Astronomy

NASA has high hopes that they will be able to send people to the moon a year earlier then they planned. They had scheduled to send people in 2015.

At this time Congress is worried by the fact that we have to rely on Russia in order to make any trips to the International Space Station during that time. NASA is preparing for any demands that the new President might have and is working on a new study that pushes up the test launch of the brand new Ares rocketship.

NASA stated this week that a worm - known as Gammima or Tarerf - was discovered on a computer in the International Space Station. It is a generic Trojan that steals passwords and they say that it is not the first time they have encountered this problem. A spokesperson for NASA stated that there was no missing information and it did not disrupt the mission.

NASA has decided to take corrective action in the Government Accountability Office and the protest that has been lodged against the Exploration Systems & Technology. Officials of NASA stated that they believe the issue requires the termination of the contract for the Constellation Space Suit System that was agreed upon with Oceaneering International.

The Orion is NASA’s first manned test flight and will be replacing the current U.S. space shuttles - but it will not launch until 2014. NASA was originally shooting for 2013 - but because of technical and funding problems they have had to change the date.

Elon Musk runs SpaceX - the commercial space launch - but is finding obstacles keeping him from achieving his goal. He tested the Falcon 1 for the third time only to find more glitches. The upper stage failed to separate from the lower that way that it was made to.

Sir Richard Branson is a British billionaire who is working with Burt Rutan an American aerospace engineer. Together they built the WhiteKnightTwo Mothership - which was officially revealed this week and will be used to launch tourists into space.

The mothership was not designed to leave the atmosphere and enter into space - but it will have the ability to launch the Spaceship Two - which is not yet finished. When completed the SpaceShipTwo will be able to reach an altitue of 50,000 feet and will be able to launch six passengers on a 2 ½ hour ride into the Earth’s atmosphere.

NASA set the final space shuttle mission for May 31st, 2010. This is exactly four months before the shuttle’s fleet is set to retire. According to NASA the fleet has exactly 10 more missions left.

President Bush ordered that this missions be retired by September 30th, 2010. Five more flights this year have been scheduled, five more in 2009, and three in 2010. At this time the space agency is working on creating a new spacecraft that will be able to take astronauts back to the moon.

Shuttle Discovery has finally made it home after their 14 day mission – which was very successful. The crew landed at the Kennedy Space Center Saturday morning. Mission Control was happy to see the shuttle and radioed them congratulations to the Commander Mary Kelly and its crew, “Beautiful landing, Mark, and congratulations on a great mission.”

The crew aboard the Discovery space shuttle was confused and a little worried when they spotted an object floating from their ship and into space. They are scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center sin a week – but are now wondering if the object was something of importance. The object could mean that something is broken or it could simply be a piece of ice or a plastic bag that was floating out of the payload bay.

The U.S. space shuttle Discovery has undocked from the International Space Station Wednesday morning and will be leaving the brand new Japanese science lab that they came to install. It took the crew nine days to install the Kibo lab.

They are taking back with them the U.S. astronaut Garrett Reisman to be a new member of their crew. For three months he was a part of the three person crew on the space station. Gregory Chamitoff will be replacing him.