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Interview with teacher Barbara Morgan
Barbara Morgan, the former Idaho school teacher who served as Christa McAuliffe's backup for the Teacher in Space program, sits down for this NASA interview. As NASA's first Educator Astronaut, Morgan will be a mission specialist and robot arm operator during shuttle Endeavour's STS-118 flight to the space station, targeted for launch in June.

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Supply ship departs ISS
The Russian Progress M-57 cargo vessel undocks from the International Space Station on January 16 for re-entry into the atmosphere. It was the 22nd resupply ship sent to ISS.

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The Flight of Sigma 7
On October 3, 1962, Wally Schirra became the fifth American to rocket into space. This NASA film entitled "The Flight of Sigma 7" explains the 9-hour voyage that gained important knowledge in the Mercury program.

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STS-109: Extending Hubble's life and reach
The fourth servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope extended the craft's scientific potential with an advanced camera and performed a major overhaul on the orbiting observatory's power system with the installation of new solar arrays and an electrical heart. The crew of space shuttle Columbia's STS-109 mission tell the story of the March 2002 mission in this post-flight highlights film.

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Shuttle: A Remarkable Flying Machine
"Space Shuttle: A Remarkable Flying Machine" is a NASA movie that takes you inside the first voyage of the space shuttle program. Commander John Young and pilot Bob Crippen flew Columbia in April 1981, opening a new era in American space exploration.

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Shuttle booster cams
Check out amazing footage from the video cameras mounted on the twin solid rocket boosters during space shuttle Discovery's nighttime launch.

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STS-116: Full coverage
Relive space shuttle Discovery's STS-116 mission to the International Space Station. We have nearly 200 movie clips from the December flight that installed a new truss segment and retracted a stubborn solar wing.

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Minotaur launch
It was a beautiful sunrise blastoff for the Orbital Sciences Minotaur rocket from Wallops Flight Facility carrying the Air Force's TacSat 2 spacecraft and NASA's GeneSat 1.

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First ULA Delta 2
The first United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket blasts off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

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Mars water discovery
Mars Global Surveyor has found bright new deposits in two gullies that suggest water may have spurted on the surface during the past few years. The images are presented by scientists in this news briefing presentation.

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Pluto-bound probe heads for close encounter with Jupiter
APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY NEWS RELEASE
Posted: January 18, 2007

Just a year after it was dispatched on the first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, the APL-built New Horizons spacecraft is on the doorstep of the solar system's largest planet - about to swing past Jupiter and pick up even more speed on its voyage toward the unexplored regions of the planetary frontier.


In this artist's rendering, New Horizons soars past Jupiter as the volcanic moon Io passes between the spacecraft and planet. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI)
 
  The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons will make its closest pass to Jupiter on Feb. 28, threading its path through an "aim point" 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from the center of Jupiter. Jupiter's gravity will accelerate New Horizons away from the Sun by an additional 9,000 miles per hour - half the speed of a space shuttle in orbit - pushing it past 52,000 mph and hurling it toward a pass through the Pluto system in July 2015.

At the same time, the New Horizons mission team is taking the spacecraft on the ultimate test drive - using the flyby to put the probe's systems and seven science instruments through the paces of a planetary encounter. More than 700 observations of Jupiter and its four largest moons are planned from January through June, including scans of Jupiter's turbulent, stormy atmosphere and dynamic magnetic cocoon (called a magnetosphere); the most detailed survey yet of its gossamer ring system; maps of the composition and topography of the large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto; and an unprecedented look at volcanic activity on Io.

The flight plan also calls for the first-ever trip down the long "tail" of Jupiter's magnetosphere, a wide stream of charged particles that extends tens of millions of miles beyond the planet, and the first close-up look at the "Little Red Spot," a nascent storm south of Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot.

"Our highest priority is to get the spacecraft safely through the gravity assist and on its way to Pluto," says New Horizons Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo. "But we also have an incredible opportunity to conduct a real-world-encounter stress test to wring out our procedures and techniques for Pluto, and to collect some valuable science data."

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The Jupiter test matches or exceeds the mission's Pluto study in duration, data volume sent back to Earth, and operational intensity. Much of the data from the Jupiter flyby won't be sent back to Earth until after closest approach, because the spacecraft's main priority is to observe the planet and store data on its recorders before transmitting information home.

"We designed the Jupiter encounter to prove out our planning tools, our simulation capabilities, our spacecraft and our instrument sensors on a real planetary target, well before the Pluto encounter," says Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Md., which built and operates the spacecraft. "If the team needs to adjust anything before Pluto, we'll find out about it now."

The mission team at APL, SwRI and other institutions has learned much in a hectic year since New Horizons lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., last Jan. 19. The spacecraft has undergone a full range of system and instrument checkouts, instrument calibrations and commissioning, some flight software enhancements, and three small propulsive maneuvers to adjust its trajectory. Operational highlights of the past year included long-distance snapshots of both Jupiter and Pluto, and a flyby of asteroid 2002 JF56 (recently named "APL" by the International Astronomical Union).

With closest approach to Jupiter coming 13 months after launch, New Horizons will reach the planet faster than any of its seven previous visitors. Pioneers 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, Ulysses and Cassini all used Jupiter's gravity to reach other destinations; NASA's Galileo orbited the planet from 1995-2003.

New Horizons also provides the first close-up look at the Jovian system since Galileo, and the last until NASA's Juno mission arrives in 2016. "The Jupiter system is incredibly dynamic," says New Horizons Jupiter Encounter Science Team lead Dr. Jeff Moore, of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "From constant changes in Jupiter's magnetosphere and atmosphere, to the evolving surfaces of moons such as Io, you get a new snapshot every time you go there."

After an eight-year cruise from Jupiter across the expanse of the solar system, New Horizons will conduct a five-month-long study of Pluto and its three moons in 2015, characterizing their global geology and geomorphology, mapping their surface compositions and temperatures, and examining Pluto's atmospheric composition and structure. Then, as part of a potential extended mission, New Horizons would conduct similar studies of one or more smaller worlds in the Kuiper Belt, the region of ancient, rocky and icy bodies far beyond Neptune's orbit.

The New Horizons science payload includes imaging infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers, a multi-color camera, a long-range telescopic camera, two particle spectrometers, a space-dust detector and a radio science experiment. The compact, 1,050-pound spacecraft, drawing electricity from a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator, currently operates on slightly more power than a pair of 100 -watt light bulbs.

New Horizons is the first mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program of medium-class spacecraft exploration projects. Stern leads the mission and science team as principal investigator; APL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

The Applied Physics Laboratory is a not for profit laboratory and division of the Johns Hopkins University. APL conducts research and development primarily for national security and for nondefense projects of national and global significance.