NASA's last space shuttle mission will be delayed until November so scientists can adapt a $2 billion particle detector for an extended life aboard the International Space Station

NASA’s last space shuttle mission will be delayed until November so scientists can adapt a $2 billion particle detector for an extended life aboard the International Space Station, officials said Monday.Three more shuttle flights remain and the space agency had planned to close out the program by September 30 with a final mission by shuttle Discovery to resupply the orbital outpost.That mission now moves ahead of shuttle Endeavour’s launch with the Alpha Magnetic Spectometer, a 16-nation project overseen by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”It became clear that (Endeavour) could not fly in July like was on the manifest,” said NASA spokesman Kyle Herring.

AMS, which is designed to look for antimatter particles and other exotic forms of matter in space, had been set to fly in July. But with the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the space station program until at least 2020, scientists decided to switch the detector’s cryogenically cooled superconducting magnet, estimated to last three years, to a permanent magnet that would last 10 to 18 years.

“We began thinking about this at the end of last year and the beginning of January when people were talking about the space station going to 2020 and beyond,” Ting said in an interview.”I began to realize that we’d have a museum piece.”

Dumping AMS’ liquid helium-cooled magnet cuts the device’s power to bend the path of charged cosmic particles as they pass through five different types of detectors. But Ting says adding more precision detectors and the extra years in orbit more than compensates for that.The replacement magnet, which flew in a prototype AMS during a 1998 shuttle mission, was taken out of clean room storage in Germany and tested. No degradation was found and it is scheduled to arrive at CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research — in Geneva where the AMS is being assembled this week.

Delaying the last shuttle flight will give the 6,000 to 8,000 workers at the Kennedy Space Center preparing for layoffs a short reprieve.

Obama’s budget request for NASA for the year beginning October 1, which still must be approved by Congress, includes $600 million to keep the program going until the end of the year if necessary to accommodate technical or weather-related delays.The schedule change is not expected to affect the final planned flight of shuttle Atlantis, targeted for liftoff on May 14 to deliver a Russian docking port to the station.(Reuters)

the shuttle will be sold at a price of £ 17.7 million

WASHINGTON  For the billionaire who has a unique hobby, get ready for spent your cash out  because the United States Space Agency (NASA) issued a supply of interesting. NASA offered their spacecraft, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavor, to be sold to the public. The aircraft was passengers eight people, has traveled 341,311,994 miles, with a top speed of 17.231 miles per hour. That number is the accumulation of the three aircraft. Not only was already retired aircraft is also equipped with six pockets to puke. The planes have been served out of the sky over 129 times since 1981. Besides this large aircraft was orbiting in space over 13.662 times. So reported The Sun, Friday (12/2/2010). Now anyone interested to buy used planes full of history but an amazing adventure, needs to raise approximately £ 17.7 million.

But sales in this plane for plane body only, while the engine certainly will not share sold. If the buyer is forced to buy as well as aircraft engines and tried to take him out space, the owner will probably not be able to finance one-way trip out space missions.
This is due to the high cost for a single space mission. Money 820 million pounds or approximately £ 17.7 million is needed for all missions. Enough money to be issued an adventure, even for a millionaire though. Discovery own aircraft is now owned by the American Space Museum in Washington. As for the other two aircraft, NASA has declared a deadline to supply the aircraft on February 19 next.

space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida

A piece of space debris is not expected to pose any danger to the two crew members aboard the international space station, a NASA spokesman said Tuesday.NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said the space junk would get no closer than about a kilometer from the space station, where Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Maxim Suraev are sleeping.Earlier Tuesday, while tracking the debris, Mission Control was considering waking the astronaut and cosmonaut if they needed to take shelter in the Soyuz spacecraft attached to the station, Humphries said.He said it was too late to do any kind of maneuver away from the debris.However, it was determined that the debris is not going to come close enough to the station to force the two men to move to the escape pod, Humphries said.On Monday, three other crew members left the space station to return to Earth. Expedition 21 Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency Flight Engineer Frank De Winne and Canadian Space Agency Flight Engineer Robert Thirsk landed in Kazakhstan, NASA said.

Williams and Suraev will be the station’s crew until December 23, when Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, NASA’s T.J. Creamer and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency arrive.Last week, space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after an 11-day mission that included the installation of two platforms on the space station.

Atlantis Astronauts Make 1st Spacewalk of Mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.A pair of astronauts ventured out on the first spacewalk of their shuttle mission Thursday to tackle some antenna and cable work at the International Space Station.The linked shuttle-station was soaring over South America when Michael Foreman and Dr. Robert Satcher Jr. emerged from the hatch.Satcher, the first orthopedic surgeon in space, was awed by the view 220 miles below. “Beautiful,” he murmured. His partner, a veteran spacewalker, couldn’t resist poking a little fun.”Hard to believe, Bobby, I think your feet look bigger from space,” Foreman joked.Two more spacewalks are planned in coming days to perform space station maintenance and get the orbiting outpost ready for the next shuttle visitors.Atlantis will remain at the space station until Wednesday.

Already, the 12 space travelers have unloaded several tons of pumps, tanks and other big spare parts that came up on Atlantis. They took care of that just hours after the shuttle docked at the station Wednesday.All the gear should keep the space station operating well past next fall’s shuttle retirement.The shuttle is the only craft large enough to haul these oversize pieces for the space station. That’s why NASA is so keen on flying the parts now, long before they’re needed.NASA plans to keep the outpost running until at least 2015.Five more shuttle missions remain, all devoted to space station work.Astronaut Nicole Stott, who’s winding up a nearly three-month space mission, celebrated her 47th birthday Thursday. She’ll have to wait until the shuttle brings her back at the end of next week to blow out her candles. Flames are verboten in orbit.

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