Posts Tagged ‘NASA’
By TechnoGadge on March 23, 2009 at 6:13 am
On Sunday afternoon, a space junk forced Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station (ISS) to reorient their path. NASA mission control ordered the astronauts to move out orbiting space complex after it found that an approaching chunk of a Chinese rocket.
The Discovery’s crew fired the thrusters to place the space shuttle in front of the space station. Discovery and the station will stay in this orientation for about three hours. Due to this, a natural drag of about a foot per second …
Category: Space | Tags: Discovery, ISS, NASA, Space, Space Shuttle
By TechnoGadge on March 22, 2009 at 4:56 am
It was not a great day for both the orbiting astronauts and the NASA mission control back on earth, as one of the spacewalking astronauts accidentally inserted a pin upside down and jammed the equipment storage platform at the International Space Station (ISS). Now a special NASA team is trying to figure out a way to loose the pin.
The incident occurred during the second spacewalk of the ongoing Discovery mission and it ate up so much time that astronauts Steven Swanson and Joseph Acaba …
Category: Space | Tags: Discovery, ISS, NASA, Space
By TechnoGadge on March 21, 2009 at 5:11 am
The International Space Station (ISS) has got the fourth and final pairs of solar arrays. The crews of the US space shuttle Discovery and the resident astronauts of the International Space Station unfurled the new solar wings on Friday, after installing them on Thursday. ISS is now 80% complete and the new solar arrays will bring the space station up to full power.
The new solar panels are 240 feet long tip to tip and weighs nearly 5,000 pounds on Earth. Altogether, the four sets …
Category: Space | Tags: ISS, NASA, Space, Technology
By TechnoGadge on March 16, 2009 at 2:19 pm
After five changes in launch date, US Space Shuttle Discovery finally blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Sunday evening. Due to the delay in launch the STS-119 mission is now shortened by one day.
During the 13-day mission, astronauts will install the space station’s last pair of solar wings. Discovery is also carrying supplies and hardware and a new Japanese resident astronaut to the International Space Station. (ISS) Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata will replace U.S. astronaut Sandra Magnus.
Discovery’s crew …
Category: Space | Tags: Discovery, ISS, NASA, Space, Space Shuttle
By TechnoGadge on March 12, 2009 at 7:10 pm
The International Space Station was temporarily evacuated on Thursday because of the potential threat of an approaching space debris. The three astronauts took refuge inside the Russian Soyuz capsule and was ready to evacuate the station in the event of a collision with the debris.
The space debris, which was a third of an inch long, came too close to the space station and passed by the station harmlessly about 12:39 p.m. ET. It was a part of a motor that helped boost a satellite …
Category: Space | Tags: ISS, NASA, Space
By TechnoGadge on March 7, 2009 at 6:40 am
US space agency NASA on Friday successfully launched ‘Kepler’, a planet-hunting spacecraft designed to look for Earth-like planets around distant stars. A Delta II rocket, carrying the Kepler, lifted off at 10:49 p.m. EST from Launch Complex 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Engineers at NASA acquired a signal from Kepler at 12:11 a.m. Saturday, after it separated from its spent third-stage rocket and entered its final sun-centered orbit, trailing 950 miles behind Earth. The spacecraft will generate its own power from its solar …
Category: Space | Tags: Kepler, NASA, Space
By TechnoGadge on February 24, 2009 at 1:01 pm
The first climate change monitoring satellite from NASA, that was launched on Tuesday, has failed to reach it’s orbit due to a serious malfunction in the rocket. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was designed for mapping Earth’s carbon dioxide levels and study how the carbon dioxide level changes with time.
The $270 million mission was launched by Taurus XL rocket, the smallest ground-launched rocket currently in use by the US space agency, from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base. Within minutes of launch the rocket suffered …
Category: Space | Tags: NASA, Orbiting Carbon Observatory, Satellite, Space
By TechnoGadge on February 22, 2009 at 5:35 am
US space agency NASA is not yet ready for the launch of space shuttle Discovery. During a thorough review of Discovery’s readiness for next flight, NASA managers decided on Friday that more data and possible testing are required before the launch of STS-119 mission to the International Space Station. So, the agency announced that it will delay the launch.
NASA engineers are worried about faulty fuel valves breaking off, which may cause sever damage to the spacecraft during launch. The space shuttle has three flow control valves that channel …
Category: Space | Tags: Discovery, NASA, Space, Space Shuttle
