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Atlantis to hangar
After its safe landing to end mission STS-115, space shuttle Atlantis is towed from the Kennedy Space Center runway to hangar 1 of the Orbiter Processing Facility for post-flight deservicing and the start of preparations leading to its next mission, STS-117.

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STS-115 landing
Space shuttle Atlantis glides to a smooth touchdown on Kennedy Space Center's Runway 33 at 6:21 a.m. to conclude the successful STS-115 mission that restarted construction of the space station.

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Soyuz TMA-9 docking
The Russian Soyuz TMA-9 space capsule carrying the Expedition 14 resident crew and space tourist Anousheh Ansari safely docks to the International Space Station's Zvezda service module.

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Expedition 14 launch
This extended duration movie follows the Soyuz rocket from the final countdown through arrival in orbit with the Expedition 14 crew. The video shows the three-stage rocket's ascent from Baikonur Cosmodrome and includes views of Mike Lopez-Alegria, Mikhail Tyurin and Anousheh Ansari from cameras inside the capsule.

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Mission of Expedition 14
The voyage of Expedition 14 aboard the International Space Station is expected to see major construction activities for the outpost. Learn more about the mission in this narrated mission preview movie.

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STS-31: Opening window to the Universe
The Hubble Space Telescope has become astronomy's crown jewel for knowledge and discovery. The great observatory was placed high above Earth following its launch aboard space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. The astronauts of STS-31 recount their mission in this post-flight film presentation.

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STS-34: Galileo launch
The long voyage of exploration to Jupiter and its many moons by the Galileo spacecraft began on October 18, 1989 with launch from Kennedy Space Center aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. The crew of mission STS-34 tell the story of their flight to dispatch the probe -- fitted with an Inertial Upper Stage rocket motor -- during this post-flight presentation film.

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NASA scientist John C. Mather wins 2006 Nobel physics prize
NASA NEWS RELEASE
Posted: October 3, 2006

The Nobel Prize Committee announced Tuesday that NASA scientist and Goddard Fellow Dr. John C. Mather is this year's recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics. Mather is currently serving as senior project scientist for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope program.

Mather shares the prize with George Smoot of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. They received the award for their work that helped cement the Big Bang theory of the universe and deepened our understanding of the origin of stars and galaxies.

"I was thrilled and amazed when I found out we won the Nobel Prize," Mather said. "The dedicated and talented women and men of the COBE team collaborated to produce the science results being recognized. This is truly such a rare and special honor."

Mather and Smoot's work was based on measurements performed with NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, launched in 1989. Together, the scientists could observe the universe in its early stages about 380,000 years after it was born. Ripples in the light they detected helped demonstrate how galaxies came together over time.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said, "I am thrilled to hear that Dr. John Mather has been selected to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics. John would be a world-class scientist no matter where he had chosen to spend his career, but we at NASA are enormously proud that he has chosen to spend it with us."

Dr. Ed Weiler, the Director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., added, "This is a tremendous accomplishment for John and for the COBE team. It is also important to note that COBE was built entirely 'in-house,' and the fact that a NASA civil servant has won the biggest science award possible demonstrates that world-class research is happening here at NASA."

COBE was built at Goddard to measure microwave and infrared light from the early universe. COBE determined that the cosmic microwave background, which is essentially the afterglow of the Big Bang, has a temperature of approximately minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit. This observation matched the predictions of the hot Big Bang theory and indicated that nearly all of the radiant energy of the universe was released within the first year after the Big Bang.

Also, COBE discovered slight temperature variations of approximately 10 parts per million in this relatively uniform light. These variations pointed to density differences which, through gravity over the course of billions of years, gave rise to the stars, galaxies and hierarchal structure we see today.

Steven Hawking a decade ago, independent of the COBE team, called these variations "the most important discovery of the century, if not of all time."

Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist who endowed the prizes, left guidelines in his will for the selection committee which cited "the prize should be given to those who shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and "have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics."

The 2006 Nobel Laureates will gather in Stockholm on Dec. 10 to receive their Nobel Prize Medal, diploma and monetary award from King Carl Gustav XVI of Sweden.