New room extended at space station

24hoursnews
The US space shuttle Discovery linked up with the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday on a mission to prepare the orbital outpost for new European and Japanese laboratories.
With shuttle commander Pamela Melroy at the controls, Discovery eased up to the station and latched onto a docking port at 8.40am EDT.
Working both outside the station and within it, the astronauts moved the Harmony module, which will serve as a connection point for two new laboratories for the station, to a temporary location on the side of the station.
The space station’s robot arm, operated by Stephanie Wilson and Daniel Tani, smoothly moved the 16-ton module out of the shuttle and onto the station, where automatic bolts secured it in place in a temporary home on the left side of the station’s living quarters.

The work outside was more strenuous. Astronauts Scott E. Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock began their spacewalk shortly after 6 a.m. Eastern time. They prepared the Harmony module for its removal from the shuttle’s payload bay and performed some of the preliminary work for the other big task of the mission, moving an enormous set of solar arrays and the truss they stand on from their initial position atop the station to the permanent home on the far end of the truss on the station’s left side.

So far, technical difficulties on the mission have been minor.

So little insulating foam was shed from the shuttle’s external tank that mission managers have determined that a more focused inspection of the shuttle’s heat shield is unnecessary. When that word was passed up to the shuttle on Thursday afternoon before the crew sleep period was to begin, the shuttle commander, Pamela A. Melroy, responded enthusiastically, ”Oh, man, that is fantastic news.”

She said that it was a relief to know that tile and panel damage was not a concern and that they would be able to take the time that would have gone to inspection and use it to further prepare the Harmony module for entry. “We just can’t wait to get inside,” Ms. Melroy said.

The spacewalk, for the most part, went smoothly. The astronauts struggled occasionally with balky bolts and hose connectors, which are optimistically called “quick-disconnect” devices. They were wary of the small amounts of frozen ammonia that drifted away from some the hoses, because they could contaminate the atmosphere within the station if brought in on the space suits. The amount of ammonia, which is used as a coolant, was small.

At one point, Paolo Nespoli, the Italian astronaut who was coordinating the spacewalk from inside the station, asked his colleagues to take a small break to enjoy what might be the greatest perk of working in space: the view. He asked them to look over the starboard side as the station passed over Houston.

The two spacewalkers oohed and aahed as the familiar coastline slid by below.

“Hello, Houston!” Dr. Parazynski said.

The spacewalkers were back in the airlock before noon.

Over the communications system, Ms. Melroy congratulated Dr. Parazynski and Mr. Wheelock on the work of the entire team, which she said she watched while making lunch for the crew.

The new room Expanded at Space Station

(24hoursnews)

The US space shuttle Discovery linked up with the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday on a mission to prepare the orbital outpost for new European and Japanese laboratories.
With shuttle commander Pamela Melroy at the controls, Discovery eased up to the station and latched onto a docking port at 8.40am EDT.
. Working both outside the station and within it, the astronauts moved the Harmony module, which will serve as a connection point for two new laboratories for the station, to a temporary location on the side of the station.
The space station’s robot arm, operated by Stephanie Wilson and Daniel Tani, smoothly moved the 16-ton module out of the shuttle and onto the station, where automatic bolts secured it in place in a temporary home on the left side of the station’s living quarters.

The work outside was more strenuous. Astronauts Scott E. Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock began their spacewalk shortly after 6 a.m. Eastern time. They prepared the Harmony module for its removal from the shuttle’s payload bay and performed some of the preliminary work for the other big task of the mission, moving an enormous set of solar arrays and the truss they stand on from their initial position atop the station to the permanent home on the far end of the truss on the station’s left side.

So far, technical difficulties on the mission have been minor.

So little insulating foam was shed from the shuttle’s external tank that mission managers have determined that a more focused inspection of the shuttle’s heat shield is unnecessary. When that word was passed up to the shuttle on Thursday afternoon before the crew sleep period was to begin, the shuttle commander, Pamela A. Melroy, responded enthusiastically, ”Oh, man, that is fantastic news.”

