After waiting for ages, STS-122 finally launched last night, it was one of the few launches recently I’ve not been around to watch on nasa TV. It all looks like it went smoothly, except for the usual foam breakup. The sensor glitches in that had kept the launch date on hold appear to have been fixed. “We won’t have the ECO sensor problem again. We’ve licked it,” [nasa administrator] Griffin told SPACE.com.

I just hope that ‘lick’ a metaphor…

In other news, your friend and mine, Mr. Burt Rutan and his team at SC are getting ready for a test flight of SpaceShip Two sometime ‘towards the middle of the year’ It will be flying from the worlds first space port (unless you count Star City in Russia, but that is military I suppose) which is going to be in the Mojave desert, and designed by Norman Foster’s bunch. I’ve seen it written that “The world first private spaceport will be designed to relate to the dimensions of the spacecraft and blend with its desert surroundings with a combination of geo-thermal, solar and wind power used to create a very low carbon footprint.” Which is handy considering the huge amount of stuff thrown out of the back of SS2’s rocket motor as it blasts it’s way into space (or the stratosphere at least). I think that the renaming of VSS Voyager to VSS Spirit of Steve Fossett is a brilliant move and I’m hoping that one of the three as yet unnamed VSS craft will be named after Carl Sagan.