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Shuttle engine test
For the first time since Hurricane Katrina, NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi conducts a test-firing of a space shuttle main engine. The engine was run as part of a certification series on the Advanced Health Management System, which monitors engine performance.

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Edwards air show
Edwards Air Force Base hosted an open house and air show this past weekend. NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center demonstrated some of its specialized aircraft -- a highly modified NF-15B, a high-altitude ER-2, and F/A-18 and T-34. On the ground, a variety of specialized air and space vehicles were on display in the NASA exhibit, ranging from the Mars rovers to the 747 space shuttle carrier aircraft.

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ISS science 'suitcases'
Scientists eagerly examine suitcase-like packages, called the Materials International Space Station Experiments, or MISSEs, after return to Earth. The MISSE packages were flown outside the orbiting station to expose different materials to the space environments for study.

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Tracking hurricanes
This 2005 Atlantic hurricane season has a been a record-breaker. Satellite imagery since June 1 has been compiled into this movie to track the 21 named storms as they formed and traveled, many making landfall.

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Hurricane Wilma
International Space Station cameras captured this incredible video of Hurricane Wilma and its well-defined eye from an altitude of 220 miles. Wilma was packing winds of 175 miles an hour as a Category 5 storm when the station flew overhead.

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Hubble examines moon
NASA has used the Hubble Space Telescope for scientific observations of the Earth's moon in the search for important oxygen-bearing minerals -- potential resources for human exploration. Scientists held this news conference on October 19 to discuss their investigations.

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Fuel tank leaves KSC
Space shuttle external fuel tank No. 120 is moved out of Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building and loaded onto a barge for transport to the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Once there, the tank will undergo modifications prior to being returned to Florida for a future launch.

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Space shuttle update
Space shuttle program officials Friday held a news conference at the Johnson Space Center to provide a status report on efforts to understand and fix the external tank foam insulation problems and confirm that the next launch won't happen before May 2006.

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Power system glitch halts European satellite mission
BY JUSTIN RAY AND STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW

Posted: October 31, 2005



 
An artist's concept shows the SSETI Express orbiting the Earth. Credit: Morten Bisgaard, Aalborg University
 
After being launched into orbit last Thursday, a tiny European spacecraft built by students fell silent Friday morning and officials aren't sure if the mission can be recovered.

"Thorough analysis over the weekend indicates that a failure in the electrical power system onboard the spacecraft is preventing the batteries from charging, resulting in a shutdown of the satellite," the European Space Agency said in a press statement this morning. "There is a small but significant possibility of recovery, the likelihood of which is being ascertained by ongoing testing."

The Student Space Exploration and Technology Initiative, began developing the SSETI Express microsatellite two years ago to serve as a motivational aid and learning tool before more complex missions are undertaken.

"Naturally, the SSETI teams are disappointed that we lost contact, but the mission has still been a success from both an educational and a technical standpoint", says Project Manager Neil Melville. "The main goal of the mission was to educate students by having them involved hands-on in all the different aspects of a space mission, and now we really have experienced everything".

During its brief life in space, SSETI Express had two-way communications with the Aalborg University ground station and allowed radio amateurs all over the world to download telemetry data as designed.

The 137-pound satellite was supposed to take pictures of Earth, serve the amateur radio community with S-band and UHF radio systems and release three Cubesat picosatellites.

The Cubesats UWE-1 and XI-V were successfully deployed, allowing their respective ground teams to acquire communications with the free-flying craft. However, the third Cubesat is missing. Although some have suggested that it never separated from the SSETI Express mothership, ESA says there is evidence to say all three passengers were released.

The University of Wurzburg's Experimental satellite 1, or UWE-1 for short, was built by students in Germany to experiment with Internet-related communications for use with space missions.

The XI-V Cubesat came from the University of Tokyo with the purpose of demonstrating newly-developed solar cells in space and snapping Earth images using a commercial off-the-shelf digital camera.

The presumed-lost Ncube-2 from students in Norway carried an automated identification system (AIS) used to receive GPS signals that would be received and then transmitted to ground sites. A reindeer named Rudolf was to be equipped with a collar containing a complete AIS transmitter and tracked as it walked around the Hardangervidda national park in Norway.

SSETI Express was put together in a remarkably short period of time. Fifteen teams totaling more than 100 students from 9 countries participated in an initial planning meeting in December 2003 before splitting up to focus on the design and manufacture of their specific components and systems. Further meetings were largely held in online chat rooms, while actual conferences were conducted twice a year.

The mission objectives included helping prepare for SSETI's next project - the European Student Earth Orbiter planned for launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket around 2008.

"Even if we don't recover contact with SSETI Express, it was still a very worthwhile mission for everyone. We will take many lessons learned on to our next educational satellite project, SSETI ESEO", says Roger Elaerts, ESA's Head of Education Department.