NASA's comet-hunting spacecraft Stardust shuts down

NASA ordered its comet-hunting Stardust probe to burn its remaining fuel on Thursday, setting off a sequence that shut down the spacecraft after a 12-year career.


Stardust had finished its main mission in 2006, sending particles from a comet to Earth. It took on another job last month, photographing a crater on an asteroid.

It accomplished one last experiment on Thursday, firing its thrusters until its last hydrazine fuel was gone. The length of that burn, a little under 2 1/2 minutes, will tell engineers exactly how much fuel was left so they can see how accurate their calculations were.

That in turn will help with the design and operation of future probes. Spacecraft don't carry fuel gauges because they don't work in zero gravity.

It will take a few days to analyze the fuel data, said Jim Neuman, a mission operations manager for Lockheed Martin, which built and operated the probe at its complex south of Denver.

NASA spacecraft spies on Mercury

For the first time, Earth has a regular orbiting eye-in-the-sky spying on the solar system's smallest and strangest planet, Mercury. NASA's spacecraft called Messenger successfully veered into a pinpoint orbit Thursday night after a 6 1/2-year trip and 4.9 billion miles (7.9 billion kilometers) and tricky manoeuvering to fend off the gravitational pull of the sun.

It is the fifth planet in our solar system that NASA has orbited, in addition to the Earth and the moon. "It was right on the money," Messenger's chief engineer, Eric Finnegan, said. Messenger is in orbit that brings it as close as 120 miles (193 kilometers) above the planet's surface.

"This is as close you can possibly get to being perfect."

"Everybody was whooping and hollering; we are elated," Finnegan said. "There's a lot of work left to be done, but we are there." Mercury is not only difficult to get to, but it's has some of the most extremes in the solar system.

NASA earth observation satellite fails to reach orbit

The earth observation satellite Glory failed to reach orbit on Friday after its protective cover did not detach following its launch, a NASA official said.

"The fairing did not separate and the vehicle does not have sufficient velocity with the fairing on to achieve orbit," an official said on NASA TV, adding that there was "no indication as to why it did not separate."

He said there would be a press briefing at around 7:30 am (1230 GMT).

The launch of the satellite -- which was to measure aerosols in the Earth's atmosphere to help clarify their impact on climate -- was delayed on February 23 after an unexpected ground control reading 15 minutes before liftoff.

On Friday it rocketed away from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a four stage Taurus-XL rocket at 2:09 am (1009 GMT), but NASA soon reported that it was slowing down and would not reach orbit.

A similar mishap took place in February 2009, when a satellite designed to monitor global carbon dioxide emissions plummeted into the ocean near Antarctica after failing to reach orbit, in a setback for climate science.

NASA delays Glory launch

NASA announced Wednesday that it has postponed the launch of its earth-orbiting Glory Mission spacecraft due to technical problems, a newspaper reported.

During the final 15 minutes before Wednesday's scheduled launch at 5.09 a.m. from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, the vehicle interface control console, a ground interface with Orbital Sciences' Taurus XL rocket, gave an unexpected reading, NASA said in a press release.

The cause and potential effect of the reading was not fully understood, the release said.

With a 48-second available launch window, there was insufficient time to analyze the issue causing the launch to be postponed, NASA said.

It said members of the Taurus team are troubleshooting the issue. The next launch attempt is no earlier than Thursday, Feb 24, at 5.09 a.m., it said.

Glory will send back data to help scientists improve their ability to predict Earth's future environment and to distinguish human-induced climate change from natural climate variability, NASA scientists said.

The $434-million mission is managed by the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

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NASA to launch newest Earth-observation satellite

NASA is set to launch its latest Earth-orbiting satellite on a $424 million mission to analyze airborne grit spewed by volcanoes, forest fires, smokestacks and tailpipes.

The Glory satellite is slated to blast off before dawn Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base aboard a Taurus XL rocket. Once boosted to an altitude of 440 miles, it will join a fleet of satellites that has been collecting climate data for years.

Its main job will be to study fine airborne particles known as aerosols. Smaller than the diameter of a human hair, these ubiquitous specks can track great distances across the globe and are largely responsible for producing hazy skies.

Scientists know very little about aerosols and their effect on climate. A better understanding is critical to improving climate models.

"We need to know these particles much better than we do," said project scientist Michael Mishchenko of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Over the past century, average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit worldwide. Scientists blame carbon dioxide, mostly from the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels, as the chief cause of global warming.

Unlike greenhouse gases that linger in the atmosphere for years, aerosols are short-lived — staying aloft for weeks — so it's much harder to measure them than carbon dioxide.

NASA releases first ever 360-degree image of the Sun

NASA has released the first ever image that shows the entire sun in a 360-degree view.

The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (Stereo) mission launched its two satellites in 2006 and they have gradually been drifting apart - one in front of the Earth in its orbit, the other lagging behind.

NASA said on Sunday that the spacecraft had arrived at points that put the Sun directly between them.

The spacecraft moved either side of the Sun to establish observing positions that should return remarkable new information about our star.

The mission is studying the Sun's great explosive events that hurl billions of tonnes of charged particles at Earth - events that can disrupt power grids and satellites.

These Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), as they are known, can also be hazardous to astronauts in space.

“By being away from the Sun-Earth line, you can look back at the space between the Sun and the Earth and see any of these clouds, these coronal mass ejections that are thrown out of the Sun and are coming our way - you can even see these things passing over the Earth. Those are the key to what Stereo's all about,” Prof Richard Harrison from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, and an investigator on the project, told the BBC.

NASA marks 25 yrs after Challenger disaster

The United States marked a day of remembrance for astronauts who have died in the line of duty, particularly the victims in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger 25 years ago.

Schoolchildren and space enthusiasts around the world watched live January 28, 1986 as the Challenger lifted off carrying seven astronauts including the first teacher, Christa McAuliffe, to embark on a mission to space.

The shuttle exploded 73 seconds after launch at an altitude of 14,000 meters (46,000 feet), killing everyone on board. Engineers determined that the blast was caused by the failure of a joint seal due to cold weather.

"We have seen that achieving great things sometimes comes at great cost and we mourn the brave astronauts who made the ultimate sacrifice in support of NASA missions throughout the agency's storied history," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

"We pause to reflect on the tragic loss of the Apollo 1 crew, those who boarded the space shuttle Challenger in search of a brighter future, and the brave souls who perished on the space shuttle Columbia."

A total of 24 people have been killed while supporting the space agency's mission since 1964, NASA said.