STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights from mike interbartolo on Vimeo.

[via Laughing Squid image via NASA]

The worms aboard the current Atlantis mission, which launched on Monday, hail from Britain's University of Nottingham, where biologists hope to use their tiny lab subjects to gain insight into the ways that muscles develop and atrophy. Though the worm-testing will take place in zero gravity, it has applications here on the homeworld: people who are bedridden, or who have muscular dystrophy or diabetes, are among those who stand to benefit from this week's research.

The batch of worms currently orbiting Earth started life in a Bristol garbage dump. Given such humble origins, you'd never guess their prominence in modern science. The worms are Caenorhabditis elegans nematodes, a species prized for its archetypal genetic structure and often used in far-reaching experiments. In 1998, for example, C. elegans became the first multicellular organism to have its genome fully sequenced.

Part of the reason C. elegans was included in the current mission is its impressive NASA resume. In 2003, the shuttle Columbia broke apart during re-entry after a sixteen-day expedition, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members. Some time later, a colony of C. elegans that had been on board was found in the crashed wreckage, alive and well.

The worms are just one part of a busy biology week at the International Space Station, where Atlantis is currently docked. A "Butterflies in Space" program will follow the development of a group of caterpillars that went up on the latest flight, and another set of experiments on the cambium tissue in a sampling of Canadian willows will explore how trees grow in microgravity. It's all important work, although you could argue that until we figure out whether ants can be trained to sort tiny screws in space, we haven't really learned anything.

Despite the event's name, the activities will actually continue through May 2nd, where there will be a celebration at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Astronauts from the recent Shuttle mission, STS-119, will be present, and there will be a live broadcast from the International Space Station.

The overall focus of this event is education, and as such, schools and civic groups have been invited and encouraged to participate. According to NASA, there will be educational activities at the museum from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. EDT.

More information can be found here : http://www.spaceday.org

Image from the South Dakota Space Grant Consorteum, 2002

The ISS is growing another section, which will allow more astronauts to live and do research for months at a time in space. Space shuttle Discovery brought up an enormous, 16-ton strut that will form the backbone for this new section. It also brought up enormous solar arrays which should keep the ISS zooming along with photon power.

Images via AP/NASA.

Barack Obama has announced that he'll be retiring the space shuttles in 2010. According to Space.com:

A hydrogen gas leak that foiled Discovery's first launch attempt last Wednesday did not pester the shuttle again . . . Ground crews also spotted a snoozing fruit bat on the shuttle's external tank during fueling. Since the small bat was perched on the side of the tank facing away from the orbiter, and a part of the tank that wasn't cold enough to freeze it in place, NASA decided the winged mammal was unlikely to pose a safety or debris risk to Discovery.

via Space.com.

Top image by Eliot J. Schechter/Getty Images. Bottom image by Bruce Weaver/AFP/Getty Images.

Engineers discovered a fuel leak, as the orbiter was being refueled with hydrogen fuel. The shuttle mission has already been delayed for two weeks, while problems with the flow control valves were being assessed and repaired, although NASA has said this is an unrelated problem. The AP is reporting that officials are aiming for a Thursday night launch provided that the problems can be solved quickly, and officials are meeting later today to discuss options.

This mission was planned to deliver the Integrated Truss Segment, to expand the size of the station, as well as new batteries and solar panels, which will help to accommodate the larger crew compliment that is planned for later this year.

Reporting on a stop the shuttle made in El Paso, the El Paso Times says:

Depending on the weather along the route, the shuttle will arrive at Cape Canaveral either Thursday or Friday.

Endeavour landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California Nov. 30 after a 16-day mission at the International Space Station. The space shuttle had to land in California due to bad weather in Florida. The cross-country ferry is expected to cost more than $1.8 million.

Space Shuttle Endeavour Stops on Cross-Country Flight [via El Paso Times]

AP Photo by Ric Francis.

At 102,800 feet, he will pass the current world record for highest altitude jump, set by Joseph Kittinger in 1960 (pictured). If exceeding Mach 1 doesn't tear him apart, he doesn't go into an uncontrollable spin and die, and he manages to survive lethally low temperatures, pressures, and oxygen levels, his name will go down in the history books. But why is he doing this? It's not just the record.

When Fournier jumps (it's more a question of 'if'; he's been trying this for years, but been foiled by weather and technical difficulties), the gear he'll have on will basically be a spacesuit. This isn't by accident.

When the Challenger space shuttle exploded during launch in 1987 it was just 11 miles above Earth's surface. If Fournier can survive his jump from more than twice that height, he believes he'll show the world that astronauts can return safely back to Earth from the edge of space. Spaceflight would become a lot safer, saving lots of live and possibly even helping to usher in the commercial spaceflight industry.

Source: LiveScience

Images by AP/Dmitry Lovetsky

With more than 8,000 NASA employees looking for jobs when the Shuttle Program wraps up, the private sector space industry could get a serious brain injection.

NASA will continue sending up rockets to launch new satellites between 2010 and 2015, the market for crewed missions to conduct repairs on existing satellites or other sensitive missions isn't likely to shrink. With all those aerospace engineers looking for something to do with their degrees, I predict we will see a burst of private space industry startups. The demand is there. The expertise is there. The real question — will the money be there? Image by NASA. [Information Week]

Airy, increasingly symmetrical as additional modules are added, with shimmering golden solar wings, it summarizes four decades of free-world space-age aesthetics. C'mon people, gaze upon its gossamer elegance! If da Vinci had ever seen anything even remotely like it, he would have shit his pants, rapturously. And if you ever pulled up alongside in a Space Shuttle, we wager you would, too. It kicks Skylab's ass and makes Mir look like it was ridden hard and put up wet. Plus it photographs well, from every angle, and against every background. All photos AP/NASA.