History > 2006 > USA > Space (III)

Mars rover reaches rim of deep crater

Updated 9/28/2006
2:19 PM ET
By Alicia Chang, The Associated Press
USA Today

LOS ANGELES — The Mars rover Opportunity reached the rim of a deep crater Wednesday after an arduous 21-month trek, marking a milestone in its exploration for clues about the Martian past.

The rover beamed black-and-white images back to Earth showing the crater interior complete with hanging rocky cliffs and rippling sand dunes on its floor.

"We made it!" said rover principal scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University.

The road to Victoria Crater, a half-mile wide and 230-foot deep impact crater, was tough. The six-wheeled Opportunity drove through what scientists called a "wasteland." At one point, it spent five weeks stuck hub-deep in a slippery sand dune before freeing itself.

Victoria, with its exposed walls of thickly layered rocks, is a treasure trove for scientists trying to determine whether the rocks were formed in shallow lakes, which might suggest the planet once could have been hospitable to life.

"This is a geologist's dream come true," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for NASA's twin rovers Opportunity and Spirit, told Space.com. "Those layers of rock, if we can get to them, will tell us new stories about the environmental conditions long ago. We especially want to learn whether the wet era that we found recorded in the rocks closer to the landing site extended farther back in time. The way to find that out is to go deeper, and Victoria may let us do that."

Opportunity will spend a day looking for a more favorable spot around the rim to take a panorama of the vista. Meanwhile, scientists are plotting Opportunity's next move and analyzing the images to find the safest route for the rover to enter.

Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, have been exploring opposite sides of Mars since landing in 2004. Both uncovered geologic evidence of past water activity on the planet.

The rovers, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, have outlasted their primary, three-month mission. This week, the space agency extended the rovers' mission for at least one more year.

Memory lane

Reaching the crater promises to be a trip down memory lane, a look into Mars' history, said David Des Marais, an astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California in an interview with SPACE.com prior to the milestone announced Thursday. By scanning and studying the exposed bedrock within the crater, he said, scientists gain a view into the planet's past.

The plan for studying the 2,625-foot-wide (800 meters) crater is to first map out the terrain that's inside the feature, including the large dune field at the bottom of Victoria.

In an earlier interview with SPACE.com, Squyres detailed what's next: After reaching the rim of Victoria at what's been dubbed Duck Bay, there are good views from there of Cape Verde, Cabo Frio, and much of the crater interior.

From that spot, Squyres added, the rover will use its set of navigation cameras, as well as acquire portions of the landscape with its Panoramic Camera, as well as utilize to some degree its Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer, or Mini-TES. This instrument sees infrared radiation emitted by objects.

Go inside?

With close-up imagery in hand, ground controllers and scientists will begin to piece together a strategy to intensively study Victoria Crater.

According to NASA's Des Marais there remains the prospect of driving into the large crater. But getting out could be tricky, he told SPACE.com.

The Mars Exploration Rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet.

Space.com contributed to this article.

    Mars rover reaches rim of deep crater, UT, 28.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-09-28-opportunity-crater_x.htm

Rocket Set to Launch From N.M. Spaceport

September 23, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:31 a.m. ET
The New York Times

EL PASO, Texas (AP) -- After several delays, the first space-bound rocket is set to launch from a southern New Mexico spaceport.

UP Aerospace plans to launch a SpaceLoft XL rocket early Monday from Spaceport America in Upham, N.M., about 95 miles northwest of El Paso. The 13-minute suborbital flight, among the first from a commercial spaceport in the United States, will hurtle 50 experimental and other payloads about 70 miles above Earth.

SpaceShipOne was the first privately manned rocket to reach space in a 2004 suborbital flight from the Mojave Desert Airport in California.

The rocket to be launched Monday is expected to land at White Sands Missile Range, about 33 miles northeast of the Upham launch site.

Eric Knight, Connecticut-based UP Aerospace CEO, said Monday's flight will also mark the first time the public has ''direct access to space.''

He said payload space on one of his rockets range in price from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the size. Each SpaceLoft XL rocket can hold about 110 pounds of cargo.

