Hubble Catches Glowing Gas and Dark Dust in a Side-On Spiral

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a sharp image of NGC 4634, a spiral galaxy seen exactly side-on. Its disk is slightly warped by ongoing interactions with a nearby galaxy, and it is crisscrossed by clearly defined dust lanes and bright nebulae.

NGC 4634, which lies around 70 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Coma Berenices, is one of a pair of interacting galaxies. Its neighbor, NGC 4633, lies just outside the upper right corner of the frame, and is visible in wide-field views of the galaxy. While it may be out of sight, it is not out of mind: its subtle effects on NGC 4634 are easy to see to a well-trained eye.

Gravitational interactions pull the neat spiral forms of galaxies out of shape as they get closer to each other, and the disruption to gas clouds triggers vigorous episodes of star formation. While this galaxy’s spiral pattern is not directly visible thanks to our side-on perspective, its disk is slightly warped, and there is clear evidence of star formation.

Along the full length of the galaxy, and scattered around parts of its halo, are bright pink nebulae. Similar to the Orion Nebula in the Milky Way, these are clouds of gas that are gradually coalescing into stars. The powerful radiation from the stars excites the gas and makes it light up, much like a fluorescent sign. The large number of these star formation regions is a telltale sign of gravitational interaction.

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NASA Space Launch System Core Stage Moves From Concept to Design

The nation's space exploration program is taking a critical step forward with a successful major technical review of the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS), the rocket that will take astronauts farther into space than ever before.

The core stage is the heart of the heavy-lift launch vehicle. It will stand more than 200 feet (61 meters) tall with a diameter of 27.5 feet (8.4 meters).

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., hosted a comprehensive review. Engineers from NASA and The Boeing Co. of Huntsville presented a full set of system requirements, design concepts and production approaches to technical reviewers and the independent review board.

"This meeting validates our design requirements for the core stage of the nation's heavy-lift rocket and is the first major checkpoint for our team," said Tony Lavoie, manager of the SLS Stages Element at Marshall. "Getting to this point took a lot of hard work, and I'm proud of the collaboration between NASA and our partners at Boeing. Now that we have completed this review, we go from requirements to real blueprints. We are right on track to deliver the core stage for the SLS program."

The core stage will store liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to feed the rocket's four RS-25 engines, all of which will be former space shuttle main engines for the first few flights. The SLS Program has an inventory of 16 RS-25 flight engines that successfully operated for the life of the Space Shuttle Program. Like the space shuttle, SLS also will be powered initially by two solid rocket boosters on the sides of the launch vehicle.

The SLS will launch NASA's Orion spacecraft and other payloads, and provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Designed to be safe, affordable and flexible for crew and cargo missions, the SLS will continue America's journey of discovery and exploration to destinations including nearby asteroids, Lagrange points, the moon and ultimately, Mars.

"This is a very exciting time for the country and NASA as important achievements are made on the most advanced hardware ever designed for human space flight," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The SLS will power a new generation of exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit and the moon, pushing the frontiers of discovery forward. The innovations being made now, and the hardware being delivered and tested, are all testaments to the ability of the U.S. aerospace workforce to make the dream of deeper solar system exploration by humans a reality in our lifetimes."

The first test flight of NASA's Space Launch System, which will feature a configuration for a 77-ton (70-metric-ton) lift capacity, is scheduled for 2017. As SLS evolves, a two-stage launch vehicle configuration will provide a lift capability of 143 tons (130 metric tons) to enable missions beyond low Earth orbit and support deep space exploration.

Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS core stage, including its avionics. The core stage will be built at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans using state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment. Marshall manages the SLS Program for the agency.
 

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Dragon Expected to Set Historic Course

In response to SpaceX's announcement that it has delayed launch of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft from April 30 to May 7, NASA issued the following statement from Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier:

"We appreciate that SpaceX is taking the necessary time to help ensure the success of this historic flight. We will continue to work with SpaceX in preparing for the May 7 launch to the International Space Station."

As scheduled, the mission will be the first to see a privately built and funded spacecraft rendezvous with the station. If successful, the mission is expected to pave the way toward regular operational commercial cargo missions.

"It's almost like the lead-up to Apollo, in my mind," said Mike Horkachuck, NASA's project executive for SpaceX. "You had Mercury then you had Gemini and eventually you had Apollo. This would be similar in the sense that, we're not going to the moon or anything as spectacular as that, but we are in the beginnings of commercializing space. This may be the Mercury equivalent to eventually flying crew and then eventually leading to, in the long run, passenger travel in space."

