Spot Shuttle Atlantis in its final journey in Night Sky

Space Shuttle Atlantis has been a work force for mankind for the last 25 years. May be this Friday, Atlantis will be making its final journey to space before retiring. The stats of Atlantis says that Atlantis has spent 282 days in space, circled the globe in 4,462 orbits and traveled 115 million miles during 31 flights that featured 185 different astronauts which is fantastic.



If you want to get a view of Atlantis in its final journey then skywatchers across US will get a fine opportunity to watch this weekend. Both shuttle and space station will be visible as separatte entities as shining "stars" on Friday and Saturday evening.By Sunday evening, Atlantis will be docked to the ISS, and both will appear as a single bright moving "star."

Atlantis and ISS will be visible across parts of southern Canada and most of the 48 continental United States.

If you live in US and want to know viewing schedule for your particular hometown then you can easily find out by searching for one of these four popular Web sites: Chris Peat's Heavens Above, Science@NASA's J-Pass, NASA's SkyWatch and Spaceweather.com or by logging into this site.


Source : space.com.

NASA poised to stop work on shuttle extension option

Facing a tight budget, a 2010 deadline to end space shuttle operations and a lack of concrete political support to fund additional flights or stretch out the current manifest, NASA managers are meeting this week to discuss the impact of ending efforts that have been keeping open the option of extending the shuttle program past the current deadline.

Complicating the picture for NASA planners, there is a very real possibility that one or two of the final shuttle missions currently envisioned will slip into the October-December 2010 timeframe, i.e., the first quarter of fiscal 2011. There is no money in NASA's projected 2011 budget for any shuttle operations beyond $300 million or so intended for retirement activities.
As a result, NASA now plans to terminate work that kept open the option of a shuttle extension when the current legislation expires at the end of the month.