Elon Musk's 'Grasshopper Project' Could Revolutionize Rocketry

Why NASA Intentionally Put Large Holes In Curiosity's Wheels

Hubble telescope mission, Nasa's most dangerous endeavour

The Nasa Atlantis crew of seven astronauts will attempt to rescue the $7 billion Hubble Space Telescope from meltdown, while dodging deadly space-junk. The mission, which is costing Nasa $1.4 billion and is launched from Florida today, is considered so perilous that it was once cancelled by space agency chiefs who feared that it could cost the astronauts their lives. It was resurrected only after they agreed to place a second shuttle and crew on emergency standby, ready to blast into space to save their colleagues should a catastrophe occur. The move is unprecedented in the 28-year history of the shuttle fleet. Please come and have a look.

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Space cowgirl salvages NASA junk, finds 'Pic of the Century'

"NASA was so preoccupied with getting an astronaut to the moon ahead of the Soviets that little attention was paid to the mountains of scientific data that flowed back to Earth from its early space missions. The data, stored on miles of fragile tapes, grew into mountains that were packed up and sent to a government warehouse with crates of other stuff.

And so they eventually came to the attention of Nancy Evans, a no-nonsense woman with flaming red hair that fit her sometimes-impatient nature. She had been trained as a biologist, but within the sprawling space agency she had found her niche as an archivist."

Charged with archiving 2,500 unreadable NASA data tapes from the '66 Lunar Orbiter mission, a determined Nancy Evans scoured govt salvage yards to find a one-ton FR-900 Ampex tape drive to read them. Too costly for NASA, she retired, the drives in her garage. Thru stroke of luck, space junkies found her on a blog, and restored NASA's historic pics.

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Russian cosmonauts armed with 3-barreled gun

Among the training regimes that Russian cosmonauts pass before being admitted into orbit is the shooting range. The reason is that they must learn how to use a special three-barreled gun found on every Soyuz spacecraft. The TP-82 gun is part of the survival kit and is meant to be used on terra firma if cosmonauts land in the wilderness.

A gun in orbit is a controversial issue. NASA traditionally keeps a ‘no firearms on board’ policy, and their astronauts’ survival kit has had a machete-like knife as its only weapon for decades. When the International Space Station project was launched, the status of a pistol on Russian ships became one of the tricky legal questions.

The third space-faring nation China apparently sided with Russia in its attitude towards firearms in space. The Chinese media reported that the Shenzhou-6 expedition in 2005 was armed with pistols for self-defence, but no detail on the model or the number of the weapons was disclosed. Russian space experts believe that China may have borrowed the concept of the TP-82 and developed their own version.

* TP-82 with its three-barreled combination. (photo from http://diversant.h1.ru/)

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