Flames shot more than 100 feet high in a successful 5.5-second ground test firing Thursday, Nov. 20, of a launch abort motor for NASA's next generation spacecraft, the Orion crew exploration vehicle. NASA and the Orion industry team conducted the firing at the Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, facility in Promontory, Utah.

Spacewalkers Piper and Kimbrough are scheduled to leave the station's Quest airlock at 12:45 p.m. CST. Piper will wear the red-striped suit while Kimbrough will be in the suit with broken red stripes. Boe will be the intravehicular officer or spacewalk choreographer, while Pettit and Expedition 18 Flight Engineer Sandra Magnus will operate Canadarm2.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed vast Martian glaciers of water ice under protective blankets of rocky debris at much lower latitudes than any ice previously identified on the Red Planet. Scientists analyzed data from the spacecraft's ground-penetrating radar and report in the Nov. 21 issue of the journal Science that buried glaciers extend for [...]

The Akari infrared surveyor, a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency mission with ESA participation, has returned a host of new results. From splashes in cosmic rivers of dust and gas to supernova remnants, the mission has been uncovering secrets of the cold and dusty Universe. 'The interstellar medium, a tenuous mix of gas and tiny solid [...]

Scientists announced on Wednesday the discovery of a previously unidentified nearby source of high-energy cosmic rays. The finding was made with a NASA-funded balloon-borne instrument high over Antarctica. Researchers from the Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) collaboration, led by scientists at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, published the results in the November 20 issue of the journal Nature. The new results show an unexpected surplus of cosmic ray electrons at very high energy - 300-800 billion electron volts - that must come from a previously unidentified source or from the annihilation of very exotic theoretical particles used to explain dark matter. - NASA

This composite image shows M84, a massive elliptical galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, about 55 million light years from Earth. Hot gas around M84 is shown in a Chandra X-ray Observatory image in blue and a radio image from the Very Large Array is shown in red. A background image from the Sloan Digital Sky [...]

Station flight engineer Sandra Magnus and her predecessor Greg Chamitoff moved the port and starboard crew quarters to the station and installed them in the Harmony node. They also installed a rack with equipment for return to Earth inside the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module.

The crews will begin preparations for the second of four mission spacewalks, this one to start at 12:45 p.m. CST Thursday. The preparations include a spacewalk procedure review for shuttle astronauts and station Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Sandra Magnus. Subsequently spacewalkers Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Shane Kimbrough will begin the standard pre-spacewalk campout in the station's Quest airlock.

NASA astronauts on Space Shuttle Endeavour's STS-126 mission will install an instrument on the International Space Station that can 'smell' dangerous chemicals in the air. Designed to help protect crew members' health and safety, the experimental 'ENose' will monitor the space station's environment for chemicals such as ammonia, mercury, methanol and formaldehyde. 'The ENose fills [...]

Nations around the world will join together to mark a milestone in space exploration this week, celebrating the 10th birthday of a unique research laboratory, the International Space Station. Now the largest spacecraft ever built, the orbital assembly of the space station began with the launch from Kazakhstan of its first bus-sized component, Zarya, [...]

Astronauts Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Steve Bowen completed the first of four spacewalks scheduled for Endeavour's mission to the International Space Station today. The spacewalk was the 115th in support of ISS construction.

The first of four spacewalks scheduled for Endeavour crew members at the International Space Station will highlight today's activities in orbit. Much of the work by Endeavour crew members, Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Eric Boe and mission specialists Don Pettit, Steve Bowen, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Shane Kimbrough and Greg Chamitoff, will involve the spacewalk and transfer of equipment and supplies between the station and Endeavour.

The joint Space Shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station crews today took the first step toward updating the complex's interior by installing a packed logistics module on a docking port. The Leonardo Multipurpose Logistics Module (MPLM) - stuffed with additional sleeping stations, new exercise equipment, a water regeneration system, experiments and hardware - was carefully moved from Endeavour's payload bay to the station in preparation for unloading for the next several days.

Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo and its seven-ton-plus cargo will be grappled by the station's Canadarm2 at about 10:25 a.m. to begin the installation process. Leonardo's cargo will help prepare the station for a six-member crew. Scheduled next year, that will enable more science to be performed aboard the orbiting laboratory.

The Shuttle and Station crews opened hatches and greeted one another at 6:16 p.m. CST, beginning more than a week of joint operations between the two crews. The crews will collaborate on the delivery of the key life support and habitability systems that will enable long-term, self-sustaining station operations for a six-person resident crew. The crews also will conduct four spacewalks to service and lubricate the Station's two Solar Alpha Rotary Joints that allow its solar arrays to track the Sun.

Endeavour's approach to the station includes a photo session. When the spacecraft is about 600 feet below the station, Ferguson will fly the spacecraft through the rendezvous pitch maneuver. That nine-minute backflip lets the station crew take high resolution photos of the shuttle's thermal protection system.

Astronomers using the Gemini North telescope and W.M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain in the Hawaiian chain, have obtained the first-ever direct images identifying a multi-planet system around a normal star. The Gemini images allowed the international team to make the initial discovery of two of the planets in the [...]

8:00 p.m. CST Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008 Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas STS-126 Mission Control Center Status Report #03 The seven-member crew of Space Shuttle Endeavour spent the day completing a five-hour inspection of Endeavour's heat shield using the shuttle's robotic arm and the Orbiter Boom Sensor System. Ground controllers will [...]

10:30 a.m. CST Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008 Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas STS-126 Mission Control Center Status Report #02 It's inspection day aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. Crew members will use the shuttle's robotic arm and its extension to look at the spacecraft's thermal protection system. They also will prepare for [...]

7:30 p.m. CST Friday, Nov. 14, 2008 Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas Space shuttle Endeavour lit the Florida night sky with a 6:55 p.m. CST launch on a mission to outfit the International Space Station for a larger crew and improve the function of a solar array rotary joint. Aboard the shuttle [...]

NASA HQ/Kennedy Space Center: Space shuttle Endeavour and its seven-member crew lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 7:55 p.m. EST on Friday to repair and remodel the International Space Station. Endeavour's STS-126 mission will carry to space about 32,000 pounds, which includes supplies and equipment necessary to double the crew size [...]

Coverage of the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-126 to the International Space Station.

Endeavour is in the final stages of launch preparation before its liftoff to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Loading of Endeavour's orange external tank with 500,000 gallons of super-cold liquid oxygen and hydrogen began this morning and was completed at 1:31 p.m. EST. The 'topping off' of propellants into [...]

European Space Agency X-ray and gamma-ray data from ESA's XMM-Newton and Integral orbiting observatories has been used to test, for the first time, the physical processes that make magnetars, an atypical class of neutron stars, shine in X-rays. Neutron stars are remnants of massive stars (10-50 times as massive as our Sun) that [...]

Canadian Space Agency announces design contract with MDA for RADARSAT Constellation. Longueuil, Quebec, November 14, 2008 - The Canadian Space Agency announced today that MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) has been awarded a 16-month contract valued at $40 million to begin the design of the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM). The RADARSAT Constellation is the [...]

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star. Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the 'Southern Fish.' Fomalhaut has been a [...]

The flight of space shuttle Endeavour includes several significant steps to install new crew equipment inside the International Space Station and service the solar array joints of the laboratory. During STS-126, the crew of space shuttle Endeavour and the space station will exchange crew members. Sandra Magnus will swap places with current station resident Greg [...]

NASA's first spacecraft dedicated to studying carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate, has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., to begin final launch preparations. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory arrived Nov. 11 at its launch site on California's central coast after completing a cross-country trip by truck from [...]

Horrific and inhumane methods of bile extraction have been developed by the bear farming industry. With your support, WSPA aims to stop the farming of bears for bile extraction and body parts across Asia. - World Society for the Protection of Animals