Explore the final frontiers of space and technology with TrekUnited news. http://www.trekunited.com/news Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:14:32 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.trekunited.com/news/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://www.trekunited.com/news Explore the final frontiers of space and technology with TrekUnited news. http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1193&Itemid=82 Officials at NASA are breathing sighs of relief now that the pen of US President George W. Bush has left his signature on a temporary spending bill that included provisions to allow NASA to purchase Soyuz flights from Russia in spite of a nuclear nonproliferation act and extended NASA’s current 2008 funding level through the end of the year as Congress continues to wrangle a cohesive federal budget plan into place (the fiscal year for the US federal government started on October 1). Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:45:42 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1192&Itemid=82 In 2007, former Microsoft executive and billionaire Charles Simonyi paid more than $20 million for a trip aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station. He followed four others who paid millions for trips to the ISS, and was apparently so pleased with the experience that he’s decided to pay another $30 million to become the first two-time space tourist. Both of Simonyi’s flights were booked through Virginia-based Space Adventures. Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:40:46 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1190&Itemid=82 On Monday evening the end came for the ESA’s first cargo ship. The Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle plunged into the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean in a destructive reentry that burned up most of the craft and left only a few dozen small fragments of the ship to fall into the uninhabited waters. The fiery plunge was caught on video by two NASA airplanes contracted by the ESA to collect data on the reentry, as well as data gathered by imagers aboard the International Space Station as it traveled overhead. The reentry marked the end of a successful premiere... Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:37:14 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1188&Itemid=82 With two space shuttle poised on the launch pad, the planned October mission to service the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope has been pushed back to next year following a failure of the telescope’s command and data systems. The breakdown does not prevent Hubble from orienting itself towards targets, once oriented the telescope cannot take pictures or transmit data back to Earth. Complicating the breakdown is the fact that NASA had planned to launch the space shuttle Atlantis on a servicing mission in less than two weeks. Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:28:42 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1187&Itemid=82 After three failed launch attempts, SpaceX’s two-stage Falcon 1 rocket finally made it into orbit, marking the first time that a private enterprise has launched its own orbital craft. Founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, SpaceX has for six years been lining up financing for its continued operations, even in the face of repeated failures. The 21-meter (68-ft) rocket carried a 165 kg (364 lb) dummy payload to an orbit between 500 and 700 km (312-437 mile) above the Earth. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:11:28 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1184&Itemid=82 Facing the likelihood of being locked out of the International Space Station for lack of ability to actually get to it, opposition has softened in the US House of Representatives to extending a NASA exemption from a nuclear nonproliferation act targeting Russia, allowing the space agency to purchase rides aboard Russia’s Soyuz space capsule to the ISS. The Senate has also approved an increased NASA budget for next year, up nearly 17% from 2008. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:22:59 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1183&Itemid=82 This week China successfully launched the nation’s third manned spaceflight, a three astronaut orbital trip that included the nation’s first spacewalk. The Shenzhou 7 craft launched on Thursday, September 23rd the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Chinese province of Gansu. The crew rode the 62 meter (200 ft) tall Long March 2F into orbit, five years after China’s first manned flight. Shenzhou 7 was crewed by Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming, and Jing Haipeng; all three are 42-year-old Chinese fighter pilots. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:37:05 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1182&Itemid=82 Opportunity, the little rover that could, just recently climbed up out of Victoria Crater on Mars after spending two years studying the large crater Now, its setting a course for a crater 20 times the size of Victoria: Endeavour Crater. Endeavour is eleven km (seven miles) to the southeast of Victoria, a distance equal to the total mileage Opportunity has racked up since landing on Mars in January 2004. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:55:26 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1181&Itemid=82 The International Astronomical Union is welcoming a new dwarf planet into the league of dwarf planets: Haumea. Previously known as 2003 EL61, the football-shaped dwarf planet is about 2000 km long – as long as Pluto is wide - but only weighs in at a third of Pluto’s mass. Haumea is composed almost entirely of rock with a crust of pure ice. It is joining Ceres, Pluto, Eris, and Makemake as our solar system’s dwarf planets. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:15:43 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1179&Itemid=82 Weighing in at 116 times the mass of the sun - that’s 254,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons - coming close to the theoretical limit of 150 solar masses (at which point gravity would not be strong enough to keep the hydrogen and helium in close). The next closest star hardly comes close, at just 89 solar masses. And they are brother and sister, gravitationally bound to each other. