European Space Agency mission specialist Paolo Nespoli (left) and NASA’s STS-120 commander Pam Melroy speak to Italian president Giorgio Napolitano from inside the Harmony Node 2, built by Franco-Italian joint venture Thales Alenia Space, that Space Shuttle Discovery delivered to the International Space Station last week.
Nespoli’s mission, to aid the installation of Harmony, is called Esperia. While Harmony’s installation has been successsful, the re-location of a solar array, another part of STS-120’s activities, has had a hitch.
NASA is now investigating the solar array damage
The US space agency has also announced Constellation programme exploration work for its centres around the US. More on that from me later this week.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has posted an update for its Kaguya/Selene lunar mission
Russia is to launch a German spacecraft that will have synthetic aperture radar apparently
Russian newswire RIA Novosti is also reporting that South Korea’s own rocket, developed with Russian help, is to make its first launch next year
For those of you with a need for the company of other space exploration enthusiasts Hobbyspace.com has links to forthcoming events
And “classic liberal”, but I also suspect enthusiastic watcher of the Fox News channel, Rand Simberg, Transterrestrial Musing’s blogger, tells it like it is on owning extraterrestrial real estate
And finally, following yesterday’s video story about Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan’s comments about NASA’s new lunar lander development, now watch the full 8min interview with Cernan here
