Discovery’s Safely on the Ground

Discovery and its crew are safely back on the ground after a 13-day trip into space to visit the International Space Station. The shuttle detached from the station on Sunday, and then landed Monday morning in Florida at 1414 GMT (9:14 am EDT). After landing, the astronauts performed the traditional shuttle walkaround, and found the spacecraft surprisingly undamaged after its trip to space and back. The space shuttle Atlantis will be moved to the launch pad in early August to prepare for its upcoming mission to deliver a truss to the station.
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One Moon in Light, One in Dark

This Cassini image shows Saturn’s shadowy side, its rings, and two of its moons: Mimas and Enceladus. Mimas is on the left, and shows its dark side, while Enceladus is on the far side of the rings, closer to Saturn, and is illuminated by the reflected sunlight from Saturn’s bright side. Cassini took this photo on June 11, 2006 when it was 3.9 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) from Mimas.
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First Pictures After Hubble’s Breakdown

After its brief breakdown last month, the Hubble Space Telescope’s main camera is gathering science data again. The Advanced Camera for Surveys stopped functioning after power supply problems, but engineers were able to switch to a backup power system and get it back online. This image was one of the first taken after the camera resumed operations on July 4th. It shows a galaxy cluster located 9 billion light-years away. Hubble located a supernova in June 2006, and then returned to see its afterglow in July.
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A Day of Rest for the Astronauts

After eight days in space, and three spacewalks, the crew of the space shuttle Discovery will be taking the day off. Yesterday’s spacewalk went well, with Mission Specialists Piers Sellers and Mike Fossum testing out methods of repairing damaged shuttle heat shields. During the mission, Sellers lost one of the caulking spatulas used to spread on the repair compound – it flew out of Discovery’s payload bay area and was lost in space.
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Inflatable Habitat Reaches Orbit

Robert Bigelow’s dream of a thriving space tourism industry took a significant step forward today with the launch of the Genesis 1 experimental spacecraft. Bigelow Aerospace reported that the prototype habitat was successfully lofted into orbit atop a converted Russian inter-continental ballistic missile. Once in orbit, it extended its solar panels and began to inflate. The rocket launched at 6:53 pm Moscow Time, and the company released a series of statements over the course of the day reporting that everything’s going well.
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Astronauts Wrap Up Third Spacewalk

Astronauts Piers Sellers and Mike Fossum wrapped up the third and final spacewalk for space shuttle mission STS-121. During the 7-hour, 11-minute spacewalk, they demonstrated techniques for repairing the shuttle’s heat shield if it was damaged during launch. The mock repairs were made using a special “space caulk gun” and several spatulas to spread on the caulking materials. Discovery will detach from the station on Saturday to return to Earth.
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Science Updates from Venus Express

ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft concluded its in-orbit commissioning phase last week, and the agency has declared it ready to enter the operational phase of its science mission. All of its instruments are performing well, except for the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS), which has a malfunction. The mirror used to target the instrument is locked in the “close” position, preventing the instrument from being able to gather data.
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Astrophoto: The Goldilocks Variable in the Dumbbell Nebula by Stefan Heutz

We are very fortunate, and perhaps lucky, to inhabit a planet near a star whose behavior has been relatively monotonous for billions of years. This is a vital quality of any star to spawn and support life. But, there are many suns that do not have this characteristic. These suns regularly increase their radiance by outpouring dramatic amounts of additional energy such as the Goldilocks variable star that can sometimes be seen in images of the Dumbbell Nebula, pictured here.
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Epimetheus in Saturn’s Glare

Look at this photograph very carefully. Just below Saturn’s rings, to the left of the bright side of the planet is its tiny moon Epimetheus (116 km or 72 miles across). This moon hugs the outside edge of Saturn’s F ring, beyond the orbit of Pandora. Cassini took this photograph on June 9, when it was approximately 4 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) from Epimetheus.
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Spirit Finds Meteorites?

NASA’s Spirit rover took this photograph of the surrounding hilly terrain, as well as several rocks. The two light-coloured, smooth rocks at the bottom of the picture might be iron meteorites. Mission controllers have named them “Zhong Shan” and “Allan Hills”. Spirit uncovered that the rocks have unusual morphologies and thermal emission spectrometer signatures that resemble a rock called “Heat Shield” discovered by Opportunity, and later identified as an iron meteorite.
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