California-based Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, is preparing to launch an ambitious mission to dock its Dragon spacecraft to the space station and return it to Earth. The spacecraft will not have a crew, but will carry about 1,200 pounds of cargo that the astronauts and cosmonauts living on the station will be able to use. The capsule will go into space atop a Falcon 9 rocket also built by SpaceX.

Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX and the company's chief designer, said his team is not taking the mission's objectives for granted, particularly since both the Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket are relatively new to spaceflight.

"We have launched the rocket twice and the spacecraft once so they are pretty new, and the proximity operations will be our first test in space," Musk said following the Flight Readiness Review. "I think it’s important to appreciate that this is fairly tricky and it is important to remember that we are hitting a target within a few inches while it moves over 17,000 mph."

Because the mission is a test flight, the cargo is not material deemed critical to the crew, Horkachuck said. Launch is targeted for May 7 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, within sight of the launch pads the space shuttles used to carry the station's components into orbit. There also are several tests and reviews coming up later this month similar to those performed ahead of space shuttle missions.

If this mission is successful, the Dragon is expected to become operational and launch regular supply runs to the station. Unlike any other cargo carrier, the Dragon can bring things back to Earth, too, a boon for scientists whose research is taking place on the orbiting laboratory.

SpaceX already has two successful Falcon 9 launches to its credit, along with a history making demonstration of the Dragon capsule that in December 2010, became the first privately built and operated spacecraft to be launched to and recovered from Earth orbit.

"I think the (first demonstration) mission was more of a question mark in my mind," Horkachuck said, "because no capsule that these guys had built before had gone into space, done the basic maneuvering to show you have attitude control as well as re-entering, so knowing the vehicle came through re-entry relatively unscathed and all the parachute systems worked perfectly, that was a real big deal."

Because of that mission's achievements, NASA and SpaceX agreed to combine the planned second and third demonstration flights into one. Assuming the Dragon spacecraft passes about a few days' worth of equipment checks and demonstration in orbit, it will be allowed to approach the station close enough for astronauts to grab the Dragon with the station's large robotic arm. The arm will berth the capsule to the station and astronauts will unload the spacecraft and put about 1,400 pounds of material inside the Dragon for return to Earth.

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NASA satellite expected to crash to Earth in days

The sky is not falling. A 12,500-pound NASA satellite the size of a school bus is, though.

It's the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, and it's tumbling in orbit and succumbing to Earth's gravity. It will crash to the surface Friday.

Or maybe Thursday. Or Saturday.

Out-of-control crashing satellites don't lend themselves to exact estimates even for the precision-minded folks at NASA. The uncertainty about the "when" makes the "where" all the trickier, because a small change in the timing of the re-entry translates into thousands of miles of difference in the crash site.

As of the moment, NASA says the 35-foot-long satellite will crash somewhere between 57 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south latitude - a projected crash zone that covers most of the planet, and particularly the inhabited parts. In this hemisphere, that includes everyone living between northern Newfoundland and the frigid ocean beyond the last point of land in South America.

Polar bears and Antarctic scientists are safe.

It's the biggest piece of NASA space junk to fall to Earth in more than 30 years. It should create a light show. The satellite will partially burn up during re-entry, and, by NASA's calculation, break into about 100 pieces, creating fireballs that should be visible even in daytime.

An estimated 26 of those pieces will survive the re-entry burn and will spray themselves in a linear debris field 500 miles long. The largest chunk should weigh about 300 pounds.

As the Friday-ish crash gets closer, NASA will refine its estimate of timing and location, but the fudge factor will remain high.

"There are too many variations on solar activity which affect the atmosphere, the drag on the vehicle," said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA.

The good news is that the satellite will probably splatter into the open ocean, because Earth is a water planet. And humans, for all their sprawl, occupy a very limited portion of its surface.

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Twisted Tale of our Galaxy's Ring

New observations from the Herschel Space Observatory show a bizarre, twisted ring of dense gas at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Only a few portions of the ring, which stretches across more than 600 light-years, were known before. Herschel's view reveals the entire ring for the first time, and a strange kink that has astronomers scratching their heads.

"We have looked at this region at the center of the Milky Way many times before in the infrared," said Alberto Noriega-Crespo of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "But when we looked at the high-resolution images using Herschel’s sub-millimeter wavelengths, the presence of a ring is quite clear." Noriega-Crespo is co-author of a new paper on the ring published in a recent issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Herschel Space Observatory is a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions. It sees infrared and sub-millimeter light, which can readily penetrate through the dust hovering between the bustling center of our galaxy and us. Herschel's detectors are also suited to see the coldest stuff in our galaxy.

