Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and
Shannon Walker got a warm welcome from the resident Expedition 24 crew after
arriving at the International Space Station. Yurchikhin, Wheelock and Walker
will spend six months on the station, joining Alexander Skvortsov, Mikhail
Kornienko and Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who’ve been there since April.
"There it goes; standing by for main engine start. We've got main engine start
5,4,3, 2 , 1 and ignition."
Yurchikhin, Wheelock and Walker arrived at the ISS after a two-day journey that
began with the liftoff of their Russian Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
"A perfect ascent to orbit for the newest trio of residents headed for the
International Space Station."
The six Expedition 24 crew members will now concentrate on more than 130 science
experiments being conducted aboard the ISS.
=========================================
KEPLER’S CONTINUING SEARCH FOR EXOPLANETS
=========================================
William Borucki:
"This discovery is just astounding."
After continually monitoring the brightness of more than 156,000 stars, NASA's
Kepler team has released the first 43 days of science data…
William Borucki:
"This is the biggest release of candidate planets that has ever happened. The
number of candidate planets is actually greater than all the planets that have
been discovered in the last 15 years."
Launch Announcer:
"3-2-engine start — 1,zero, and lift off of the Delta II Rocket with Kepler."
Since its launch on March 6, 2009, Kepler has been on the hunt to find planets
similar in size to our Earth, especially those in the habitable zone of stars
where liquid water and possibly life might exist.
William Borucki:
"A planet candidate is some astrophysical signal that we have picked up that
looks like it’s coming from a planet orbiting another star. Some of those are
actual planets, and some of them are false positives so we have a ground-based
program with a dozen different telescopes that stretch from the Canary Islands,
to Hawaii, where we check to see which of those signals is really a planet, and
which one isn't."
The findings of those follow-up observations will be released in February 2011.
A team of astronomers and scientists from NASA, the Japanese Aerospace
Exploration Agency and other organizations had a front row seat as the Hayabusa
spacecraft made a fiery return to Earth’s atmosphere.
Special cameras and other imaging instruments aboard NASA's DC-8 airborne
laboratory captured the spacecraft's high-speed re-entry over an unpopulated
area of central Australia. Hayabusa completed a seven-year journey to return a
sample of the asteroid Itokawa. Scientists aren’t sure a sample was obtained; if
they do find one, it'll weigh no more than a gram.
====================
MAIL ROOM MAYDAY
====================
"We're going to be needing the SERT Hazmat team here."
The Glenn Research Center held a "Mail Room Mayday." The drill was a test of
cutting- edge robotic technology to detect a simulated biological contaminant in
the center's mailroom.
Документальный фильм "NASA TV's This Week @ NASA, June 18, 2010"