She said that it was a relief to know that tile and panel damage was not a concern and that they would be able to take the time that would have gone to inspection and use it to further prepare the Harmony module for entry. “We just can’t wait to get inside,” Ms. Melroy said.

The spacewalk, for the most part, went smoothly. The astronauts struggled occasionally with balky bolts and hose connectors, which are optimistically called “quick-disconnect” devices. They were wary of the small amounts of frozen ammonia that drifted away from some the hoses, because they could contaminate the atmosphere within the station if brought in on the space suits. The amount of ammonia, which is used as a coolant, was small.

At one point, Paolo Nespoli, the Italian astronaut who was coordinating the spacewalk from inside the station, asked his colleagues to take a small break to enjoy what might be the greatest perk of working in space: the view. He asked them to look over the starboard side as the station passed over Houston.

The two spacewalkers oohed and aahed as the familiar coastline slid by below.

“Hello, Houston!” Dr. Parazynski said.

The spacewalkers were back in the airlock before noon.

Over the communications system, Ms. Melroy congratulated Dr. Parazynski and Mr. Wheelock on the work of the entire team, which she said she watched while making lunch for the crew.

Cosmic Log : The spaceport Race

Cosmic Log : The spaceport Race

If you think the commercial space race is grueling, consider the hurdles that lie ahead for Spaceport America, a 16,600-acre stretch of ranchland that New Mexico hopes will become a world center for space tourism by 2010.

State officials will have to appoint a new spaceport director, hammer out a deal with the spaceship operator, win a license from federal regulators, get $200 million in financing in order and break ground for construction - all within the next year.

Not only that, they have to convince voters in two rural counties that the project is important enough to merit tens of millions of dollars in new taxes. Kelly O'Donnell, chairwoman and acting director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, admits that won't be easy.

"I feel very, very confident that we will get past this particular challenge, and that the many local governments that stand to benefit from the spaceport will share the burden - er, the honor - of funding this project with the state of New Mexico," she told attendees here today in Las Cruces, N.M., at the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight.

New Mexico's Spaceport America, situated 40 miles north of Las Cruces, serves as a test case to see if the public will voluntarily accept the costs as well as the benefits that come with space travel. We know people will do it for baseball stadiums, but will they do it for launch pads?

About $140 million is already being put up by the state for building Spaceport America, but local governments will have to kick in the other $60 million, O'Donnell said. And that puts the burden - er, the honor - on three counties in the job-hungry southern part of the state: Dona Ana, Sierra and Otero counties.

Dona Ana voters narrowly approved new taxes in April, but at least one more county or city has to approve its own tax by the end of next year in order for the spaceport plan to move forward. Sierra County is planning a ballot next March or April, and Otero County is due to vote in November 2008, O'Donnell said. In the meantime, Dona Ana is trying to hold off on collecting the tax.

"A delay in those elections could be very bad for the spaceport," O'Donnell said.

That's just one of the hurdles that New Mexico has to negotiate:

Today, O'Donnell is asking the state legislature to approve a $1.9 million budget for the spaceport authority, which she said would represent a fourfold increase.


The authority is finishing up interviews for the new spaceport director this week, and should make its selection sometime early next month, she said.


New Mexico has "accelerated the process" of nailing down a long-term lease agreement with Virgin Galactic, which pledged to operate its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane from Spaceport America in a nonbinding pact last March. Some New Mexicans are rankled by the fact that Virgin Galactic still hasn't made a binding commitment - but the company's chief operating officer, Alex Tai, said a firm agreement is very close. "There's no way we're backing out," he told me.


Due to some snags that hung up an environmental assessment of the spaceport site, New Mexico has not yet completed its application for a launch site operator license from the Federal Aviation Administration, O'Donnell said. But she voiced confidence that the application would be finished by early next year. That timetable is important, because the FAA can take up to 180 days to approve a license - and O'Donnell said construction could not begin until that license is in hand.


The current plan calls for construction to start in September or October of next year, and for operations to begin in early 2010, O'Donnell said.
Those are a lot of hurdles to jump over, so it's no wonder that O'Donnell looked a bit high-strung as she ticked through her to-do list. But she voiced confidence that the spaceport authority will get through the list, even if some items are taking longer than officials expected two years ago. "Our record of meeting those challenges is very strong," she said.