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:04:08 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1178&Itemid=82 Sitting on its three spindly legs since landing in the Martian arctic on May 25th, the Phoenix Lander’s mission has been extended again into December. The lander has performed the most detailed analyses of the Martian soil and has for the first time verified the presence of water ice on the red planet. This is the second time that the Phoenix mission has been extended, and probably will be the last. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:41:10 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1173&Itemid=82 Probing the secrets of science was supposed to get easier when the Large Hadron Collider in Europe was switched on earlier this month. Instead, the $10 billion, 27 km (17 mile), super-cooled atom smasher broke during the first test, a setback that will delay any further experimentation until the spring of next year. Buried 100 meters (330 feet) below the CERN particle physics center on the border of France and Switzerland, the collider was 14 years in the making and since conception had been sparking fears of inducing doomsday by creating a micro black hole of magnetic monopole or other... Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:34:54 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1171&Itemid=82 Even though the Phoenix Lander has shown that Mars is pretty much as dry as we thought it was, a new study suggests that the massive valleys we see on the red planet now were carved out by wet and dry seasons much like Earth’s current deserts. This stands in stark contrast to theories that the networks of valleys were the result of short-lived catastrophic flooding that lasted from a few centuries to a few millennia. The latest models indicate that wet periods on Mars could have lasted longer than 10,000 years. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:38:07 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1167&Itemid=82 Two days later than originally planned, the space shuttle Atlantis rolled out to is launch pad on the Atlantic Coast on Thursday. The move to Launch Complex 39A, the primary shuttle launching platform, was delayed by Tropical Storm Hanna, which skirted by Florida’s coast earlier in the week before charging up the eastern United States seaboard. The storm dealt no damage to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The two-day delay will ripple through the mission timeline, pushing back the launch to service the Hubble Space Telescope to no earlier than October 8, 2008. Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:40:52 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1166&Itemid=82 In the past week both Russia’s Progress cargo ship and the ESA’s Jules Verne ATV undocked from the International Space Station. Both of the unmanned cargo spaceships are on their way towards a fiery destructive reentry over the Pacific Ocean. Progress 29 undocked on Monday and the Jules Verne ATV on Friday, though both will remain in orbit for several more days to conduct further tests. Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:54:08 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1163&Itemid=82 Faced with a growing chorus of legislators from around the country calling for NASA to reexamine its plans to retire the remaining three space shuttles in 2010, the US space agency has commissioned an internal study to examine the ramifications of delaying certain shuttle flights or extending the retirement deadline in favor of more launches. The decision was spurred by international concerns over Russia’s soon-to-be monopoly on human transport to the International Space Station, as their Soyuz capsule is the only other manned craft capable of docking with the orbital outpost. Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:49:30 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1162&Itemid=82 In orbit of our blue marble are at least 10,000 bits of space litter, ranging from functioning satellites to discarded rocket segments to the remains of satellites obliterated by ground based rockets. Also up there are satellites that have simply died and are circling our planet until their orbit decays and they fall out of the sky. Either way, most of the 10,000 tracked pieces of debris would pose a threat to any craft in their path, be it a space shuttle or the International Space Station with its massive sweeping solar panels. Such a threat arose this week for... Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:06:11 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1158&Itemid=82 Inexplicably, a computer virus designed to steal the passwords of online gamers has appeared on laptop computers in use aboard the International Space Station. Deemed a low risk, the virus was detected late last month, and according to NASA, does not pose a threat to the space station. The virus several laptop computers used to tabulate data for minor experiments and for personal use by the three astronauts aboard the ISS. There are 71 laptops aboard the orbital outpost, though not all of them are vulnerable to the Windows-based virus, many lack basic virus protection. Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:30:16 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1157&Itemid=82 US Senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain (R-Arizona) has added his voice to the growing congressional chorus calling for more money for more shuttle flights. In the face of an increasingly tense relationship with Russia - the only other nation capable of delivering humans to the International Space Station - McCain and two other senators have written to President George W. Bush, imploring the president to direct NASA to hold off for at least one year any actions that would prevent space shuttle flights beyond 2010. Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:28:46 +0100 http://www.trekunited.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1155&Itemid=82 Having successfully survived another southern hemisphere Martian winter, the solar-powered Mars rovers are back at work, with Opportunity again stealing the spotlight. Having rolled down into Victoria Crater nearly a year ago, NASA mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, have accomplished everything they set out to do when they went into the crater, and are now taking the same route back out. Their efforts could be stymied by a potential wheel failure, though - Opportunity experienced an unsettling power spike in its left front wheel motor, a similar electrical current spike spelled doom for the right... Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:56:39 +0100