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Video archive

STS-118: Highlights
 The STS-118 crew, including Barbara Morgan, narrates its mission highlights film and answers questions in this post-flight presentation.

Full presentation
Mission film

STS-120: Rollout to pad
 Space shuttle Discovery rolls out of the Vehicle Assembly Building and travels to launch pad 39A for its STS-120 mission.

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Dawn leaves Earth
 NASA's Dawn space probe launches aboard a Delta 2-Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral to explore two worlds in the asteroid belt.

Full coverage

Dawn: Launch preview
 These briefings preview the launch and science objectives of NASA's Dawn asteroid orbiter.

Launch | Science

ISS crew change preview
 The Expedition 15 mission draws to a close aboard the space station and the Expedition 16 launch nears. These two briefings from Sept. 25 cover the upcoming transition between the two missions.

Exp. 15 recap
Exp. 16 preview

Discovery moves to VAB
 Shuttle Discovery is transported from its hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building for attachment to the external tank and boosters.

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STS-120: The programs
 In advance of shuttle Discovery's STS-120 mission to the station, managers from both programs discuss the flight.

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STS-120: The mission
 Discovery's trip to the station will install the Harmony module and move the P6 solar wing truss. The flight directors present a detailed overview of STS-120.

Part 1 | Part 2

STS-120: Spacewalks
 Five spacewalks are planned during Discovery's STS-120 assembly mission to the station. Lead spacewalk officer Dina Contella previews the EVAs.

Full briefing
EVA 1 summary
EVA 2 summary
EVA 3 summary
EVA 4 summary
EVA 5 summary

The Discovery crew
 The Discovery astronauts, led by commander Pam Melroy, meet the press in the traditional pre-flight news conference.

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NASA's successful FUSE mission concludes
NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: October 18, 2007
WASHINGTON - After an eight-year run that gave astronomers a completely new perspective on the universe, NASA has concluded the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer mission. The satellite, known
as FUSE, became inoperable in July when the satellite lost its ability to point accurately and steadily at areas of interest. NASA will terminate the mission Wednesday.
"FUSE accomplished all of its mission goals and more," said Alan
Stern, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at
NASA Headquarters, Washington. "FUSE vastly increased our
understanding of our galaxy's evolution and many exotic phenomena and
left a strong legacy on which to build the next generation of
investigations and missions."
Launched in 1999, FUSE helped scientists answer important questions
about the conditions in the universe immediately following the Big
Bang, how chemicals disperse throughout galaxies, and the composition
of interstellar gas clouds that form stars and solar systems.
"FUSE helped pioneer low-cost, principal investigator-led astronomy
missions," said Jon Morse, director of the Astrophysics Division at
NASA Headquarters.
Examples of the many successes FUSE achieved during its mission are:
- By measuring abundances of molecular hydrogen (made of two hydrogen
atoms), FUSE showed that a large amount of water has escaped from
Mars, enough to form a global ocean 100 feet deep.
- FUSE observed a debris disk that is surprisingly rich in carbon gas
orbiting the young star Beta Pictoris. The carbon overabundance
indicates either the star is forming planets that could end up as
exotic, carbon-rich worlds of graphite and methane, or Beta Pictoris
is revealing an unsuspected phenomenon that also occurred in the
early solar system.
- FUSE discovered far more deuterium, a form of hydrogen with a proton
and a neutron instead of just one proton, in the Milky Way galaxy
than astronomers had expected. Deuterium was produced in the early
universe, but this isotope is destroyed easily in stellar nuclear
reactions. "FUSE showed that less deuterium has been burned in stars
over cosmic time, in agreement with modern models for the evolution
of the galaxy and the recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
results," said Warren Moos, FUSE principal investigator, Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore.
- FUSE saw that an atmosphere of very hot gas surrounds the Milky Way.
The ubiquity of hot gas around our galaxy demonstrates the galaxy is
even more dynamic than expected.
- By detecting highly ionized oxygen atoms in intergalactic space,
FUSE showed that about 10 percent of matter in the local universe
consists of million-degree gas floating between the galaxies. This
discovery might help resolve the long-standing mystery of the
universe's "missing baryons." Baryons are subatomic particles, often
protons and neutrons. Calculations of how many baryons were produced
in the very early universe predict about twice as many baryons as
astronomers have observed. The rest of the missing baryons might
exist as even hotter gas, which could be observed by future X-ray
observatories such as NASA's Constellation-X.
"FUSE collected quality science data for eight years, longer than its
five-year goal. By any measure, FUSE was a success," said George
Sonneborn, FUSE project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Although FUSE's mission has ended, NASA's ultraviolet study of the
universe continues. In 2008, NASA will conduct a servicing mission to
the Hubble Space Telescope to install a new ultraviolet spectrograph
on the telescope and repair another. The new Cosmic Origins
Spectrograph, or COS, is designed to study remote galaxies and nearby
stars in the ultraviolet. Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging
Spectrograph also will be repaired. That instrument had ultraviolet
capabilities complementary to the COS and was used in conjunction
with FUSE when both were operational. The spectrograph failed due to
an electronic short in August 2004 after more than seven years of
in-orbit operations.
FUSE was a joint mission of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the
French Space Agency, the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales. The
Johns Hopkins University built the telescope and managed the mission.
The University of Colorado, Boulder, built FUSE's spectrograph. The
University of California, Berkeley, made the detectors.
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