Once the spaceport goes up, local officials hope more construction crews and tourist attractions will follow. The region is already being targeted for a potential new development called Hot Springs Motorplex, which will offer auto racing activities, a resort center and other goodies.

Research conducted for the state indicated that the spaceport alone could generate economic activity resulting in more than $750 million in revenue for New Mexico and more than 5,000 new jobs by 2020.

All this is music to the ears of local officials, and that could turn the tide when taxpayers render their verdict next year.

"Biggest thing on the agenda is to make our folks happy. ... What we're looking for is jobs," said Judd Nordyke, the mayor of Hatch (pop. 1,650) in Sierra County.

Lori Montgomery - the mayor of Truth or Consequences, another Sierra County town that's close to Spaceport America - said her constituents are already seeing the benefits of heightened economic development. Those benefits include a new hospital, a new 18-hole golf course and dozens of new houses.

"I've lived there 41 years, and I've never seen the type of interest that I've seen in the past couple of years," she said.

Having a spaceport nearby will shine the spotlight even more brightly on an area that's already a tourist magnet, said Rick Holdridge, chairman of the New Mexico Space Authority Community Advisory Committee.

"This is one of the most beautiful parts of the country here," he said, "and we want to show it off to the world."

Cosmic Log : The spaceport Race

Cosmic Log : The spaceport Race

If you think the commercial space race is grueling, consider the hurdles that lie ahead for Spaceport America, a 16,600-acre stretch of ranchland that New Mexico hopes will become a world center for space tourism by 2010.

State officials will have to appoint a new spaceport director, hammer out a deal with the spaceship operator, win a license from federal regulators, get $200 million in financing in order and break ground for construction - all within the next year.

Not only that, they have to convince voters in two rural counties that the project is important enough to merit tens of millions of dollars in new taxes. Kelly O'Donnell, chairwoman and acting director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, admits that won't be easy.

"I feel very, very confident that we will get past this particular challenge, and that the many local governments that stand to benefit from the spaceport will share the burden - er, the honor - of funding this project with the state of New Mexico," she told attendees here today in Las Cruces, N.M., at the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight.

New Mexico's Spaceport America, situated 40 miles north of Las Cruces, serves as a test case to see if the public will voluntarily accept the costs as well as the benefits that come with space travel. We know people will do it for baseball stadiums, but will they do it for launch pads?

About $140 million is already being put up by the state for building Spaceport America, but local governments will have to kick in the other $60 million, O'Donnell said. And that puts the burden - er, the honor - on three counties in the job-hungry southern part of the state: Dona Ana, Sierra and Otero counties.

Dona Ana voters narrowly approved new taxes in April, but at least one more county or city has to approve its own tax by the end of next year in order for the spaceport plan to move forward. Sierra County is planning a ballot next March or April, and Otero County is due to vote in November 2008, O'Donnell said. In the meantime, Dona Ana is trying to hold off on collecting the tax.

"A delay in those elections could be very bad for the spaceport," O'Donnell said.

That's just one of the hurdles that New Mexico has to negotiate:

Today, O'Donnell is asking the state legislature to approve a $1.9 million budget for the spaceport authority, which she said would represent a fourfold increase.


The authority is finishing up interviews for the new spaceport director this week, and should make its selection sometime early next month, she said.


New Mexico has "accelerated the process" of nailing down a long-term lease agreement with Virgin Galactic, which pledged to operate its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane from Spaceport America in a nonbinding pact last March. Some New Mexicans are rankled by the fact that Virgin Galactic still hasn't made a binding commitment - but the company's chief operating officer, Alex Tai, said a firm agreement is very close. "There's no way we're backing out," he told me.


Due to some snags that hung up an environmental assessment of the spaceport site, New Mexico has not yet completed its application for a launch site operator license from the Federal Aviation Administration, O'Donnell said. But she voiced confidence that the application would be finished by early next year. That timetable is important, because the FAA can take up to 180 days to approve a license - and O'Donnell said construction could not begin until that license is in hand.