When astronomers turned the giant telescope to look at the center of our galaxy, it captured unprecedented views of its inner ring -- a dense tube of cold gas mixed with dust, where new stars are forming.

Astronomers were shocked by what they saw -- the ring, which is in the plane of our galaxy, looked more like an infinity symbol with two lobes pointing to the side. In fact, they later determined the ring was torqued in the middle, so it only appears to have two lobes. To picture the structure, imagine holding a stiff, elliptical band and twisting the ends in opposite directions, so that one side comes up a bit.

"This is what is so exciting about launching a new space telescope like Herschel," said Sergio Molinari of the Institute of Space Physics in Rome, Italy, lead author of the new paper. "We have a new and exciting mystery on our hands, right at the center of our own galaxy."

Observations with the ground-based Nobeyama Radio Observatory in Japan complemented the Herschel results by determining the velocity of the denser gas in the ring. The radio results demonstrate that the ring is moving together as a unit, at the same speed relative to the rest of the galaxy.

The ring lies at the center of our Milky Way's bar -- a bar-shaped region of stars at the center of its spidery spiral arms. This bar is actually inside an even larger ring. Other galaxies have similar bars and rings. A classic example of a ring inside a bar is in the galaxy NGC 1097, imaged here by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The ring glows brightly in the center of the galaxy's large bar structure. It is not known if that ring has a kink or not.

The details of how bars and rings form in spiral galaxies are not well understood, but computer simulations demonstrate how gravitational interactions can produce the structures. Some theories hold that bars arise out of gravitational interactions between galaxies. For example, the bar at the center of our Milky Way might have been influenced by our largest neighbor galaxy, Andromeda.

The twist in the ring is not the only mystery to come out of the new Herschel observations. Astronomers say that the center of the torqued portion of the ring is not where the center of the galaxy is thought to be, but slightly offset. The center of our galaxy is considered to be around "Sagittarius A*," where a massive black hole lies. According to Noriega-Crespo, it's not clear why the center of the ring doesn't match up with the assumed center of our galaxy. "There's still so much about our galaxy to discover," he said.

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UrtheCast Announces New Space Venture

Joint Canadian, Russian and UK Space Venture to Install World's First Ever High Definition Streaming Video Cameras on the International Space Station





UrtheCast is building, launching, and operating the world's first and only high definition streaming video cameras being installed on the International Space Station (ISS).


UrtheCast will supply video data and imagery of Earth collected by two HD cameras on the Russian module of the Space Station. This data and imagery will be down-linked to ground stations around the planet and then displayed in real time on the Internet and distributed directly to UrtheCast's exclusive partners and customers.

The UrtheCast web platform will allow Users to constantly track the location of the Space Station, anticipating when it will pass over a particular geographic location. Users will be able to search for videos of a particular location, type, or theme and will have the ability to interact with the HD video feed from the UrtheCast servers. They will be able to zoom in and out, virtually steer the camera from side to side, rewind, and fast forward as they check out areas and things of interest on Earth. UK based Rutherford Appleton Labs is building two high definition cameras. A medium resolution camera will provide a three colour image with a swath of 45 kilometers and a resolution of 5.5 meters. The high-resolution camera will offer a video image with a frame rate of 3.25 frames per second with a resolution that is comparable to much of Google Earth. This will allow Users to see man-made objects and groups of people.

As a result of all this unique functionality, the UrtheCast web platform will spark a great deal of awareness, creativity, and unique user events from around the world. The UrtheCast website will feel like a blend of Google Earth with the video playback and search functionality of YouTube. The UrtheCast web platform will combine a consumer centric website, mobile application for smart phones, and an open Application Program Interface (API). The API enables third party developers to create their own applications and upload them to the UrtheCast web platform.

"Users will be able to view Earth from space. It will operate seamlessly with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter," explains Scott Larson, President of UrtheCast. ISS is a low orbit, human-inhabited satellite. The station travels at 26,000 km/h, orbiting Earth sixteen times per day, at an altitude of approximately 350 km. The ISS is a collaborative project between the Russian, Canadian European, Japanese, and US space agencies. UrtheCast has signed an exclusive agreement with RSC Energia, who maintains operational control of the Russian segment on the ISS. RSC Energia will take UrtheCast's cameras, install them on the outside of the ISS, and provide the necessary maintenance and transfer of the data. The cameras are being built by UK based Rutherford Appleton Laboratories (RAL), who is a world leader in building cameras for aerospace and satellite purposes.

