The STS-118 and Expedition 15 crews will continue cargo transfers and prepare for Saturday’s spacewalk. The 10 astronauts and cosmonauts will also hold the traditional joint crew news conference.
The Mission Management Team decided Thursday that Saturday’s spacewalk will not include repair of Space Shuttle Endeavour’s heat shield. After hours of reviewing data and imagery collected during the inspections by the STS-118 crew , the managers decided the damage did not pose a safety risk to the crew or Endeavour.
The spacewalk preparations include preparing equipment and reviewing procedures. Mission Specialist Dave Williams and space station Flight Engineer Clay Anderson will conduct the excursion, which is slated to kick off at 10:01 a.m. EDT Saturday.
The cargo transfers have been ongoing since shortly after Endeavour arrived Aug. 10. STS-118 delivered supplies and equipment to the orbital outpost and will return unneeded station items and science experiments to Earth.
The joint news conference will take place at 1:34 p.m. The crew members will field questions from reporters on the ground.
Galaxy Evolution Explorer has spotted an amazingly long comet-like tail behind a star streaking through space at supersonic speeds. The star, named Mira after the Latin word for "wonderful," has been a favorite of astronomers for about 400 years. It is a fast-moving, older star called a red giant that sheds massive amounts of surface material.
Commands have benn sent and received from the Spaceway 3™ satellite following a successful launch of the spacecraft. All data shows that Spaceway 3 is healthy and operating normally.
An Ariane 5 rocket lifted the Hughes Network Systems, LLC payload into space yesterday at 7:44 p.m. EDT (23:44 GMT) from Ariane Launch Complex 3 in the tropics of Kourou, French Guiana. Boeing's Mission Control Center in El Segundo, Calif., reported spacecraft acquisition five hours, 46 minutes later, when signals were received at the ground station in Hartebeesthoek, South Africa.
Recent probes inside comets show it is overwhelmingly likely that life began in space, according to a new paper by Cardiff University scientists.
Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and colleagues at the University’s Centre for Astrobiology have long argued the case for panspermia - the theory that life began inside comets and then spread to habitable planets across the galaxy. A recent BBC Horizon documentary traced the development of the theory.
The BSAT-3a broadcasting satellite, designed and built by Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] for the Broadcasting Satellite System Corporation (B-SAT) of Japan, is ready for its scheduled launch on Aug. 14 aboard an Ariane 5-ECA launch vehicle provided by Arianespace. BSAT-3a, which is set for liftoff at 7:44 p.m. EDT, will be located at orbital location 110 degrees East longitude.