Station crew and tourist aim for overnight landing

Outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchakov and space tourist Charles Simonyi bid farewell to the Expedition 19 crew Tuesday and boarded a Soyuz ferry craft for re-entry and landing Wednesday in Kazakhstan.

Fincke and Lonchakov, launched to the International Space Station last Oct. 12, are wrapping up a 178-day stay off planet as the core members of the lab's 18th full-time crew. Simonyi, a wealthy software developer making his second paid trip to the station, took off March 26 with Expedition 19 commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Michael Barratt.

After a busy day of packing and readying the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft for re-entry, Fincke, Lonchakov and Simonyi shared hugs and handshakes with Padalka, Barratt and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata before floating into the ferry craft around 8:45 p.m. EDT. Hatches were closed a few moments later to set the stage for undocking just before midnight. Landing is expected around 3:16 a.m. Wednesday.

Undocking from the downward-facing port of the Russian Zarya module is targeted for around 11:55 p.m. EDT this evening. After moving a safe distance away and reaching the proper point in their orbit, Lonchakov will oversee a planned four-minute 21-second rocket firing at 2:24 a.m. that will slow the craft by about 258 mph and put it on the proper re-entry trajectory.

After falling to an altitude of about 87 miles, the three modules making up the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft will separate and the central descent module will enter the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of about 62 miles at 2:52 a.m. If all goes well, the module's main parachute will deploy shortly after 3 a.m. for a rocket-assisted touchdown at 3:16:29 a.m.

Weather causes one-day delay in Soyuz landing

Snow and soggy conditions at the primary landing site in Kazakhstan have prompted Russian flight planners to order a 24-hour delay, from April 7 to 8, for the return of a Soyuz capsule carrying outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchakov and space tourist Charles Simonyi.

The mission had been scheduled to conclude with a touchdown on April 7 northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, but the landing zone has been moved to a backup site about 180 miles to the southeast where conditions may be more favorable. Touchdown now is targeted for 3:15 a.m. EDT on April 8.

Fincke and Lonchakov were launched to the international space station aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft Oct. 12.

North Korean launch fails to put anything into orbit

Sunday's failure of an improved version of the North Korean Taepo-Dong-2 has deprived U.S. intelligence agencies from assessing performance of the vehicle's third stage. This is deemed critical to determining the precise threat the vehicle poses as an ICBM that could attack Alaska, Hawaii or deeply into the continental U.S.
Almost immaterial in the post-flight analysis is the failure of the vehicle to place a small communications satellite in low earth orbit, North Korea's stated intention.
Unlike on the previous launches of earlier versions of the long-range vehicle, the North Koreans announced the planned impact zones for the first and second stages of the vehicle to warn ships and commercial aircraft out of the area.
North Korea says the satellite launch mission succeeded, but the U.S. says the vehicle failed about half way through an about 13-minute ascent. This plunged the second and third stages, along with the satellite into the mid-Pacific Ocean.

Multi-tasking satellite deployed by 50th ILS Proton

A Proton rocket blasted off from Kazakhstan 3 April ,2009 and deposited a versatile European communications satellite into orbit, beginning a 15-year mission that will introduce a state-of-the-art service to beam live television to cell phones, iPods and cars across Europe.

The 191-foot-tall rocket left the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 1624 GMT (12:24 p.m. EDT), turning northeast from the launch pad and tearing through the night sky on the power of six first stage RD-276 engines.

Eutelsat's 13,000-pound W2A spacecraft was bolted atop the rocket for the nine-hour mission.

The Proton's three core stages thrust W2A on a high-speed suborbital trajectory 10 minutes after liftoff.

The Breeze M upper stage, fueled by an explosive mix of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, took over the flight and ignited for its first burn to place the payload into a low-altitude parking orbit.

The W2A satellite was deployed at about 0134 GMT Saturday (9:34 p.m. EDT Friday).

ILS markets the Proton rocket to international customers and manages commercial launches of the venerable booster.

After Friday's launch, the ILS backlog now stands at 22 missions. The next commercial Proton will launch the ProtoStar 2 direct-to-home broadcasting satellite that will cover India and Southeast Asia. That flight is scheduled for the middle of May, according to an ILS spokesperson

Atlas 5 rocket successfully launches military satellite

It was a perfect Friday night , April 3,2009 flight for the Atlas 5 rocket, completing a military mission that put an advanced communications spacecraft into the sky to serve U.S. forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Technical challenges had held up the launch for several months, but the main engine and twin solid boosters finally lit at 8:31 p.m. EDT to begin a spectacular nighttime ascent.

The satellite will be parked over the equator around 60 degrees East longitude for use by U.S. Central Command in Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of Southwest Asia, according to Col. William Harding, vice commander of the Military Satellite Communications Systems Wing at the Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles.

Oldest isolated pulsar ever found by X-rays

The oldest isolated pulsar ever detected in X-rays has been found with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This very old and exotic object is surprisingly active.The pulsar is about 200 million years old.

3 galaxies involved in a game of tug- of -war

NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows three galaxies playing a game of gravitational tug -of- war that may result in the eventual demise of one of them.The galaxies are located 100 million light years away.

Why Taurus XL failed

On 24th, February, a Taurus XL carrying NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory(OCO) failed to reach orbit. Managers want to confirm there will not be similar issues with Kepler's Delta II.
Preliminary information indicated that the fairing on the Taurus XL did not separate from the rocket as planned about 10 minutes into the flight.
The fairing is a clamshell structure that encapsulates the satellite as it travels.

China's lunar probe lands on Moon

Chang'e- 1, China's first lunar probe, impacted the Moon at 4.13 p.m . Beijing Time (0813 GMT) on March 1, 2009 said sources with the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.
The satellite ended its 16- month mission on March 1, 2009 when it hit the lunar surface at 1.50 degrees south latitude and 52.36 degrees east longitude.
This is the first phase of China's three-stage moon mission, which will lead to a landing and launch of a rover vehicle around 2012.
"Chang'e" is name after legendary Chinese Moon goddess.

Chandrayaan likely to join U.S spacecraft for water probe

India's Chandrayaan-I probe will be joining two U.S spacecraft to be launched this year in looking for water on the Moon.
NASA plans to launch the Lunar Reconnaissance (LRO)as well as the Lunar Crater Observation an Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) on an Atlas V rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
One of the instruments on Chandrayaan-I, which is currently circling the Moon, is a compact imaging radar known as Mini-SAR developed by the U.S scientists to look for signs of water-ice at the bottom of lunar craters that are permanently in shadow. A similar sort of radar, called Mini-RF, is flying on LRO as well.