"Being part of a project that not only taps into the recent renewed interest in space, but also provides a connection between people and the rest of the world is what is most intriguing about this project," Richard Holdaway Director, RAL Space.

UrtheCast will officially launch this project in Calgary on June 28th at 12:00pm. Dr. Dave Williams, one of NASA's most accomplished astronauts, will be speaking at the launch at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

"The UrtheCast camera will support the ISS and continue to inspire youth to pursue advanced studies in space sciences and spark interest in science, technology, engineering and the environment," says Dr.Williams.

Dr. Williams blasted into space aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, and again on Shuttle Endeavour where he walked out into the great beyond. He has set records in space walking and has logged more than 687 hours in space. He will be speaking about space flight, space exploration, space science and technology, environmental stewardship and educational awareness as it relates to seeing the Earth from Space. "This unprecedented UrtheCast initiative is helping position Canada as a leading space-faring nation and driving science and innovation while actively inspiring young people across our country to take their place as members of Canada's next space generation," stated Dr. Williams.

Sunset from an Astronaut's Perspective

Astronauts onboard the International Space Station see the Earth from a unique perspective — for example, in one 24-hour period, they see not one sunrise and sunset, but 16 on average. Each changeover between day and night is marked by the terminator, a line on Earth's surface separating the sunlit side from the darkness.

While the terminator is often conceptualized as a hard boundary, in reality the edge of light and dark is diffuse due to the scattering of light by the Earth's atmosphere. This zone of diffuse lighting is experienced as dusk or twilight on the ground; while the Sun is no longer visible, some illumination is still present due to light scattering over the local horizon.

The terminator is visible in this panoramic view across central South America, looking towards the northeast. An astronaut shot the photo at approximately 7:37 p.m. local time. Layers of the Earth's atmosphere, colored bright white to deep blue, are visible on the horizon (or limb). The highest cloud tops have a reddish glow due to direct light from the setting sun, while lower clouds are in twilight.

China's First Space Station: A New Foothold in Earth Orbit

China's state-run news outlets report that preparations of the country's first space station module, called Tiangong-1, are in full swing for a launch in the second half of this year and will be followed by an unpiloted spacecraft.

The spacecraft twosome, the station module and China's Shenzhou 8 vehicle, will mark the country's first round of orbital rendezvous and docking tests – viewed as a springboard to larger space adventures. A Long March 2F rocket is the booster of choice for the individual launches, according to reports by China's Xinhua news agency.

According to state media reports, the Tiangong-1 space station module is outfitted with a docking port on its front and rear ends. It will tip the scales at roughly 8 1/2 tons and purportedly will have a two-year lifetime in Earth orbit. Next year, China's Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10 missions, each carrying astronauts, are expected to link up with the station module, according to current plan.

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Space Tourist Trips Around the Moon Get Roomier Spaceship

Fifty years after the first American astronaut rocketed into space, one commercial spaceflight company is hoping to push the envelope even further, with tourist trips around the moon. And now they plan to use a bigger spaceship.

The Virginia-based space tourism firm Space Adventures has brokered commercial rides to the International Space Station for the last 10 years under a partnership with Russia's Federal Space Agency, which provided the Soyuz spacecraft for the flights. The three-person Soyuz vehicle also forms the core of Space Adventures' trip for two around the moon at $150 million per passenger, but the U.S. company on may 5th announced a new twist: an extra module to give customers more room during the lunar visit.

Space Adventures already has one customer signed on for the circumlunar joyride and is in contract negotiations with a second, which means the first flight could occur as soon as the end of 2015, said the company's chairman Eric Anderson. "The mission, in my mind, will be another watershed event," Anderson said in a news briefing today. "It's remarkable that a private company will be able to work in the market and finance what is likely to be humanity's first return to the moon in what will, at that time, be 45 years."

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Virgin Galactic's Space Tourist Ship Passes Major Flight Test

A private spaceship built to carry space tourists on suborbital flights for the company Virgin Galactic passed a major glide test flight while flying over California's Mojave Desert on 4th may 2011: The spacecraft tested out the novel system it will use when re-entering Earth's atmosphere. Today's flight marked Virgin Galactic's seventh glide test for its first SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, called the VSS Enterprise, and took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port.

