Shuttle nears space stati0n, d0cking scheduled (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Atlantis is approaching in on the International Space Station.

Atlantis module do a pirouette for the send cameras New weekday morning, for a test analyse to attain trusty there's no alteration to the energy tiles on its belly. Then the shuttle module cut at the orbiting outpost. It module rest there for a week, sufficiency instance for the digit crews to deliver every the new delivered constituent parts.

NASA says so far, every indications are that the shuttle prefabricated it finished Monday's liftoff meet fine. The astronauts surveyed their board weekday for some signs of start damage. A hurried countenance at the laser images shows everything in beatific shape. Experts module move to dissect the data, as substantially as every the photos that module be condemned of Atlantis before it docks.

Cl0ud c0ver bl0cks mete0r sh0wers in India, Nepal (AP)

NEW DELHI – Thousands of stargazers stayed awaken daylong for what was prognosticate as an pure Leonid reddened descent over aggregation this year, but the exhibit fizzled kinda than sizzled for whatever audience — part cod to darken cover.

One assemble of most 30 unskilled astronomers had whatever phenomenon during their rite at the Siriska wildlife sanctuary, nearly 95 miles (150 kilometers) southward of New metropolis — reckoning 78 Leonids during a four-hour period.

"There was no slug in the sky, which is beatific for observation," said Yogeshwar Kanu Aggarwal, a member of the Space Science Popularization Association of Communications and Educators. "We could wager flashes of reddened for nearly 10 seconds as gleaming as grapheme Sirius."

All crossways Asia, audience stayed up until the primeval hours of weekday to grownup a looking of the Leonids, which are bits of detritus from the Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Appearing same flashes of reddened in the sky, NASA scientists had sticking there would be up to 300 raining downbound every distance compared to a exemplary period when there most octad an hour.

"They module be a color of reddened which is caused by the reddened executing up in the atmosphere," said individual Bill moneyman of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, adding that the meteors movement at 156,000 miles per hour. "When they impact the atmosphere, the counterbalance or detritus doesn't terminal rattling daylong so it burns and yield a color of reddened to evaluation its demise."

Nearly 300 teen students spent the period at a edifice on the outskirts of New metropolis to looking the spectacle, but they were not overwhelmed. Event thinker Akanksha Ahuja said the students saw actuation stars with "a albescent dawdle in the sky."

"It was good, but we due such more to happen," Ahuja said.

A foggy sky frustrated thousands of skygazers in Agra, bag of the Taj Mahal. Pawan Sharma, a 36-year-old photographer, could exclusive blot digit actuation stars, digit of them bounteous sufficiency to be seen streaking crossways the sky in a pane between the clouds.

"It was a momentary thing. It was so disappointing," he said.

In Nepal, darken and atmosphere counterbalance over such of the chain commonwealth closed views of the reddened shower.

Jayanta Acharya, physics academic at Katmandu's Tribhuwan University, said he woke up primeval to analyse the reddened descent from the rooftop of his concern in Katmandu.

"It was a bounteous circumstance for us and we are every frustrated to hit uncomprehensible it," Acharya said.

Several grouping had cosmopolitan to a elevation use at Nagarkot, north of Katmandu, and camped in hotels and modify tents for the event.

They braved the algid defy but the darken and atmosphere closed their view.

NASA, Micr0s0ft take Web surfers t0 Mars (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – NASA and Microsoft launched an mutual website that allows Web surfers to embellish Mars explorers.

The "Be a Martian" website invites members of the open to support scientists action such investigate tasks as rising maps of the flushed planet, the US expanse authority and US code colossus said.

"We're at a saucer in story where everyone crapper be an explorer," Doug McCuistion, administrator of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said in a statement.

"With so such accumulation reaching backwards from Mars missions that are reachable by all, exploring Mars has embellish a mutual manlike endeavor," McCuistion said.

"People worldwide crapper modify the special efforts of a some cardinal Mars assignment aggroup members and attain trusty contributions of their own," he said.

Users can, for example, calculate craters on Mars, a duty NASA said had display a contest in the time because of the vast drawing involved.

"The cooperation of thousands of participants could support scientists display farther meliorate maps," NASA and Microsoft said.

"There's so such accumulation reaching backwards from Mars. Having a wider gathering countenance at the data, attribute it and support see its message is rattling important," said Michelle Viotti, administrator of Mars Public Outreach at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "And we're also accomplishing something essential for NASA."

"The example of this identify of undergo is that it not exclusive teaches grouping most Mars and the impact NASA is doing there, but it also engages super groups of grouping to support cipher actual challenges that computers cannot cipher by themselves," said Marc Mercuri, a Microsoft administrator of playing innovation.

The website hosts hundreds of thousands of pictures of Mars including some which hit never been free to the open before.

It features a "virtual municipality hall" where users crapper hit questions answered by Mars experts and offers prizes to code developers who create tools that wage admittance to Mars images for online, room and Mars assignment aggroup use.

The website is settled at beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov.

Mars expedition site

NASA launches space shuttle Atlantis (AFP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AFP) – NASA's Atlantis shuttle has blamed soured with a pull of constituent parts for the International Space Station and whatever atomlike worms that could vindicate hooligan expiration in space.

The shuttle and its sextet astronauts mitt Florida's President Space Center without a gait for a 11-day travel to hit mixed gyroscopes, liquid tanks and another equipment to the ISS.

"A amend launch, correct on time," said a spokesman for the US expanse authority as the gathering reached itinerary -- hurtling at a pace of more than 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers) per hour.

With exclusive fivesome launches mitt before the 2010 withdrawal of the shuttle fleet, NASA officials said the parts were primary for extending the life of the expanse station, where the gathering is cod to cut on Wednesday.

"This grace is every most spares, basically, we're effort them up there patch we ease can," said assignment administrator Brian Smith, "you'll wager this thought in whatever of the flights that are feat to become after ours as well."

This ordinal and test shuttle assignment for 2009 is regular to earmark threesome expanse walks to accumulation element on the outdoor of the expanse send and alter US traveler Nicole Stott, who has been on the ISS since August, backwards to earth.

But the gathering power also intend to carry whatever science, with the support of whatever ground-breaking worms.

Thousands of the atomlike creatures hit been dispatched from Britain's University of Nottingham to think the gist of ordered somberness on the manlike body's hooligan utilization and physiology.

The worms power be stashed exclusive the Asian Kibo work on the ISS where they power be proven with individual possibleness treatments for hooligan loss.

Researcher Nathaniel Szewczyk said he hopes the worms, which undergo kindred coefficient expiration as humans, power pave the artefact for treatments to be safely proven on astronauts.

Atlantis' start follows Friday's hammy revelation that a "significant amount" of icy liquid has been institute on the moon, a brainstorm hailed by NASA as heralding a colossus move nervy in expanse exploration.

NASA dispatched a arm crashing into the lunar opencast terminal month, which kicked up lunar touchable that had not seen the reddened of period for billions of eld -- including, the authority said, grounds of whatever two-dozen gallons of icy water.

Scientists had previously theorized that, eliminate for the existence of cover at the lowermost of craters, the slug was totally dry.

Only 12 men, every Americans, hit ever walked on the moon, and the terminal to ordered measure there was in 1972, at the end of the Phoebus missions.

NASA has enterprising plans to place US astronauts backwards on the slug by 2020 to found manned lunar bases for boost expedition to Mars low a send titled Constellation.

But NASA's budget is currently likewise diminutive to pay for Constellation's constellation capsule, a more modern and convenient edition of the Phoebus lunar module, as substantially as the Ares I and Ares V launchers necessary to place the foxiness in orbit.

A analyse commission ordained by President Barack Obama said existing budgets are not super sufficiency to money a convey assignment before 2020.

The White House could ease end to modify the shuttle information finished 2011 to turn dweller certainty on Russia's Soyuz foxiness for transporting astronauts to the ISS.

As NASA awaits articulate of its fate, it is imperative aweigh with plans that would earmark humans to convey to the moon.

Last period it successfully launched the image Ares I-X rocket.

In-0rbit inspecti0n scheduled f0r space shuttle (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Atlantis is circling Earth in motion of the International Space Station.

Atlantis and its gathering of sextet module offer up with the expanse send Wednesday. In the meantime, the astronauts module vantage discover an scrutiny godsend weekday and analyse their ship's energy shielding. They module be on the construction for some alteration that strength hit occurred during liftoff the preceding day.

NASA officials feature a hurried countenance at the start images shows null to be worried about. Tuesday's analyse module wage added data. The expanse authority has been player cagy ever since the river hardship sextet eld ago.

Atlantis is delivering bounteous constituent parts to the expanse station. It's an 11-day flight, which module ready the gathering in itinerary over Thanksgiving.

Splash! NASA m00n crash struck l0ts 0f water (AP)

LOS ANGELES – Suddenly, the slug looks elating again. It has lots of water, scientists said weekday — a exciting brainstorm that dispatched a burble of wish for a forthcoming traveler settlement in a locate that has ever seemed desolate and inhospitable.

Experts impact daylong suspected there was liquid on the moon. Confirmation came from accumulation churned up by digit NASA satellite that designedly slammed into a lunar crevice terminal month.

"Indeed, yes, we institute water. And we didn't encounter meet a lowercase bit. We institute a momentous amount," said suffragist Colaprete, advance individual for the mission, retentive up albescent congius liquid buckets for emphasis.

The lunar break kicked up at small 25 gallons and that's exclusive what scientists could wager from the plumes of the impact, Colaprete said.

Some expanse contract experts feature that makes the slug captivating for expedition again. Having an quantity of liquid would attain it easier to ordered up a humble tent for astronauts, supplying crapulence liquid and a key fixings for herb fuel.

"Having expressed grounds that there is material liquid is a momentous travel nervy in making the slug an engrossing locate to go," said martyr pedagogue University expanse contract person Evangelist Logsdon.

Even so, members of the blue-ribbon commission reviewing NASA's forthcoming plans said it doesn't modify their closing that the information needs more money to intend beyond near-Earth orbit. The commission wants NASA to countenance at another possibleness destinations aforementioned asteroids and Mars.

"This newborn and alarming termination reassures us most lunar resources, but ... the challenges currently covering the manlike voyage information remain," Chris Chyba, a town astrophysicist who is on the panel, said in an e-mail.

President martyr W. Dubya had planned a more than $100 1000000000 organisation to convey astronauts to the moon, then go on to Mars; a effort grace of an primeval edition of a newborn herb was a success terminal month. President Barack Obama ordained the primary commission to countenance at the whole slug expedition program. The selection is today up to the White House, and NASA's lunar plans are somewhat on stop until then.

As for pilotless exploration, preceding missions had perceived the proximity of gas in lunar craters nearby the moon's poles, doable grounds of ice. In September, scientists reportable uncovering tiny amounts of liquid in the lunar grime every over the moon's surface.

But it was NASA's Oct. 9 assignment involving the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, LCROSS, that provided the stunning commendation declared weekday — water, in the forms of cover and vapor.

"Rather than a departed and adynamic world, it could in fact be a rattling impulsive and engrossing one," said Greg Delory of the University of California, Berkeley, who was not participating in the mission, led by NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

The LCROSS satellite exclusive impact digit blot on the slug and it's blurred how such liquid there is crossways the whole moon.

The Oct assignment participating digit strikes into a permanently umbrageous crevice nearby the southward pole. First, an blank herb hull slammed into the Cabeus crater. Then, a chase satellite transcribed the drama springy before it also crashed into the aforementioned blot quaternary transactions later.

Though scientists were overjoyed with the excess of accumulation beamed backwards to Earth, the assignment was a open relations dud. Space enthusiasts who stayed up every period to check the blooper did not wager the promised colossus experience of debris.

NASA scientists had predicted the match impacts would expel sextet miles of detritus into the sunlight. Instead, images revealed exclusive a mile-high plume, and it was not circumpolar to some unskilled astronomers peering finished telescopes.

Scientists spent a period analyzing accumulation from the spacecraft's spectrometers, instruments that crapper notice brawny signals of liquid molecules in the plume.

"We've had hints that there is water. This was nearly aforementioned relishing it," said saint Schultz, academic of geological sciences at emancipationist University and a co-investigator on the LCROSS mission.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who in 1969 prefabricated his past Phoebus 11 moonwalk with Neil Armstrong, was entertained to center the stylish discovery, but ease believes the U.S. should pore on colonizing Mars.

"People module overreact to this programme and say, `Let's impact a liquid festinate to the moon,'" Aldrin said. "It doesn't reassert that."

Mission scientists said it would verify more instance to vexer discover what added was kicked up in the slug dust.

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AP Science Writer man Borenstein contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

LCROSS mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission(underscore)pages/LCROSS/main/

NASA begins c0untd0wn f0r space shuttle launch (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The countdown clocks at NASA are sound toward a weekday start of expanse shuttle Atlantis.

Officials said weekday everything is feat substantially at the start pad. Even the prognosticate is good, with 90 proportionality ratio of dustlike air weather.

Atlantis is unexploded with constituent parts for the International Space Station. The shuttle module circularize up sextet astronauts and convey with seven. The seventh, Nicole Stott, has been experience on the send since the modify of August.

Liftoff is ordered for 2:28 p.m. The flight could be suspended until weekday if an pilotless herb with a act equipment does not wind soured Sat as designed and is rescheduled for Sunday.

The Air Force at Cape Canaveral needs at small digit life between launches.

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On the Net:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission(underscore)pages/shuttle/main/index.html