Sunday: May 11, 2003   0412 GMT Stephan's Quintet: Intruder shocks tightly-knit group The hurly-burly interactions in the compact group of galaxies known as Stephan's Quintet are shown where a Chandra X-ray Observatory image is superimposed on a Digitized Sky Survey optical image. Shock-heated gas, visible only with an X-ray telescope, appears as a bright blue cloud oriented vertically in the middle of the image and has a temperature of about 6 million degrees Celsius.    FULL STORY Meteorites rained on Earth after massive breakup Using fossil meteorites and ancient limestone unearthed throughout southern Sweden, marine geologists at Rice University have discovered that a colossal collision in the asteroid belt some 500 million years ago led to intense meteorite strikes over the Earth's surface.    FULL STORY Saturday: May 10, 2003   0633 GMT Parsons named shuttle program manager NASA has named William Parsons, director of the agency's Stennis Space Center, as the new manager of the space shuttle program, replacing Ronald Dittemore who announced his retirement late last month. Parsons, who began his NASA career at the Kennedy Space Center in 1990, will take over from Dittemore sometime this summer, after an on-the-job training transition period.    FULL STORY Iridescent glory of nearby nebula showcased In one of the largest and most detailed celestial images ever made, the coil-shaped Helix Nebula is being unveiled in celebration of Astronomy Day. The composite picture is a seamless blend of ultra-sharp Hubble Space Telescope images combined with the wide view from the Kitt Peak National Observatory.    FULL STORY Friday: May 9, 2003   1245 GMT Japan launches asteroid sample return mission A compact Japanese space probe embarked on an ambitious mission today bound for a series of close encounters with an almost equally small asteroid to gather samples for return to Earth.    FULL STORY Atlas 5 to launch Greek craft during second flight Looking to make it two successes in a row, Lockheed Martin's next-generation Atlas 5 rocket will take its second flight Monday, blasting off from Florida's east coast carrying a commercial telecommunications satellite.    FULL STORY    LAUNCH WEATHER FORECAST    ATLAS 5 VIDEO COLLECTION Initial foam tests cause only minor damage to tiles Researchers have begun initial test runs firing external fuel tank foam insulation at a shuttle landing gear door in a bid to calibrate damage prediction software and to assess how much damage high-speed impacts might actually do to a shuttle's heat-shield tiles. Engineers ultimately plan to fire foam debris at a mockup of the shuttle's wing leading edge system, the location of the breach that doomed Columbia.    FULL STORY NASA to name next shuttle program manager NASA plans to name a new space shuttle program manager Friday to replace Ronald Dittemore, the widely-respected man in charge during the Columbia disaster who announced his retirement late last month, sources say.    FULL STORY Thursday: May 8, 2003   1230 GMT India launches second GSLV rocket India's largest rocket soared skyward Thursday on its second test flight, carrying with it an experimental satellite and plans for indigenous access to space for a wide range of payloads.    FULL STORY Deepest view of space yields young stars in halo Relying on the deepest visible-light images ever taken in space, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have reliably measured the age of the spherical halo of stars surrounding the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.    FULL STORY Advanced radioisotope-power R&D teams selected NASA selected several radioisotope-based power-conversion technologies for research and development. The awards are the first competitive technology procurement funded wholly by NASA's Project Prometheus.    FULL STORY Video flashback: Endeavour's maiden voyage Eleven years ago Wednesday, space shuttle Endeavour set sail on its inaugural voyage. The STS-49 shuttle mission was a daring one -- the capture and relaunch of the wayward Intelsat 603 communications spacecraft.    COMPLETE VIDEO LISTING Wednesday: May 7, 2003   0451 GMT CAIB accepts, agrees with NASA failure scenario For the first time, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board has endorsed a detailed failure scenario developed by NASA and contractor engineers that traces the shuttle's destruction to a breach in the ship's left wing at or near leading edge panels 8 and 9.    FULL STORY See more coverage here:       Video coverage for subscribers only:    VIDEO: TESTIMONY ON LAUNCH FILM AND VIDEO ANALYSIS QT    VIDEO: LATEST REVISION OF ACCIDENT TIMELINE PRESENTED QT    VIDEO: HEARING PANEL DISCUSSES 'FLIGHT DAY 2' OBJECT QT    VIDEO: PRESENTATIONS ON DEBRIS SEARCH AND RECOVERY QT    VIDEO: THIS WEEK'S COLUMBIA BOARD NEWS CONFERENCE QT    SUBSCRIBE NOW GALEX cover opened The protective cover on the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's telescope was successfully opened at 4:32 a.m. EDT (0832 GMT) Tuesday morning as ground controllers guide the craft through its early life in space.    MISSION STATUS CENTER    FULL GALEX VIDEO COVERAGE 'Cosmic dandruff' mystery solved, scientists say Using the Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia, Dr. Mary Putman of the University of Colorado and her colleagues appear to have settled a decades-old controversy about the nature of gas clouds that surround the Milky Way Galaxy.    FULL STORY Tuesday: May 6, 2003   0451 GMT Europe's mission to the Red Planet nearing launch The European Space Agency's Mars Express mission to the Red Planet has passed its flight readiness review in preparation for launch June 2 atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia.    FULL STORY SIRTF observatory launch rescheduled for August 27 With its launch stalled four months, NASA's Space Infrared Telescope Facility has been removed from atop its rocket at Cape Canaveral's pad 17B and returned to a processing clean room for the unplanned wait to fly.    FULL STORY McCulley to replace Turner as USA president and CEO USA Chief Operating Officer Mike McCulley has been named to succeed Russ Turner as President and Chief Executive Officer of United Space Alliance, effective May 15. Boeing Vice President and Deputy General Manager of NASA Systems, Brewster Shaw, has been selected to replace McCulley as USA COO, later this spring.    FULL STORY Monday: May 5, 2003   0001 GMT Expedition 6 crew members meet with officials Space station commander Kenneth Bowersox, looking relaxed if tired after five-and-a-half months in space and a grueling re-entry, said Sunday he and his crewmates' "eyes got very wide" when computer displays showed their Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft was going to land well off course.    FULL STORY Video coverage for subscribers only:    VIDEO: POST-LANDING INTERVIEW WITH COMMANDER BOWERSOX QT    VIDEO: ISS MANAGER SAYS LANDING PROBLEM TO BE EXAMINED QT    VIDEO: NASA'S DIRECTOR OF FLIGHT CREW OPERATIONS QT    COMPLETE VIDEO LISTING    SUBSCRIBE NOW				News Archive April 28-May 4: Columbia could not be saved, NASA study shows; Off-target Soyuz with outgoing station crew found after hours of searching; Satellite launched to trace the evolution of galaxies; BeppoSAX takes the plunge; Freewheeling galaxies collide in blaze of star birth; Hubble gyroscope fails. April 21-27: Space station caretaker crew blasts off on Soyuz; NASA, CAIB investigators compare notes on disaster; Dittemore to leave after accident probe complete; Glowing hot transiting exoplanet discovered; Spectacular photos unveil mysterious nebulae; Titan reveals a surface dominated by icy bedrock. More news  See our weekly archive of space news. Contact us If you have a comment or question for Spaceflight Now, just send us an e-mail.