Astronauts aboard space shuttle Atlantis are preparing to return to Earth after an ambitious and risky mission to re-fit the Hubble telescope. There are two chances to land on Friday: one at 1500 BST (1000 EDT) and a second at 1639 BST (1139 EDT).
Space explorations
Former Microsoft Executive returns from Space
A former Microsoft Corp. executive Charles Simonyi has safely returned from his 12-day “vacation” on the International Space Stati, It was the last trip on which nonastronauts could hitch a ride on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Simonyi blasted off March 26 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with two crew members, Russian cosmonaut Gennadiy Padalka and [...]
Shuttle Discovery Back on Earth
Space shuttle Discovery returned in good shape, after traveling more than 5 million miles and circling Earth 202 times. The 13-day flight — which ended as a Russian-launched crew was settling into the space station — was highlighted by the installation and unfurling of the station’s last pair of solar wings. The $300-million addition brought [...]
Kepler blasts off in search of Earth-like planets
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday on a three-year mission to find Earth’s twin, a Goldilocks planet where it’s neither too hot nor too cold, but just right for life to take hold. The Delta II rocket, carrying the widest-field telescope ever put in space, lifted off the [...]
Chinese probe crashes into moon
A Chinese lunar probe has crashed into the moon in what Beijing has called a controlled collision. The Chang’e 1 lunar satellite hit the moon’s surface at 1613 local time (0813 GMT) at the end of a 16-month moon-mapping mission. China launched the spacecraft in late October 2007 on a mission to survey the entire [...]
Scientists Mull Future After Carbon Satellite Crash
Nine years of work disappeared in five minutes yesterday when a NASA satellite crashed into the icy waters near Antarctica. Now climate scientists who worked on the ambitious effort to map the world’s carbon dioxide are trying to figure out what comes next. The $278 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory was designed to monitor how CO2 [...]