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| Image credit: Xinhua |
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| China Set for Launch on Wednesday |
| Oct 14, 2003 - China has entered its final countdown in preparation for its first manned flight – Shenzhou 5 is expected to lift off Wednesday, October 15 carrying a single astronaut. The current top candidate is Yang Liwei, a 38-year old from the Suizhong county in the province of Liaoning. China was originally going to broadcast the launch live, but then decided against it, concerned of the public relations fallout if something goes wrong. State television will probably provide video of the launch… only if it lifts off successfully. Shenzhou 5 will stay up for approximately 20 hours and make 14 orbits of the Earth before landing in the desert. |
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| Image credit: NASA |
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| NASA Lab Will Study Astronaut's Radiation |
| Oct 14, 2003 - NASA and the US Department of Energy have set up a new laboratory to study the effect of radiation on astronauts as they fly outside the Earth’s protective atmosphere. Located at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, the $34 million NASA Space Radiation Laboratory will have 80 researchers annually. The teams will do a variety of experiments with the kinds of radiation found in space in hopes to better understand how it damages living tissue. This can help NASA predict risks and develop countermeasures when risking astronauts to long-term exposure to radiation. |
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| Image credit: NASA |
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| Orbital Joins Space Plane Consortium |
| Oct 14, 2003 - Three aerospace firms announced today that they’re teaming up to supply NASA with a proposal for its Orbital Space Plane: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Orbital Sciences. NASA will choose between this consortium and Boeing in August 2004 for who will build the new spacecraft. NASA will require the winning team to provide a completed spacecraft that can serve as a rescue vehicle for the International Space Station by 2008, and then actually transfer crew to and from the station by 2012. |
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| Image credit: NASA |
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| SIRTF Successfully Focused |
| Oct 14, 2003 - NASA’s recently launched Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) passed an important milestone this week when it was successfully focused. The fourth, and last, of NASA’s great observatory has been in space since it was launched on August 25, and since then, it’s been slowly cooling down. The telescope is now only five degrees above Absolute Zero – this will let it pick up the faint infrared emissions from distant objects in space without seeing its own heat. The observatory will eventually reveal previously unseen objects obscured by gas and dust. |
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