The current plan calls for construction to start in September or October of next year, and for operations to begin in early 2010, O'Donnell said.
Those are a lot of hurdles to jump over, so it's no wonder that O'Donnell looked a bit high-strung as she ticked through her to-do list. But she voiced confidence that the spaceport authority will get through the list, even if some items are taking longer than officials expected two years ago. "Our record of meeting those challenges is very strong," she said.

Once the spaceport goes up, local officials hope more construction crews and tourist attractions will follow. The region is already being targeted for a potential new development called Hot Springs Motorplex, which will offer auto racing activities, a resort center and other goodies.

Research conducted for the state indicated that the spaceport alone could generate economic activity resulting in more than $750 million in revenue for New Mexico and more than 5,000 new jobs by 2020.

All this is music to the ears of local officials, and that could turn the tide when taxpayers render their verdict next year.

"Biggest thing on the agenda is to make our folks happy. ... What we're looking for is jobs," said Judd Nordyke, the mayor of Hatch (pop. 1,650) in Sierra County.

Lori Montgomery - the mayor of Truth or Consequences, another Sierra County town that's close to Spaceport America - said her constituents are already seeing the benefits of heightened economic development. Those benefits include a new hospital, a new 18-hole golf course and dozens of new houses.

"I've lived there 41 years, and I've never seen the type of interest that I've seen in the past couple of years," she said.

Having a spaceport nearby will shine the spotlight even more brightly on an area that's already a tourist magnet, said Rick Holdridge, chairman of the New Mexico Space Authority Community Advisory Committee.

"This is one of the most beautiful parts of the country here," he said, "and we want to show it off to the world."

Astronauts use robot arm for shuttle safety scan

Astronauts used a robot arm to scan the space shuttle Discovery's heat shield for damage on Wednesday as it headed for a Thursday rendezvous with the International Space Station.

"The mission is right on track ... We look forward to docking tomorrow," mission management chairman John Shannon told a press briefing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The shuttle is due to dock with the ISS at 1233 GMT on Thursday to kick off a 10-day construction mission at the outpost that will feature five spacewalks.

Astronauts spent the morning remotely maneuvering the arm to slowly inspect the shuttle wings and nose in a now mandatory post-launch routine begun after space shuttle Columbia broke apart on its return to Earth in 2003.

The scan with lasers and digital cameras looked for any damage to the heat shield that might have occurred when Discovery hurtled into space from Florida on Tuesday.

Data collected is beamed back to Earth for study by NASA engineers who will scrutinize it over the next few days. Preliminary analysis revealed nothing amiss.

Three suspect panels were given an especially close examination. Engineers using a new X-ray analysis technique warned managers ahead of the launch that three of the wing's 44 carbon-composite panels had tiny cracks in their silicon-carbide coatings.

After a lengthy debate, managers opted to proceed with the launch and assigned teams to monitor the situation.Columbia was doomed by a hole in its wing heat shield from a blow by fuel tank insulation foam that broke loose during takeoff. The damage was not detected and the shuttle was destroyed by the high heat of re-entry into the atmosphere, killing the seven astronauts on board.

Loose tank foam has been a recurring problem on shuttle flights. NASA says the danger cannot be eliminated, but it has taken many steps to reduce it.

Video of Tuesday's liftoff showed several pieces of insulation flying off the tank late in the ascent when debris strikes pose less danger because they occur with less force.

The shuttle is carrying the 24-foot-long Harmony, an Italian-built unit that will be installed on the station and to which Europe's Columbus and Japan's Kibo modules will be attached on space missions starting in December.

The seven-member shuttle crew is led by retired U.S. Air Force Col. Pam Melroy. They will link up with a space station crew led by NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson.

LHC( Large Hadron Collider) :ATLAS big wheel triumph

LHC ( Large Hadron Collider)
ATLAS celebrates installing the last of the eight big wheels. These wheels form the end-cap muon spectrometer of the detector.
The ATLAS end-cap muon detectors, the ‘big wheels’, have been compared to many things: flowers, orange halves, clock faces and works of art. But, more importantly, each is an incredible feat of engineering. On Friday last week the team celebrated the completion of the last wheel, and moved into the final stages of installation.

