes to a shuttle program that ends with the last mission of the last shuttle, Atlantis, scheduled for liftoff Friday, is an awareness that the space plane helped carry Southern California's aerospace industry for four decades. It staved off decline after the end of the moon landings, bequeathing new generations of aeronautical technology — and jobs — to the regional economy.

"Building the space shuttle fleet enabled a historic chapter in NASA's space program," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former shuttle commander. "Southern California has a strong place in shuttle history as a key site where the spacecraft were built and often landed."

Constructing the shuttle fleet was testament to how advanced Southern California's aerospace engineering and labor workforce had become by the 1970s — and assured that the vast assemblage of brainpower and engineering know-how would not be lost in the Southland.

The history of the shuttle program may be linked forever to the flights of Challenger and Columbia, its two deadly tragedies. But the shuttle era will also be remembered for advancing technology, including reusable rocket engines and computerized guidance systems, that changed manned flight.

Space Shuttle Endeavour's Final Landing

I watched on Fox, and check NASA's Shuttle page for updates. And at ABC News, "Space Shuttle Endeavour Lands Safely in Florida."

I'll post video later this morning.

Added: AP Video.

Reflecting on Endeavour's Great Journey

From Ralph Vartabedian, at Los Angeles Times:

Spare parts were collecting dust in warehouses in Bell, Downey and Palmdale when the urgent call came from NASA: the nation needed another space shuttle.

It was the unusual beginning of the orbiter Endeavour, which will streak across the California coastline at hypersonic velocity one last time Wednesday, carrying its six astronauts and two decades of the nation's human space flight history.

When it was christened in Palmdale in 1991, it was the newest and most capable of the fleet, fawned over by astronauts for its advanced flight electronics, sinuous skins and, eventually, the first toilet that actually worked.
"It was a real clean bird," said Robert "Hoot" Gibson, the Navy aviator who flew Endeavour the year it entered service in 1992. "We didn't have any issues with that machine."

But it began its life amid a political scheme to circumvent opponents by squirreling away spare parts in the hope they would someday amount to a real spacecraft.

When the Challenger was lost in an explosion in 1986, the spare-parts plan was vindicated and they suddenly became the starting point for keeping the shuttle program alive.

And now the ship will come back home a museum piece in the county where it was built, destined for a display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The last shuttle flight is scheduled to launch July 8, after decisions by the Bush and Obama administrations to end the program.

More at the link above.

Seems weird the program's winding down and America's got nothing big planned to replace it.

RELATED: "After Columbia: why we must still boldly go" [from 2003].

Also, a NASA Twitpic.

Looking Back at the Apollo Mission, 50 Years Later

At New York Times:

It was the spring of 1961. President John F. Kennedy, speaking of new frontiers and projecting the vigor of youth, had been in office barely four months, and April had been the cruelest.

On the 12th, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth — one more space triumph for the Soviet Union. Though the flight was not unexpected, it was nonetheless deflating; it would be more than a month before Alan Shepard became the first American in space, and that was on a 15-minute suborbital flight. On the 17th, a force of anti-Castro exiles, trained by the C.I.A., invaded communist Cuba at the Bay of Pigs — a fiasco within 36 hours. Mr. Kennedy’s close aide Theodore Sorensen described him on the 19th as “anguished and fatigued” and “in the most emotional, self-critical state I had ever seen him.”

At one meeting, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, the attorney general, “turned on everybody,” it was reported, saying: “All you bright fellows. You got the president into this. We’ve got to do something to show the Russians we are not paper tigers.” At another, the president pleaded: “If somebody can, just tell me how to catch up. Let’s find somebody — anybody. I don’t care if it’s the janitor over there.” Heading back to the Oval Office, he told Mr. Sorensen, “There’s nothing more important.”

So, 50 years ago, on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress and a national television audience, declaring: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.”

There it was, the challenge flung before an adversary and to a nation on edge in an unconventional war, the beginning of Project Apollo.

RTWT.

We had good Democrats back then.

(I wasn't quite born yet, but I'll be 50 later this year.)

Last Launch for Space Shuttle Endeavour (VIDEO)

And Gabrielle Giffords was on hand: "Gabrielle Giffords, Mark Kelly met privately before shuttle launch."

Also at AubreyJ's.

Space Shuttle Endeavour Launch Today

Check in over at AubreyJ's for updates and a live feed of today's launch, "Update on Upcoming Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-134 Mission."