Several other UP Aerospace flights have been scheduled for later this year, including an Oct. 21 flight that is expected to carry the ashes of James Doohan, who gained worldwide notoriety for his portrayal of chief engineer Montgomery ''Scotty'' Scott on the original ''Star Trek'' TV series, Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, and several other people.

The Upham launch site is also the planned home of a state-built $225 million spaceport. Richard Branson, the British billionaire founder of the Virgin Group, announced plans last year to headquarter his space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, in New Mexico and launch flights from the spaceport by the end of this decade.

    Rocket Set to Launch From N.M. Spaceport, NYT, 23.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Spaceport-Rocket-Launch.html

Shuttle Lands at Kennedy Space Center

September 21, 2006
The New York Times
By KENNETH CHANG

CAPE CANAVERAL, Sept. 21 — The space shuttle Atlantis glided down to an uneventful pre-dawn landing today, concluding a mission that marked NASA’s resumption of construction on the International Space Station.

The Atlantis fired its engines at 5:14 a.m. E.D.T., sending it falling back toward Earth. It touched down at the runaway at the Kennedy Space Center here at about 6:21 a.m.

The landing was delayed by one day after an object was spotted floating near Atlantis. Several other objects were spotted later.

To allay concerns that pieces of the shuttle’s all-important heat shield had somehow been broken off, astronauts spent Wednesday surveying the shuttle’s underside for damage. They saw none, and Atlantis was cleared for its return.

One piece of the debris was likely to have been a piece of plastic, spotted during an earlier inspection, that had wedged between the thermal tiles and then was presumably shaken loose during tests of the hydraulic systems.

Stormy weather at Kennedy on Wednesday morning probably would have kept Atlantis in orbit another day, anyway, mission managers said.

Despite the glitches — in addition to the unidentified debris, Atlantis’s launching was delayed, first to check from damage and then by malfunctions in a fuel cell and a fuel tank sensor — the astronauts accomplished their primary goal of hauling up a 35,000-pound segment to the space station, the first addition since late 2002.

“I have to remind everyone we’re back in the assembly business,” N. Wayne Hale Jr, the space shuttle program manager, said at a news conference Wednesday.

During the 12-day mission, astronauts conducted three spacewalks to install the segment, which included solar arrays to generate electricity for the station and a radiator to dissipate excess heat.

    Shuttle Lands at Kennedy Space Center, NYT, 21.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/science/space/21cnd-shuttle.html?hp&ex=1158897600&en=333eb098aec19407&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Astronauts find three more objects outside shuttle during inspections

Updated 9/20/2006 8:09 AM ET
By Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press
USA Today

HOUSTON — Shuttle astronauts spotted three pieces of debris floating in space outside Atlantis early Wednesday, a day after the discovery of two other mysterious objects forced a postponement of the landing.

Atlantis commander Brent Jett described the objects as two rings and a piece of foil. He told Mission Control the first object, about 100 feet from the shuttle, was "a reflective cloth or a mechanic looking-cloth. ... It's not a solid metal structure."

"It doesn't look like anything I've seen outside the shuttle," Jett said.

The astronauts noticed the objects during an extensive inspection of the space shuttle using a 50-foot-boom early Wednesday to see if its heat shield was damaged by a mysterious object that apparently floated off the spacecraft.

NASA FOOTAGE: View video of the object (Real) | (Windows)

Jett suggested the three objects might have come from the Russian Soyuz vehicle, which docked with the International Space Station early Wednesday. But Mission Control told him the Soyuz likely was too far below the shuttle, and that the closest the two space vehicles came to each other was 20 miles.

The extra inspection with the boom followed a 4½-hour inspection using cameras on the space shuttle's robotic arm early Wednesday.

NASA managers didn't see anything that concerned them during the initial inspection but decided to go ahead with the boom inspection anyway as an extra safety precaution. The boom, which is attached to the shuttle's 50-foot robotic arm and has cameras and sensors at its end, can look at hard-to-reach places.

