NASA: Final Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour Set for April 29

NASA's space shuttle Endeavour is ready to launch on its final voyage April 29, top mission managers decided today (April 19).

Shuttle officials approved the launch plan after a day-long meeting called the Flight Readiness Review (FRR), which allowed mission managers to discuss Endeavour's mission plan in detail and consider any possible issues that might delay liftoff.

officials decided to move forward with the target date of April 29 at 3:47 p.m. EDT for Endeavour's final blast off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla

"The team was unanimous and we're ready to go fly," NASA's associate administrator for space operations, Bill Gerstenmaier, said during a press conference following the meeting.

Endeavour is slated to carry six astronauts, a cargo bay full of spare supplies, and a $2 billion astrophysics experiment to the International Space Station.

"The potential science that it can return to understand the dark matter that lives in the universe and understand these unique high-energy particles that are out there in space, it's going to be tremendously important," Gerstenmaier said. "This is a pretty unique mission to close out Endeavour's career."

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http://www.space.com/11432-nasa-space-shuttle-launch-date-endeavour.html

Flutes In Space

The first-ever space-Earth flute performance took place over the weekend with Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson dueting with NASA astronaut Col. Cady Coleman.

We wouldn’t blame you if you thought this marvelous little performance was still to come. Press announcements issued last week declared the duet would take place April 12, 50 years to the date when Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in history to be launched into space.

With Coleman floating weightlessly on board the International Space Station while Anderson kept his feet planted firmly on the ground in Perm, Russia, the two flautists played a portion of “Bouree,” which appeared on Tull’s 1969 album Stand Up.

Along with carrying one of Anderson’s flutes to the space station, Coleman took a penny whistle and Irish flute belonging to The Chieftains.

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Commercial rocket launch, splashdown a success

The first of what NASA hopes will become a fleet of privately built rockets and capsules successfully launched from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday morning in a major test for the commercial space industry. After twice circling the globe, the capsule landed in the Pacific as planned three hours later.

The successful splashdown marks the first time that a commercial company launched a rocket and capsule into space and brought the spacecraft safely back to Earth.

The landing was announced on the Twitter account of Space Explorations Technologies Inc., or SpaceX, the start-up company that has pioneered the new era of commercial space travel. A recovery team was at the capsule - built to be reusable - within 20 minutes of splashdown, suggesting that it was on target for its landing.

The Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX was on its first full test flight. Its Dragon capsule was empty and unmanned, but plans are to fill it in the months ahead with cargo - and ultimately with astronauts - to transport to the International Space Station.

NASA's deputy administrator, Lori Garver, said after the splashdown that the administration was delighted by the success and that "the path to and from the space station is going to be this: a partnership between private companies and government to get the job done most effectively."

The flight is an important moment for President Obama and his administration's hopes to expand commercial space efforts in low-Earth orbit as a way to free up NASA funds for missions to send astronauts much deeper into space and ultimately to Mars.

SpaceX, founded in 2002 by Elon Musk and run from California, successfully launched a Dragon 9 rocket in June, but that test was done without a real capsule. Musk, who founded and sold the online payment company PayPal and is also behind development of the Tesla electric car, said before launch that he rated the chances for a successful mission at about 60 percent.

After the splashdown, Musk said he was in "semi-shock."

"There's so much that can go wrong and it all went right," Musk said. His next challenge is a Dragon capsule rendezvous with the space station that is scheduled for next year.

The Falcon 9 rocket is a pipsqueak compared with the space shuttle it will partially replace - measuring 157 feet with the capsule and weighing 735,000 pounds. The much larger shuttle was needed to fly parts up to the $100 billon international space station, but the fleet is being retired because of its age and because its job is largely done. Each shuttle flight costs about $1 billion, while the entire NASA contribution so far to SpaceX has been $253 million, according to NASA officials.


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Secret Military Mini-Shuttle Headed Back to Earth

A miniature robotic space shuttle launched from Cape Canaveral in April has completed a nine-month classified mission for the military and will be headed for a landing as early as Friday, Air Force officials said on Tuesday.

The vehicle, known as the Orbital Test Vehicle or X-37B, is expected to land at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California between Friday and Monday, depending on weather and technical considerations, the Air Force said in a statement.

The project, started by NASA in the late 1990s and later adopted by the military, is intended to test technologies for a next-generation space shuttle.

The military is looking at the space plane as a way to test new equipment, sensors and material in space, with the intention of incorporating successful technologies into satellites and other operational systems.

The Air Force imposed a news blackout on the X-37B's activities while in orbit, though it was tracked by amateur satellite-watchers throughout its nine-month mission.

The X-37B looks like a space shuttle orbiter, with a similar shape and payload bay for cargo and experiments.

But it measures 29 feet, 3 inches in length and has a 15-foot (4.5-meter) wing span, compared to the 122-foot (37-meter) orbiters with wing spans of 78 feet.

Unlike NASA's space shuttles, which can stay in orbit about two weeks, X-37B is designed to spend as long as nine months in space, then land autonomously on a runway.

The Air Force plans to fly its second X-37B vehicle this spring. The vehicles were built by Boeing Co's advanced research lab, Phantom Works.

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http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=12280571