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Shuttle

nasa

NASA Preparing to Service Hubble for the Last Time, In Glorious Pictures

The Boston Globe's Big Picture blog continues its incredible coverage of all things wonderful to look at today with a spread relating to the space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope. Atlantis is scheduled to launch on October 8, equipped with all manner of instruments, batteries and gyroscopes for Hubble. Pictured above is one of the massive Atlantis engines being moved to the main bay for installation. That's just one engine, though—there's plenty of space-related tech porn to be found in the rest of the spread, too. More »

holy smokes

Guy Films Space Shuttle Launch from Passing Airliner

Watching a space shuttle launch from the ground is undoubtedly very awe inspiring, but this video of a launch takes the biscuit: It's filmed from thousands of feet in the air. A lucky guy managed to film a shuttle rocketing off the ground (possibly STS-124) from inside a passing Air Canada airliner. It's less fire, smoke and thunder than a sea-level view, more "Holy crap, look how fast it goes!" Check it out... you may be as amazed as it sounds like he was. [PointNiner]

X-37B

Air Force to Launch Military Orbital Spaceplane

The USAF and Boeing will launch the X-37B—the first military orbital space plane if you discount the secret military shuttle—on top of an Atlas V rocket in November. They want to test its flying features in space and during atmospheric reentry. And probably its anti-matter rays and nuclear bays and hyperspace engines too (but of course, they are never going to tell you that). However, there seems to be a conflict with the civilian space program which may push one of the Moon exploration missions to 2009. More »

space

Unmanned Japanese Cargo Spacecraft Could Be NASA's Next Space Shuttle

With the dinosaur Space Shuttle set to retire in 2010, and Orion due to be finished (optimistically) by 2015, NASA may purchase the $131 million unmanned HTV cargo vehicle from JAXA, Japan's space agency, to guarantee fresh shipments of space-Doritos flowing up to the brave souls on the International Space Sation. While they had initially planned to fill this gap by relying on commercial space cargo flights by companies like SpaceX, Reuters is reporting that delays in the private-sector space companies have caused NASA to look elsewhere to avoid being crippled by the Shuttle's retirement. UPDATE: NASA issued a statement this afternoon saying the Reuters' report was full of baloney. They're still dedicated to finding commercial haulers—full release below. More »

to infinity and into storage

Space Shuttle Final Flight Programmed: May 31 2010

NASA has put a final date on the shuttle program: May 31 2010. That day, the shuttle will launch for the last time, putting an end to 29 years of amazing missions, two of them with tragic endings. The final will be STS-133, in which Endeavour "will carry critical spare components that will be placed on the outside of the station," including new communication antennas, a gas tank, spare parts for giant space robot Dextre, and the coolest of them all: "micrometeoroid debris shields." I don't know about you, but I hope these involve invisible fields or laser micro-turrets or some kind of plasma generator. They also released details for the remaining flights of Endeavour, Discovery, and Atlantis: More »

Lego Kennedy Space Center

750,000-Brick Kennedy Space Center Is the Mother of All Lego Models

Forget about the Lego Airbus A380 and the Lego Death Star, because this video will show you the mother of all Lego models: the 750,000-brick Kennedy Space Center. Using 1,506 square feet, it took 2,500 hours to build. It includes a 6.13ft-tall Space Shuttle on the launch pad, the space center with a 9ft-long Saturn 1B rocket, and the Vehicle Assembly Building—8ft long x 6ft high x 5ft wide—made out of 50,000 Lego bricks. I know. Mindblowing. This thing is so massive that it can probably affect Earth's orbit. Update: if Lego's Kennedy Space Center is the mother of all Lego models, Giz reader Florian Frischmuth has sent us his pictures of the father: the 1,300,000-brick Lego Allianz Arena stadium in Munich, Germany. This titan contains a mindblowing 30,000 mini-figs inside. More »

pcs

Shuttle D10 Media Server With a 7-Inch Touchscreen

Here's a small form factor PC by Shuttle meant to function as a media server. What's clever is the 7-inch touchscreen and I hope some general UI for getting around your files and programs. I've stashed a Shuttle box or two in a closet, and it fit great but using a keyboard and mouse in the closet is rough. So is planting a monitor between your shirts and pants. So this is a nice idea. (Please ignore the photoshopped floating screenshots to the sides of the LCD.) [Shuttle]

iss

Shuttle to Repair ISS Toilet, Save the Day

It must be a relief for the ISS crew to hear that their malfunctioning toilet will get some urgently-needed repairs next week, now that Discovery will be whizzing a new pump aloft. The dodgy loo has been unable to deal with liquid waste, and repair attempts failed. So NASA has cleared Discovery to fly on Saturday with a 13kg replacement pump, even though it means leaving other stuff behind. "Having a working toilet is a priority for us," said Scott HigginbothamHigginbottom, in charge of shuttle payloads. The Russian-made pump was even give special treatment: it was flown in a diplomatic pouch from Russia. Clearly when spacemen need to go, they need to go... [New Scientist]

hard drives

Charred Hard Drive from Space Shuttle Columbia Recovered (Best Data Rescue Ever?)