Today's flight marked Virgin Galactic's seventh glide test for its first SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, called the VSS Enterprise, and took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port. The WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo combo serves as a launch system, the backbone of Virgin Galactic’s aspirations to create a spaceline -- one that would whisk tourists into space on a suborbital trajectory. SpaceShipTwo vehicles are designed to carry six passengers and two pilots to the edge of space and back.

The pay-per-view flights are billed as giving tourists a spectacular view of the Earth and several minutes of weightlessness. A per-seat price of $200,000 is being offered by Virgin Galactic. The space liner operations are backed by British billionaire, Sir Richard Branson, founder of the firm.

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Largest 3-D Map Opens Window to the Ancient Universe

The largest-ever three-dimensional map of the distant universe has been created using the light of the brightest objects in the cosmos. Since this distant light took eons to reach Earth, the map is essentially a window back in time, providing an unprecedented view of what the universe looked like 11 billion years ago.Normally, researchers make maps of the universe by looking at galaxies.

"Here, we are looking at intergalactic hydrogen gas, which blocks light," said researcher Anže Slosar, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. "It's like looking at the moon through clouds -- you can see the shapes of the clouds by the moonlight that they block."

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NASA's Voyager Probes to Leave Solar System

It may be decades before humanity sets foot on Mars, but we're only five years away from sampling the vast stretches of interstellar space beyond our solar system for the first time, researchers say. NASA's twin unmanned Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977, are streaking toward the edge of the solar system at around 37,000 mph (60,000 kph). At that rate, they'll probably pop out of our sun's sphere of influence and into interstellar space by 2016 or so, according to mission scientists.

"They are about to break free of the solar system," Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., said during a media teleconference yesterday (April 28). "We are trying to get outside of our bubble, into interstellar space, to directly measure what is there.

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Asteroid or Planet?

Scientists still aren't sure what to make of Vesta, a small body that orbits the sun. Is it an asteroid or a planet? NASA's Dawn spacecraft could settle the matter. Vesta was spotted 200 years ago and is officially a "minor planet" — a body that orbits the sun but is not a proper planet or comet. Yet, many astronomers call Vesta an asteroid because it lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

But Vesta is not a typical member of that orbiting rubble patch. The vast majority of objects in the main belt are relative lightweights, 62 miles(100 kilometers) wide or smaller, compared with Vesta, which is 329 miles(530 km) wide. If Vesta is an asteroid, it would be the second-largest in the solar system. Some scientists, however, are skeptical about that designation. "I don't think Vesta should be called an asteroid," said Tom McCord, a Dawn team member at the Bear Fight Institute in Winthrop, Wash. "Not only is Vesta so much larger, but it's an evolved object, unlike most things we call asteroids."

The evolution of Vesta

The onion-like structure of Vesta (core, mantle and crust) is the key trait that makes Vesta more like planets such as Earth, Venus and Mars than the other asteroids, McCord said. Like the planets, Vesta had sufficient radioactive material inside when it formed, releasing heat that melted rock and enabled lighter layers to float to the outside. Signatures of a type of volcanic rock called basalt were detected in 1972, which meant that the body had to have melted at one time.

Mars' Thick Dry Ice Sheet Points to Planet's Wetter Past

The south pole of Mars has a layer of dry ice that is 30 times thicker than previously thought, a find that suggests the Red Planet may have had more liquid water on its the surface in the distant past, scientists say. While most of the ice at the Martian south pole is frozen water, some of the ice pack is composed of dry ice — frozen carbon dioxide.

A team of scientists used a radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to calculate the depth of dry ice deposits. By measuring how long it took for the radar waves to travel through the ice and bounce back to the MRO spacecraft, the researchers determined the dry ice cache was nearly 2,300 feet (700 meters) thick.

"The volume of the deposit is about the volume of Lake Superior," said study leader Roger Phillips of the Southwest Research Institute.

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Pluto's Atmosphere Found Poisonous and Surprisingly High

Poisonous carbon monoxide gas has been discovered in the atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto, after a worldwide search that lasted nearly two decades, according to a new study that also detected the planet's atmosphere extending much higher above the surface than previously thought. A British-based team of astronomers, led by Jane Greaves of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, found a strong signal of carbon monoxide gas in Pluto's atmosphere using the 15-meter James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii.

The atmosphere of Pluto was known to extend more than 60 miles (about 100 kilometers) above the surface, the researchers said, but the new findings raise that height to more than 1,860 miles equivalent to a quarter of the distance out to Pluto's largest moon, Charon.