And at Wall Street Journal, "Blastoff Obscures NASA's Troubles":

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Space shuttle Endeavour's scheduled launch Friday recalls sunny spectacles that marked NASA's former glory. But the sense of excitement surrounding the event masks the uncertain future of America's manned exploration program.

The launch is expected to be witnessed by a huge crowd, including President Barack Obama and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman wounded in an assassination attempt whose husband, Mark Kelly, commands Endeavour.

Lawmakers, contractors and leaders of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration continue to squabble over how to divvy up shrinking space budgets. And with the final shuttle countdown expected this summer, no consensus has emerged on how to meet the administration's goals of exploring an asteroid around 2025, and eventually sending astronauts to Mars.

"NASA's fundamental problem is a lack of clear-cut direction and goals," said Scott Pace, a former senior NASA official who now teaches at George Washington University. "The current path is a very risky one, and time is quickly running out to correct course."

Almost two years have passed since Mr. Obama roiled Congress and the aerospace industry by seeking to privatize many of NASA's core functions. Both critics and supporters of the agency worry it's embroiled in nagging political battles and increasingly seems out of touch with the deficit-conscious mindset of voters.

Keep reading at the link above. It turns out that Rep. Giffords chaired the House subcommittee overseeing NASA and she opposed the adminstration's space commercialization efforts. Plus, "Some officials now hope the personal drama surrounding Rep. Giffords and Mr. Kelly will rekindle public ardor for the agency's mission."

We'll see.

RELATED: "First Pictures of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Since Shooting, Walking on Her Own."

Hubble IMAX in 3-D

Via Glenn Reynolds, at NYT, "Seeing What the Hubble Sees, in Imax and 3-D":

What goes through an astronaut’s head when things go wrong, and he is floating in space 350 miles above the Earth?

Six days into a mission last May to repair and rehabilitate the Hubble Space Telescope, Michael J. Massimino, an astronaut, robotics expert and honorary New York City fireman, was getting ready to rip a handrail off the side of the fabled telescope.

Beneath the handrail, behind a panel secured by 111 tiny screws, was a broken spectrograph needing electronic repair to go back to its job, which included inspecting faraway planets. Dr. Massimino had trained for years to do this on-orbit “brain surgery,” but first, having stripped a crucial bolt, he would have to resort to brute force.

Dr. Massimino’s thoughts, he recalled recently over lunch in New York, flew back to his boyhood and the day his Uncle Frank couldn’t get the oil filter off his car. At one point, his father ran across the street, came back with a giant screwdriver, and punched it through the filter to get leverage to pry it off. After yanking, and cursing, “Finally he got the thing to budge,” Dr. Massimino said. “That’s what I was thinking when I was yanking on the handle on the Hubble.”

He has been reliving that moment in talks and interviews for the last year. Now, the whole world can as well.

RTWT.

Video: Space Shuttle Discovery Lifts Off for Space Station

As readers know, I'm fascinated by the shuttle launches. The New York Times has a big story, "Shuttle Lifts Off for Space Station."

And as always, AubreyJ provides comprehensive coverage, "Watch Launch and Mission Live Of Space Shuttle Discovery STS-131."

Plus, see ABC News, "Discovery Teacher-Astronaut Breaks the Mold: Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger's Unusual Route to Becoming a NASA Astronaut."

Shuttle Endeavour Launch

You can count on my good friend AubreyJ to have comprehensive coverage of NASA shuttle missions. No disappointment today. See his post from yesterday, "Endeavour Set to Launch Early Sunday Morning," which includes updates on the launch delay until this morning:

Here’s a little about...

Endeavour's STS-130 Mission.

Commander George Zamka will lead the STS-130 mission to the International Space Station aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. Terry Virts will serve as the pilot. Mission Specialists are Nicholas Patrick, Robert Behnken, Stephen Robinson and Kathryn Hire. Virts will be making his first trip to space.

Shuttle Endeavour and its crew will deliver to the space station a third connecting module, the Italian-built Tranquility node and the seven-windowed cupola, which will be used as a control room for robotics. The mission will feature three spacewalks.

Liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is scheduled for February 7, 2010, at 4:39am EST .

P.S. I love to watch videos of the shuttle launches, especially the separation of the solid fuel booster.

RELATED: From the New York Times, "Shuttle Endeavour Blasts Off for Space Station."

Photographs From the International Space Station

From the Big Picture, "Recent Scenes From the ISS:

The limb of the Earth, seen from the ISS when it was high above Arkansas on May 21,2009. (NASA/JSC) #

Thirty-four more pictures, at the link.