The object spied Tuesday appeared to drift away when landing systems were put through a normal but bumpy trial run early that morning.

Worry about whether it came from a crucial part of Atlantis was enough to make NASA postpone the shuttle's landing from Wednesday until Thursday or later. NASA officials said their best guess was that the object was a plastic filler placed in between thermal tiles which protect the shuttle from blasting heat.

But after being unable to determine what the object was Tuesday, NASA managers opted to spend early Wednesday making sure the shuttle was in good shape instead of concentrating on solving the mystery.

The engineers' main concern was the status of the all-important heat shield, because a damaged shuttle skin led to the 2003 demise of the shuttle Columbia.

"We are going to verify that our critical heat shield is in good shape for entry to the best of our ability," shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said, adding that that goal should be accomplished by 2 p.m. ET.

Beginning with the right wing at 12:15 a.m. ET, astronauts slowly swept the shuttle's robot arm above and along Atlantis' heat shield. The two cameras on the arm looked for any damage to the heat shield from the mystery object. NASA doesn't know how big the object is because there was no frame of reference or distance in the video that captured the dark rectangular shape.

A second mystery object was spotted midday Tuesday and photographed by astronaut Dan Burbank. Commander Brent Jett said the object looked like a picture hanging clip. But it may be a garbage bag, which would unlikely be a damage risk, but the issue will be moot if the heat shield looks good, Hale said.

"So far we do not know the identity of the two things that floated away yesterday," Houston spacecraft communicator Hans Schlegel told Atlantis Tuesday night. "Today we want you to survey the vehicle to make sure it's ready for entry. Last night we already surveyed from ground."

Mission controllers also used cameras at the end of the robot arm to take pictures around the payload bay while astronauts slept on Tuesday.

If astronauts are too tired from the shield inspection process Wednesday, NASA could postpone landing until Friday, Hale said.

Mission Control woke Atlantis to Beautiful Day by U2 and astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper responded: "Any day in space is a beautiful day and hopefully tomorrow it'll be a beautiful day in Florida and we'll be back home."

There are two landing opportunities at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday: one in the darkness at 6:22 a.m. ET and a second in daylight at 7:57 a.m. ET.

NASA has not worked on a contingency plan of parking the shuttle at the International Space Station for astronauts' safe haven, but has not ruled that out if serious damage was found.

NASA's handling of the problem is "the prudent thing," said George Washington University space policy director John Logsdon, who was a member of the board that investigated the Columbia accident.

"The point is having a clean vehicle for re-entry, not figuring out what this piece of whatever-it-is is," Logsdon said.

There is little downside to taking an extra day to make sure the heat shield is intact, said risk analysis expert Paul Fischbeck, a Carnegie Mellon University engineering professor.

"There doesn't seem to be much cost in doing it," Fischbeck said. "It's almost like a freebie; an extra day in space."

Hale said NASA's attitude has changed since the Columbia accident.

"Clearly we are taking a much closer look than we ever did," Hale said. "You can call it anxiety. You can call it smart. It's what we do these days."

    Astronauts find three more objects outside shuttle during inspections, UT, 20.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-09-20-shuttle-check_x.htm

Shuttle Separates From Station and Prepares for Return to Earth

September 18, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis said goodbye Sunday morning to their hosts at the International Space Station, separated the two craft and performed a fly-around to get a 360-degree look at the station to check for damage from orbital debris.

The video from space showed the station gleaming against the black backdrop of the void, and then the Earth, and then space again as the shuttle looped around it. The new solar arrays delivered by the shuttle and installed by the crew extended from one side.

With the fly-around completed, the shuttle mission commander, Capt. Brent W. Jett Jr. of the Navy, radioed a NASA science officer on the station, Col. Jeffrey N. Williams of the Army, to say, “It was really a spectacular sight to see your vehicle, looking down, from above the Earth.”

Colonel Williams replied that his team had taken pictures of the shuttle as it circled the station, and added: “It was a great mission. Thanks for all the good work.”

On Monday, the shuttle astronauts will conduct a final inspection of the nose cap and wing leading edge to ensure that no damage occurred from collisions with space debris. The shuttle will return to Earth as early as Wednesday, depending on weather conditions at Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Traffic control around the station is more hectic than usual, with the shuttle departing just in time for new visitors to arrive. The next crew of the station, the commander, Capt. Michael E. Lopez-Alegria of the Navy, and a Russian cosmonaut, Mikhail Tyurin, will arrive at the station on Wednesday with their passenger, Anousheh Ansari, a telecommunications entrepreneur who will be the fourth space tourist after paying a reported $20 million for the trip.

In a news conference from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, played over NASA television, Ms. Ansari, who helped finance the Ansari X Prize competition for privately built spacecraft, said she hoped her trip would inspire others to see space as a reachable, even profitable, frontier.

The shuttle’s mission resumed construction at the station, which had stalled since the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew in February 2003.

    Shuttle Separates From Station and Prepares for Return to Earth, NYT, 18.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/science/space/18shuttle.html

Shuttle Astronauts Complete Final Spacewalk at Station

September 16, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 — A pair of astronauts completed the third and final spacewalk of their mission outside the International Space Station on Friday by freeing up a new heat-dispensing radiator and upgrading communications gear.

The two, Joseph R. Tanner, a former Navy pilot, and Cmdr. Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper of the Navy, spent 6 hours 41 minutes in space completing assorted tasks to get the station ready for further expansion as building of the research outpost resumed in earnest.

Their main task was removing packing restraints and readying deployment of a radiator that was part of the new solar power array set unfurled on Thursday. Shortly afterward, mission control sent commands to unfold the 1,600-pound radiator, and its seven panels expanded to form a 44-foot-long, 12-foot-wide winglike structure.

The radiator is to disperse heat and control temperatures of the electronics inside the solar array module once it starts supplying power to the station in December.

The astronauts also adjusted a communications antenna and swapped out defective parts, retrieved a suitcase-size experiment that exposed various materials to space to see how they fared, cleared the path of a mobile workstation that traverses the station, and rearranged footholds and handgrips for future spacewalkers working outside the station.

Mr. Tanner and Commander Stefanyshyn-Piper conducted their first spacewalk on Tuesday, connecting the 17.5-ton truss structure that the space shuttle Atlantis attached to the station a day earlier. A spacewalk the next day by Cmdr. Daniel C. Burbank of the Coast Guard and Steven G. MacLean of the Canadian Space Agency continued installation of the $372 million addition and freed a big rotary joint that will allow the station’s solar panels to track the sun.

An overloaded circuit breaker delayed the final spacewalk of the shuttle’s 11-day mission by 45 minutes because it knocked out a depressurization pump in the airlock where the astronauts were preparing for their excursion. The problem was caused by heaters cycling on at the same time as the pump and was corrected easily, said John McCullough, the lead station flight director.

With completion of the spacewalks, Mr. McCullough said, the busy mission was winding down. This is the first station construction mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster, which resulted in a nearly three-year grounding of the shuttle fleet.

“We’re all tired on this team, but happy,” Mr. McCullough said at a news briefing from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

On Saturday, the six Atlantis astronauts are to get a half-day off before packing up and preparing for the shuttle’s departure on Sunday. The shuttle is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday.

    Shuttle Astronauts Complete Final Spacewalk at Station, NYT, 16.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/science/space/16shuttle.html

Spacewalkers tested as tool breaks, bolt balks

Updated 9/13/2006 10:20 PM ET
USA Today
By Traci Watson

CAPE CANAVERAL — Home renovations are never easy. In space, where there's no gravity to keep things in place, construction is even tougher.

Two astronauts on a spacewalk to expand the International Space Station learned that the hard way Wednesday, as they allowed two small but potentially hazardous pieces of hardware to escape into space. They also broke an orbital ratchet trying to loosen a bolt and then strained and panted as they wrenched the bolt free.

If they had failed to remove the bolt, a $370 million girder that space shuttle Atlantis delivered to the station last week would have been useless. Put another way: If you're a carpenter working on a home renovation, it would be as though one wobbly nail caused the whole addition to collapse.