Greaves will present the new discovery on Wednesday (April 20) at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Wales. Pluto was discovered in 1930 and was considered to be the smallest and most distant planet orbiting around the sun. In 2006, its status was demoted to dwarf planet, making it one of a handful of such bodies that orbit beyond Neptune in the outer reaches of the solar system.

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April's Full Moon Arrives Sunday With Easter Name

Sunday (April 17) brings us the first full moon of the new spring season in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing a lunar delight named – in part – for Easter. The official moment that the moon will turn full is 10:44 p.m. EDT. Traditional names for the full moons of the year are found in some publications such as The Farmers' Almanac. The origins of these names have been traced back to native America, though they may also have evolved from old England or, as Guy Ottewell, editor of the annual publication, "Astronomical Calendar" suggests, "writer's fancy."

Traditionally, the April full moon is known as the "Pink Moon,"supposedly because the grass pink or wild ground phlox is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other monikers were the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and – among coastal tribes – the Full Fish Moon, when the shad come upstream to spawn.

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New U.S. Spy Satellite Launches on Clandestine Mission

A rocket carrying a new U.S. spy satellite lit up the California night sky Thursday on a secret mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. The spy satellite NROL-34 soared into orbit atop an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket after launching from a pad at the Vandenberg Air Force Base at 9:24 p.m. PDT (0424 GMT on April 15) to begin the latest classified flight for the NRO. The details of the satellite's purpose and final orbit are classified, but the new spacecraft will definitely serve a role for the U.S. military, officials said.

"This launch supports the military's national defense mission," officials with the United Launch Alliance, which orchestrated the satellite launch for the NRO, said in a mission description. Because of the satellite's secret purpose, a media blackout was put in place about 4 1/2 minutes after the Atlas 5 rocket launched toward orbit. The rocket lifted off with the help of a single solid rocket booster to propel it into space.

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Why There's No Replacement for the Space Shuttle

After the wheels of the space shuttle roll to a stop for the final time, NASA astronauts will have to rely on Russian spaceships for their rides into space until commercial American vehicles are ready to fly crews to orbit. A capsule-based spacecraft, called Orion, is also in development, but NASA's current plans are to use it primarily as an escape ship for the International Space Station.

Over the course of the shuttle program's 30-year career, NASA and its various partners explored a number of different vehicle options to succeed the space shuttles, but none were brought to fruition, said Roger Launius, space history curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, in Washington.One by one, each program ended after development plans bumped up against funding and politics – an experience familiar throughout NASA's history. "There's a whole series of factors – some of them were political, but a lot of the problems were technical," Launius said. "Could they have been solved if they had more money? Probably. So, was it a technical problem or a political problem? I could argue both sides."

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Is Space Tourism the New Space Race?

Fifty years after the Soviet Union beat the United States to send the first human to space, a new space race is heating up. This time, the players are not nations — rather, they're commercial companies that aim to send the first paying passengers to space on private spaceships. "It's an exciting time for the industry," said George Whitesides, president of suborbital spaceship company Virgin Galactic. "I really believe that we're at the edge of an extraordinary period of innovation which will radically change our world."

If Virgin and other companies succeed, space could soon become one more conquered frontier, with rocket rides to space becoming as accessible as plane rides across the Atlantic. "We're just about to the point where low-Earth orbit really ought to be considered part of our normal regime," said Roger Launius, a space history curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. But while we may be nearing a tipping point where access to space expands widely beyond the select few who've left Earth to date, Launius and others caution that it's not a done deal yet.

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NASA's Space Shuttles at 30

NASA's space shuttle program may be coming to an end later this year, but the agency's fleet of orbiters is preparing to celebrate an important milestone next week – the 30th anniversary of the very first space shuttle flight. On April 12, 1981, the shuttle Columbia blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.,on the program's inaugural STS-1 mission. Thirty years later, the workhorse shuttles have played an instrumental role in constructing the International Space Station, launching critical satellites and observatories into orbit including the prolific Hubble Space Telescope and carrying numerous supplies and science experiments into space.

Over the course of his career, Wayne Hale, NASA's former space shuttle program manager, bore witness to many of these crowning achievements. Hale joined NASA in 1978 as a propulsion officer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. He then worked as a flight director in Mission Control, presiding over 40 shuttle flights before becoming manager of the program in 2005. Hale played a critical role in the agency's recovery from the catastrophic loss in 2003 of the shuttle Columbia and its seven-astronaut crew. He now serves as Director of Human Spaceflight Programs at Special Aerospace Services, located in Boulder, Colo.