Thanks to Everyone

Sun, 24 May 2009 01:05:16 PM CDT

Before leaving Runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base in California, Commander Scott Altman spoke for his crew to thank everyone for getting them safely back home.

"At last! I didn't realize it was going to be so hard to get back to the Earth, landing here just felt great to everybody," said Altman.

"We're all thrilled to have the mission complete and it was a testament to the teamwork and cooperation of folks all across the country."

The STS-125 astronauts will be honored with a welcome home ceremony that will be held at 5 p.m. Tuesday at Houston's Ellington Field.

Welcome home Atlantis!

STS -125 successfully landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Two earlier attempts to land at Kennedy were scrubbed due to bad weather.

Shuttle Landing Scrubbed

Today's two scheduled landing opportunities for the Space Shuttle have
both been cancelled. They had been 10:00am and 11:39am EDT.

The next opportunity for the Space Shuttle to land here at Kennedy
Space Center is tomorrow (Saturday) at 9:16am EDT (1316z).

Heavy rainfall continues to plague this area.

2009 Hurricane Forecast To Be Released Today

Forecasters to make predictions about 2009 hurricane season

Top federal weather forecasters on Thursday will be announcing their eagerly anticipated predictions for this year's Atlantic hurricane season -- a season likely to be as active as last year.

Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and others will make their forecast public at a news conference to be held at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in northern Virginia.

On hand will be Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco and Bill Read, NOAA's National Hurricane Center director, along with a host of other federal officials.

Government forecasters were right on the mark with their 2008 predictions -- a very active hurricane season. The numbers: 16 named storms, eight hurricanes, five of them major.

Scientists had projected that the 2008 season would bring 12 to 16 named storms that would grow into six to nine hurricanes, two to five of which would be Category 3 or stronger.

Gerry Bell, NOAA's lead seasonal Atlantic hurricane forecaster, has said the gradual warming of the Atlantic Ocean, combined with an active tropical era of storms that began in 1995, will likely mean busy hurricane seasons in the future.

Florida was spared the worst of last year's hurricane season. Only Tropical Storm Fay struck the region hard.

That was not the case for our Caribbean neighbors. Cuba and Haiti got pounded by a succession of major hurricanes and storms, resulting in heavy damage and lost lives.

Fifth STS-125 Spacewalk Under Way

Mon, 18 May 2009 07:30:47 AM CDT

Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel began the fifth and final STS-125 spacewalk at 8:20 a.m. EDT. It is scheduled to last 5 hours, 45 minutes.

Grunsfeld is wearing a spacesuit marked with solid red stripes. Feustel is wearing an all white spacesuit.

For this spacewalk, the astronauts will begin with some setup tasks and then move to install the second battery group replacement in an equipment bay above the Wide Field Camera 2 and next to the compartment where the first battery set was installed on the second spacewalk of the flight.

The two astronauts then will remove and replace one of the three Fine Guidance Sensors, FGS-2, used to provide pointing information for the spacecraft. Grunsfeld and Feustel’s last task before closing up the telescope for good will be to remo

Space Walk Underway

Scheduled to begin work at 8:16 a.m. EDT, the astronauts will remove Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and replace it with the new Wide Field Camera 3. They will also replace a failed science data processing computer that delayed the launch from last October and install a mechanism for a spacecraft to capture Hubble for de-orbit at the end of its life.

Meanwhile, the crew was informed that a focused inspection will not be required for any area of the shuttle. The official decision will be made during tomorrow's Mission Management Team meeting.

The crew also was notified that the imagery from scans of the underbelly and scans of the crew cabin did not sufficiently overlap, leaving a row of 16 heat shield tiles in an area of the port side of the shuttle's nose where there isn't sufficient imagery. The crew will be asked to use the arm's end effector camera to go over that area. The flight director has asked the flight activities officer to potentially insert the brief inspection into the crew's timeline on flight day 5. The survey would take 45 minutes, at most.

There was no further communication with the crew about a possible conjunction due to debris from the Chinese Fengyun-1C weather satellite. The 10 cm object was to make its closest approach to Atlantis at 7:28 p.m. EDT. It passed without incident.


NASA TV LIVE FEED IS POSTED AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

Breaking News: double murder-suicide in League City

By Rosa Flores / 11 News & Associated Press
LEAGUE CITY, Texas -- A League City couple and their son were dead Thursday after an apparent double murder-suicide.


Authorities on Wednesday night found the bodies of Lewis Cantrell III, his father, Lewis Cantrell II, and stepmother Gayle Cantrell in a home in the 2600 block of Chinaberry Park Lane.

Sgt. John Jordan with the League City Police Department said a .38 caliber pistol was found near the younger man’s body.

Jordan said two other siblings, aged 18 and 20, were in the house when they heard gunfire. They managed to escape and ran to a neighbor’s house to call 911.

Police interviewed four people overnight: two family members and two neighbors.

Police said the younger Lewis Cantrell did not live in the home with his parents.

The investigation is ongoing.

Atlantis shuttle launch: Tweets from space?

If watching the launch of space shuttle Atlantis left you wanting more, there's somewhere else you can go to follow the mission to service the Hubble telescope -- Twitter.

NASA astronaut Mike Massimino launched into space alongside our very own Greg Johnson, a graduate of the University of Washington and West Seattle High. Massimino has more than 212,000 followers on the popular micro-blogging site, and told them last month he'd keep them posted -- even from space.

"Next stop: Earth Orbit!!" Massimino -- a.k.a. Astro_Mike -- wrote in his latest tweet, posted about 9:20 EST this morning.

As for the first extraterrestrial tweet, it's been two and a half hours since launch, and followers are still waiting.

"We're going to be really busy so I'm not sure how much we'll do this from orbit," Massimino told reporters at an April news conference. "I'll try to do it when I have free time in between missions. I can't make any promises, but I'm going to try."

Space Shuttle Atlantis is Fueled for Flight

Mon, 11 May 2009 07:17:25 AM CDT

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the loading of about 500,000 gallons of liquid propellants into space shuttle Atlantis' external tank is complete. Now in "stable replenish," the tank will be continuously topped off until the final minutes of the countdown.

The countdown clock is holding at T-3 hours for two hours and 30 minutes. Liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-125 mission remains on schedule for 2:01 p.m. EDT from Launch Pad 39A.

Shuttle Ready To Rescue Hubble

Atlantis' Launch One Day Away
Sun, 10 May 2009 09:37:47 AM CDT

At this morning's final countdown status briefing from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA Test Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said that the countdown timeline is on target and "Atlantis is ready to fly."

Final preparations will continue throughout the day at Launch Pad 39A, and the rotating service structure that surrounds Atlantis will be rolled back into its launch position at 5 p.m. EDT.

Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters improved on the forecast, now giving the team a 90 percent chance to launch Atlantis at 2:01 p.m. EDT tomorrow without weather interfering.

Also this morning, STS-125 Commander Scott Altman and Pilot Gregory C. Johnson once again practiced landings in the Shuttle Training Aircraft as the entire crew readies for their mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Live countdown and launch coverage begins tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. on NASA TV and on the web at www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/launch_blog.html.