NASA has pushed to November the launch of one of its three remaining shuttle missions to modify an experiment module to be attached to the International Space Station (ISS).
Shuttle Endeavour, which had been scheduled to lift off on July 29, will now launch “no earlier than mid-November 2010” so that scientists can upgrade a magnet in the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer program to a longer-lasting device, the US space agency said late on Monday on its Web site.
“This will take advantage of NASA’s plan to extend station operations until at least 2020,” the agency said.
The Endeavour rescheduling does not affect the next launch, of shuttle Atlantis, due to blast off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on May 14.
“The payload for the [Atlantis] flight, an integrated cargo carrier and a Russian-built mini research module, was installed in the shuttle’s cargo bay Sunday,” NASA said.
The final shuttle mission had been scheduled for Sept. 16, with Discovery flying a last resupply machine to the orbital outpost. Discovery was still slated for its Sept. 16 launch, “but managers will continue to assess its readiness for flight and make changes as appropriate,” NASA said.
NASA is mothballing its shuttle program this year and once the three shuttles are retired the US will rely on Russia to take astronauts to the station aboard three-seater Soyuz spacecraft until a new fleet of commercial space taxis is operational.
A successor to the Discovery is scheduled to take off no earlier than 2015.
By the time the final three missions are complete, the space shuttles — characterized by NASA as the most advanced machines ever built — will have flown 134 missions into orbit.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer — a project led by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — will be installed on the ISS to help study and shed light on how the universe was formed, and search for evidence of dark matter and anti-matter by measuring cosmic rays.
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS