Expedition 19 Crew Launches from Baikonur

Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt of the 19th International Space Station crew launched in their Soyuz TMA-14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:49 AM EDT Thursday to begin a six-month stay in space.

With Padalka and Barratt is second-time spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi, flying under contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency. Simonyi previously flew to the station in April 2007 as a spaceflight participant with the Expedition 15 crew.

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Image Credits (Full Size): NASA

Discovery Crew Undocks, Starts Journey Home

Space shuttle Discovery undocked from the International Space Station at 3:53 PM EDT. The shuttle spent 9 days, 20 hours and 10 minutes docked to the station. Sandy Magnus spent 129 days at the station and 134 days in space.

Discovery's first landing opportunity at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., will be Saturday at 1:43 PM.

During the STS-119 mission, the shuttle and station crews installed and deployed the final set of solar arrays. The arrays provide the electricity to fully power science experiments and support the station's expanded crew of six in May. The flight also delivered Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, who replaced space station crew member Sandra Magnus. She spent more than four months aboard the station and will return to Earth aboard Discovery.

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NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis to Move to Launch Pad Tuesday

Space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to roll out to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, March 31, as preparations for the STS-125 mission move forward. Atlantis is targeted to lift off May 12 to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

The first motion of the shuttle out of Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. EDT. The fully assembled space shuttle, consisting of the orbiter, external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters, was mounted on a mobile launcher platform and will be delivered to the pad atop a crawler-transporter. The crawler will travel slower than 1 mph during the 3.4-mile journey. The process is expected to take approximately six hours.

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Image Credits (Full Size): Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images

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Astronauts Wrap Up Third Spacewalk

Astronauts Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold ended the mission's third spacewalk at 6:04 PM EDT. They helped robotic arm operators relocate the Crew Equipment Translation Aid (CETA) cart from the Port 1 to Starboard 1 truss segment, installed a new coupler on the CETA cart, lubricated snares on the "B" end of the space station's robotic arm and performed a few "get ahead" tasks.

They were unable to deploy the Port 3 unpressurized cargo carrier attachment system (UCCAS) and tied it safely in place while engineers evaluate the problem. Because the issue is not yet understood, Mission Control cancelled the installation of a similar payload attachment system on the starboard side.

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Expedition 19 Set for Thursday Launch to International Space Station

Commander Gennady Padalka, and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt will launch in a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan, along with spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi. They'll join crewmate Koichi Wakata.

Padalka, a 50-year-old Russian Air Force colonel, will command Expedition 19 and 20 as well as the Soyuz spacecraft for launch and landing. He is making his second voyage to the station after commanding Expedition 9 in 2004 and his third flight into space, having logged 387 days in orbit on his previous missions. Barratt, who will launch just days before his 50th birthday, will serve as a flight engineer on board the station and the Soyuz. He is making his first journey into space after extensive experience in the medical field, including serving as the medical operations lead for the International Space Station Program and as a NASA flight surgeon. Padalka and Barratt will spend about six months on the complex.

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Image Credits (Full Size): NASA

Oops: Colbert Wins NASA Space Station Name Contest (ABC News)

ABC News reports that, "NASA's online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. Comedian Stephen Colbert won."

Although the NASA poll only gave four possible choices, their mistake may have been that they allowed write-in votes. Stephen Colbert urged his viewers to write his name in and they did. Of nearly 1.2 million, 230,539 votes were written in for Colbert, handily defeating Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes.

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Image Credits (Full Size): Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images

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Astronauts Prepare for Third Spacewalk

Today's wakeup music was "Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens" by Louis Jordan played for Discovery astronaut Steve Swanson at 6:43 AM EDT, suggested by his children.

Astronauts aboard Discovery begin the mission's third spacewalk at 11:43 AM During the 6.5 hour excursion, Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold will relocate a cart that moves along the rails of the station's truss, attempt again to deploy the unpressurized cargo carrier attachment system, install a similar attachment system on the starboard side, lubricate the space station arm's end effector and reconfigure some cables that power the station's gyroscopes.

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NASA Astronauts Perform Space Station's First 'Spacewalk Swab' to Test Planetary Protection Concept

Astronauts working outside the International Space Station March 19 used an innovative laboratory device to detect how biological material may be spread in space. The experiment is a critical step in developing procedures to monitor and mitigate biological contamination in future missions to other worlds.

The successful spacewalk was the first-ever such use of the Lab-on-a-Chip Portable Test System, or LOCAD-PTS. The portable testing and analysis device, used on the space station since March 2007, is designed to rapidly detect and identify a variety of biological materials derived from various bacteria and fungi.

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Image Credits (Full Size): NASA/KSC

Quadruple Saturn Moon Transit Snapped by Hubble

Saturn's comparatively paper-thin rings are tilted edge on to Earth every 15 years. Because the orbits of Saturn's major satellites are in the ring plane, too, this alignment gives astronomers a rare opportunity to capture a truly spectacular parade of celestial bodies crossing the face of Saturn. Leading the parade is Saturn's giant moon Titan – larger than the planet Mercury. The frigid moon’s thick nitrogen atmosphere is tinted orange with the smoggy byproducts of sunlight interacting with methane and nitrogen. Several of the much smaller icy moons that are closer in to the planet line up along the upper edge of the rings. Hubble’s exquisite sharpness also reveals Saturn's banded cloud structure.

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Image Credits (Full Size): JAXA, University of Alzu

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March 21, 1965, NASA launched Ranger 9 Lunar impact mission.

As part of the pre-Apollo preparations, NASA created the Ranger series of missions to take high-quality pictures of the Moon and transmit them back to Earth in real time. These images were not only to help select landing sites for future Apollo missions, they were also to be used for scientific study.

Read more about Ranger 9.

Image Credits: NASA

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