It's taken four and a half years, but the data recovery specialists charged with extracting data from a cracked, charred 400MB Seagate drive aboard the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia have done their duty, retrieving 99% of the information written to the disk. The Columbia burned up on re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, over Louisiana and Texas. Computerworld reports that the drive was found in a dry lakebed and handed to a team at Kroll Ontrack about six months after the tragedy, but the successful recovery has only just come to light. So, you ask, what was on the drive that was so important? More »

space fleet

Buran Space Shuttle Floats Along the Rhine

The Buran space shuttle was once the apple of the Soviet space fleet's eye. Unfortunately, it has now been reduced to floating peacefully down the river Rhine, where it will eventually come to rest at the Technik Museum Speyer in Mannheim, Germany. The great shuttle took to the skies only once during an unmanned test flight, but two decades later, the modern relic has gone the way of a crushed Buzz Lightyear—it's realized it can't fly, but at least it can put on one hell of an exhibition. Good on you, Buran. The images of the final float look stunning, and the video of the event, which is set against some seriously melancholic music, makes the whole event look like a sad and dignified funeral procession. Check out the pictures in the gallery below, then jump in to see the clip. Warning: have your hankies ready. More »

shuttle kpc

Shuttle $99 PC Reviewed (Verdict: Great Value, But the Linux OS Is Bleh)

A $99 PC obviously isn't going to deliver a blockbuster experience, but Shuttle's toaster-sized KPC actually has the hardware to get the lightweight job done: 1.8GHz Celeron processor, 512MB RAM and an 80GB hard drive, all of which is expandable. Overall, Tom's Hardware thought the cheap-o box delivered "surprisingly good" performance and value, except for the default OS Foresight Linux—its user-unfriendliness and bugs are the KPC's biggest problems. But, the Windows XP install "worked flawlessly" in case you've got an extra copy lying around and want a low-power mini-PC. [Tom's Hardware]

nasa

iPod Pictured Onboard Space Shuttle Endeavour

A TUAW reader has managed to spot an iPod onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which is currently floating around in a giant vacuum. The hawk-eyed reader spotted the iPod from official NASA photos, which showed the device, barely visible, through a cabin window. Interestingly, iPods cannot be taken into space willy-nilly. In fact, the usual lithium battery must be replaced with specially designed alkaline alternatives to ensure safety standards are met. That seems like a lot of planning to us, which is part of the reason we won't be leaving planet Earth anytime soon. Another equally valid reason is because we are not qualified astronauts. If you are having difficulty recovering from the shock of this new information, please sit down and drink some water. Jump for a zoomed out shot of the space shuttle, which indicates the founder was either very bored or has awesome Superman-like eyesight. You decide. More »

robots

NASA Sending Robots into Space to do Astronauts' Dirty Work

NASA is sending a $200 million, Canadian-built robot named Dextre (Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator) up to the International Space Station to help carryout spacewalk missions too dangerous for humans to attempt. The currently disassembled robot is being flown up on the Space Shuttle Endeavour and will be built up on the Space Station. Once constructed, Dextre will be 10 feet high, 5 feet wide and have two arms comprised of seven joints apiece. [ABC News]

lego

LEGO Contest Picks Up Steam, Pod Racer, London Imperial Shuttle and Jeff Vader

Some of you asked for it when we showed you the LEGO Steampunk Tie Fighter and here it is: a LEGO Steampunk Pod Racer, the Darling Apollo IV driven by Trenton Telgaard. Whoever that is. It's also part of the LEGO Steam Wars contest, like the brilliant London Imperial Shuttle after the jump (right next to a hilarious LEGO animation set to Eddie Izzard's monologue on Darth Vader's at the Death Star's cafeteria. A must for a Monday morning.) More »

laptops

Lenovo Y410 Notebook Has Facial Recognition, Special Media Playback

Lenovo's previously Asia-only Y-series notebooks just crossed the Bering Strait and landed in the US, bringing both facial recognition, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, and a special Shuttle Center control that lets you play back music and movies without booting the main system. Underneath these special features are pretty standard-issue equipment for a laptop around $735: 1.46GHz Pentium, Vista, 1GB Memory, 14.1-inch display, 160GB hard drive, and DVD burner. You can get a little beefier by buying from Office Depot and getting a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB memory, which costs $900. [Lenovo via Electronista]

space waste

NASA Mistakes Star Wars for Reality, to Launch Lightsaber Into Space

Now the US space program has really jumped the shark. The Space Shuttle Discovery will carry into space Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, a prop used in Star Wars. The entire journey of this movie prop will be accompanied with crazy fanfare—from prop shop to space and back—all in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the 1977 premiere of the first Star Wars movie. More »

pcs

Shuttle SXDi: Water-cooled PC with CrossFire and Flames

This is the new Shuttle SDXi and although it's a variation of the XPC, it's also one BMF. It comes loaded for speed with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 2 GBytes Crucial Ballistix RAM and a 10.000rpm Western Digital Raptor hard drive. But more importantly, the painted flames on the sides are guaranteed to make it run even faster. Or something like that. More »

gadgets

Shuttle Car PC: A Techier Way to Die

Shuttle just announced their new Car PC—or what looks to be a Mac Mini genetically enhanced with car audio badassness (known to some as a heat sink). More »