"I must admit that at the end of last year I would not have believed that we would manage to install these eight big wheels essentially on schedule," admitted Peter Jenni, ATLAS spokesperson. The first of the wheels took a long time to install, but the last one took just a couple of weeks. "This is really a great achievement."

The big wheels harbour ATLAS’s middle layer of muon chambers in the forward region and are one of the last large pieces to be installed. Each is 25m across, weighs between 40 and 50 tonnes and contains around 80 precision chambers or 200 trigger chambers. The support structure itself is just one third of the weight of the total wheel.

Because of their sheer size, each wheel had to be made in 12 pieces for the trigger planes and 16 pieces for the precision-measurement planes, or "petals", of aluminium, the last of which was installed on Friday. Each was assembled at CERN using components from all over the world before being fitted together, piece by piece like a jigsaw.

Because of the need for space for the chambers, designing a suitable structure presented a unique challenge, one that project engineers, Raphaël Vuillermet, Dimitar Mladenov and Giancarlo Spigo were happy to take on.

"The detectors themselves have been on drawings for 15 years; everyone knew where they would go but no one knew about the structure," explains Dimitar. "There were chambers everywhere so our design had to build around them and in the small spaces in between them."

The result after 3 years of calculation, design and sleepless nights was a uniquely thin and light structure that is precise to less than a millimetre.

The 100-member collaboration from Israel, Japan, the US, China, Russia, Europe and Pakistan began assembly of components in 2005 and installation in 2006. "Because the pieces are so delicate we had to be careful throughout the whole process," explains Raphaël. "I was very afraid about something happening to the chambers and also to the people, because you are working 30 metres up. But we didn’t have any problems."

The completion of the big wheels is symbolic for ATLAS because, as technical coordinator Marzio Nessi explains, "the big wheels were always seen as something we would do at the end. And now we have done them."

For Dimitar the biggest challenge was the timing. "I feel proud, but not for myself, for everyone. It was the result of hard work. The only thing that we were lucky about was the weather; if there had been a single day of heavy rain we might have been delayed. But Marzio said not to worry and to leave the weather to him, and the weather was great. I don’t know how he did it!"

Now just two smaller scale wheels and the end-wall chambers remain to be installed, and the big wheels have already begun to give read-outs as part of test runs using cosmic ray data that ATLAS performs every six weeks.

With their striking symmetry and aesthetic appeal the big wheels are likely to become icons of the experiment. But to Marzio, all pieces of ATLAS are beautiful. "This piece just happens to be 25m high."

Robotic Cars Must Drive In Darpa Challenge

The robotic vehicles must navigate traffic circles, avoid moving obstacles, and merge into lanes without human intervention. They also must obey California's traffic laws.

Some of the best and brightest geek squads are revving up their engines for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Urban Challenge next month.
More than 30 semifinalists will compete, beginning Friday, to qualify their robotic vehicles for the final competition on Nov. 3, in Victorville, Calif. Twenty teams will make it to the urban military training grounds on the former George Air Force Base, for cash prizes of up to $2 million.

For some in Team Berlin, that could mean slowing down a bit. The team includes engineering students and faculty from Rice University in Houston and from Freie Universität Berlin, whose home turf includes the Autobahn.

"The vehicles must perform as well as someone with a California driver's license," Darpa Director Tony Tether said in a prepared statement.

Teams from Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, and Virginia Tech are among the finalists.

The vehicles also will conduct simulated military supply missions to judge their performance in realistic environments.

With many technology companies and innovators participating and supporting the event, innovations from the race are used to improve car safety and robotics. The U.S. military aims to operate one-third of its vehicles without drivers by 2015. Darpa hosted its first Grand Challenge in 2004 to spur innovation needed to meet that goal.

The first year, none of the vehicles could finish the qualifying course. By 2005, 23 teams qualified and Stanford's Stanley took the $2 million prize, completing about 130 miles in nearly seven hours. This year, teams developed cars that made it through intersections with other cars and moved as smoothly as if drivers had taken the wheel.