Work. By my self. Bugger...

I've been regularly reading the main stories on New Scientist lately, particularly the space related ones.

There is some REALLY cool stuff that ESA and NASA are planning. According to NS, THE DECISION TO JUNK HUBBLE HAS BEEN OVERTURNED!!!! This is awesome, how could you waste a cool piece of gear like that! They have postponed two other major missions to rescue and upgrade the Hubble instead. They have postponed:

Space Interferometry Mission: - Now called "SIM PlanetQuest"
A search for extra solar planets that was scheduled for 2011. Looks like ESA is going to win that one as they are planning a similar mission about that time.

Space Interferometry Mission

Terrestrial Planet Finder:
"The Terrestrial Planet Finder observatories will study all aspects of planets outside our solar system: from their formation and development in disks of dust and gas around newly forming stars to the presence and features of those planets orbiting the nearest stars; from the numbers at various sizes and places to their suitability as an abode for life." This mission was going to start in 2014.

Coronograph

Formation-flying infrared interferometer

Mars Science Laboratory:
This looks like another cool one. It's another rover. I reckon, if there was Martians, they would be pissed at the amount of "low tech" junk that we are leaving on the surface of their planet! It was planned to launch in December 2009, arriving at Mars in October 2010.

Mars Science Laboratory

It seems that Mike Griffin is a smart man: "Reducing budgets across all programmes or eliminating funding in the middle of existing projects is not an effective way to save money. I would look to delaying programmes that have not yet started." About time they started thinking logically

They are also retiring their three main shuttles. This means they will be looking at alternatives in July this year. There are 28 planned shuttle flights this year. 18 of those are going to be used to carry parts to the international space station.

Back to MARSIS:
The first 20m antenna has successfully been deployed. It was tricky though. On the 7th May, they discovered that one of the segments of the 13 wasn’t unfolded and locked into a straight position. They rotated the orbiter exposing the boom to the sun for about 5 minutes where it warmed, they then rolled it back into the darkness and it unfolded all the way. They believe that the fibreglass lost it’s elasticity after being exposed to the cold of space for 2 years in a folded position. They have decided to postpone the deployment of the second boom a few weeks while they analyse the results of the first unfolding. They may also need to expose this boom to the sun in the hope it will reduce kinking, doing this would risk a “whiplash” effect caused by the boom unfolding with too much force.