This is Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson looking out of the observation window, known as the Cupola on the ISS, shortly before her return to earth after a 176 day mission.

Click on the image to get the awesome full resolution version of the whole of the UK.

This is one of the very rare times, and possibly the last ever time we will see two shuttles rolled out onto the pads at the same time.   Why?

After the Columbia accident, where the shuttle broke apart and burnt up during re-entry, it’s Nasa policy that any mission must have a safe haven, where the Crew can move to should the shuttle be found to be damaged and unable to cope with re-entry.  Usually this is the International space station, but we aren’t going there on this mission, we are going to the Hubble, so the Atlantis will be all alone out there.  This is why Endeavour is sat their waiting, It’s a life boat in case anything goes wrong.

This could be the final flight of Space Shuttle Atlantis, it is due to be decommissioned after this flight. Atlantis has completed 29 flights, spent 220.40-days in space, completed 3,468 orbits, and flown 89,908,732 nautical miles (166,510,972 km) in total, as of September 2006. Among the five Space Shuttles flown in space, Atlantis has conducted a subsequent mission in the shortest time after the previous mission when it launched in November, 1985, only 50 days after its previous mission (from Wikipedia).  However, the Ares (big Saturn 5 like rocket – due to replace the Shuttles in 2012) test flights due to take place this year have been postponed due to “budget reviews” so the old shuttles may still have some life and a few more missions left in them yet.  (there are major parts of the shuttle Atlantis flying today that we rated for a 10 year life span, which are now 22 years old!)

Good luck Atlantis!

You can watch the flight live on Nasa TV or if you want higher quality streams you can try the links on my blog.

About the Hubble space telescope.

The shuttle fleet aren’t the only ones feeling their age.  The Hubble space telescope was launched in April 1990, nearly 20 years ago.  It was hugely expensive and very ambitious.  The launch was successful, but when it was turned on and pointed at the stars for the first time, it was found that everything was blurred and out of focus.  Considering the mission costs, this was a stunning disaster.

Fortunately, the Hubble was designed to be repaired and upgraded in space, so a mission was put together to fit corrective optics and since then the HST has been responsible for some of the most important space based science ever done, despite its huge cost, it has earned its money many times over.

Over the next 11 days there will be five back to back space walks to replace instruments and refill the propellant tanks, there will even be some work done on circuit board level which has never been attempted before.  Atlantis is due to land on the 22nd (a week on Friday) at about 15:41.

You can be amazed by the science Hubble has done, you can be shocked at the cost of the operation and maintenance, but it’s the outstanding beauty of its images and its ability to connect us to the universe that which will be its long lasting legacy.

Last night (17th March 2009) I was able to capture a few photos of the ISS and Discovery very close to docking. The combination of circumstance that has to fall into place is stagering, firstly, there has to be a shuttle about to dock, and that doesn’t exactly happen every week. Next, the orbit of the IIS and shuttle has to be favorable so that the orbital ground track pass will near enough my house to be able to see it, this is not so tricky, pretty much anywhere over Westen Europe will do.  However, timing is critical, it must be just in that sweet spot of dusk where the sun will still reflect off the space craft, but it’s dark enough at home that you can take a fairly long exposure without it being blown out.  Finaly, it has to be clear; a cloudy night would ruin it.  As you can see below, the clouds nearly did. I’m pleased with this shot, but if you want to see a better one check out Marco Langbroek’s blog

On February 10th, at 4:56pm,  Two satellites in earth orbit  were destroyed in the first ever satellite collision in  space 500 miles above the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia.  The relative speed of the impact was 26,170mph! The satellites involved were a live and fully functional “Iridium 33” (part of the Iridium satellite phone network that you may have seen the comic relief climbers using on Kilimanjaro) and a defunct Russian Kosmos 2251 communications satellite which had been dead since 1995. This collision has created a huge debris cloud in space.  The effect of this debris is really scary, perhaps leading to something called the “Kessler Syndrome” where the debris from this collision collides with other satellites, and that debris then collides with more satellites and before you know it (in a process called Ablation cascade) earth orbit is full of razor sharp bits of metal flying around randomly at 10,000+ miles per hour making being in space even more dangerous than it is now. (You can see a great diagram of this, here, via APOD)

Earlier this month, on the 6th march, a new space telescope was launched called Kepler. Read more about it here.  It’s main job is to SEARCH FOR EXTRASOLAR PLANETS! How cool is that?  It’s not a direct replacement for the ageing hubble ‘scope but it will be ‘complementary’.  There is a shuttle mission scheduled to repair hubble soon, more details on that below. The mission will last for 3.5 years and aims to discover and catalogue planets within the ‘habitable zones’ around nearby stars.

In dramatic news, the International space station was evacuated last Thursday (12th March) for fear that it was about to be hit by space debris.  Although not connected to the satellite collision mentioned above, it’s still a sign that this issue of debris is being taken seriously.  The debris passed by eventually and life on the station went on as usual, but it was really interesting to see how the news spread almost as fast as it can via twitter. Normaly, the ISS ground crew actually move the station out of the way of debris by boosting it’s orbit, but in this case they didn’t have time.  The crew closed all the interior hatches and took refuge in the Russian Soyuz escape capsule. Upadate: This has just happend again, on monday!

The main news is that last night (Sunday March 15^th), Space shuttle Discovery launched just before midnight on mission STS-119 to the international space station. You can watch the launch in glorious HD here (also watch this HD video taken from a guys back yard 40 miles away!!!!).  The aim of this mission is to fit out a new set of solar panels and a truss section to the ISS.  Should be some hot spacewalking action over the next 14 days so stay tuned.

From Wikipedia:STS-119 will deliver the S6 solar arrays to the space station, completing the construction of the Integrated Truss Structure.[8] STS-119 will be used for several experiments, including Shuttle Ionospheric Modification with Pulsed Local EXhaust (SIMPLEX), Shuttle Exhaust Ion Turbulence Experiments (SEITE), and Maui Analysis of Upper Atmospheric Injections (MAUI). STS-119 will also be used for the “Boundary Layer Transition Detailed Test Objective” experiment. One tile in the thermal protection system will be raised 0.25 inches (6.4 mm) above the others so that, at about Mach 15 during reentry, a boundary layer transition will be initiated.

It’s been really cloudy here, and when it is clear, it just doesn’t get dark, I guess that’s the english summer for you.  I did manage to take a couple of shots of the ISS on consecutive nights, although tonight i was really aiming for the Early Ammonia Servicer which i think I saw, but in a totally unexpected part of the sky.  I’ll get it next time…

Those are pieces of pad 39a splashing into the water below Disco’s Plume