"Today we had numerous battles with the hardware," said John McCullough, the head station flight director. "It took a couple strong folks to get the job done."

In the end the spacewalkers successfully finished their work, which was focused on setting up a giant circular structure 10 feet wide that will rotate like a Ferris wheel. As it spins, it will point a set of solar panels at the sun to maximize the power supply to the station.

On Wednesday afternoon, engineers on Earth sent the circular joint spinning to test that it worked. The solar panels are to be unfurled early Thursday. Both the joint and the solar panels are attached to the girder, which the space station's robotic arm clamped onto the rest of the station on Tuesday.

When NASA released similar solar panels in 2002, they stuck together rather than unfolding. Two astronauts had to fix them during an emergency spacewalk. This time NASA plans to unroll the panels after exposing them to sunlight, which helps disable the chemicals on the panels' surface that make them prone to sticking.

Minor setbacks are common whenever astronauts venture out of the shuttle or station. The spacewalks to build the space station are some of the most complex NASA has executed, providing numerous chances to trip up the astronauts.

In 2002, for example, a piece of equipment that spacewalker John Herrington had planned to rely on for his chores broke. He was forced to do his work on the station with one hand rather than two.

On Tuesday, a washer and bolt floated away after astronaut Joseph Tanner lifted a cover off a launch lock. Astronauts are trained to keep a tight grip on even tiny objects so they can't drift away and strike the shuttle or a partner's spacesuit. A collision that punctures a vehicle or suit, allowing the air to leak out, would be disastrous.

As he performed the same task Wednesday, spacewalker Steven MacLean noticed a bolt was missing from a cover he was supposed to reattach to the joint. He didn't see it float away, so he couldn't tell Mission Control whether it hit anything.

At the end of the spacewalk, MacLean's crewmate Daniel Burbank saw a pin floating in the girder and realized it had drifted out of his trash bag. He quickly retrieved it with no damage done.

The bolt that caused MacLean and Burbank so much grief helped keep the circular joint from moving during its ride into orbit. The bolt had to be removed to allow the joint to aim the solar panels.

When MacLean tried to remove it, his ratchet broke, sending him on a 25-minute, 100-foot trek to a storage box to get new tools. When he got back to the bolt, it became clear that it would take more than one man to wrench the bolt out.

MacLean and Burbank panted and grunted for 20 minutes as they shoved on a ratchet with a long extension on it.

"You guys didn't spend enough time at the gym," Tanner said, teasing MacLean and Burbank. Before the mission, Burbank had said he hates the weightlifting regimen required of astronauts.

When the bolt finally came out, Burbank yelled, "Woo-hoo!"

"There was much rejoicing," Tanner told the fix-it team. "You can't imagine the drama inside (the shuttle) and, I'm sure, on the ground."

At Mission Control, astronaut Pamela Melroy joked that the episode answered the question: "How many astronauts does it take to unscrew a bolt?"

"It takes three, two outside (the space station) and one inside," she said to the spacewalkers and Tanner. "Seriously, you guys did an awesome job."

    Spacewalkers tested as tool breaks, bolt balks, UT, 13.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-09-13-shuttle_x.htm

Astronauts Overcome ‘Showstopper’ in Spacewalk

September 13, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

HOUSTON, Sept. 13 — Despite a balky bolt that could have been a “showstopper” for the new $372 million truss and solar array on the International Space Station, two astronauts successfully completed a seven-hour spacewalk this morning.

The astronauts — Daniel C. Burbank, a Coast Guard commander, and Steven G. MacLean of the Canadian Space Agency — got to work at 5:05 a.m. Eastern time, preparing the space station’s new solar arrays to be deployed. Each was on his second shuttle mission, but his first spacewalk.

They removed 14 devices known as launch locks, and 6 known as launch restraints, which had held the rotating joint for the new solar arrays securely in place during the heavy vibration of launch. Doing so freed the joint to allow the 240-foot-long solar array to rotate and face the sun as the station circles the earth.

It was repetitive work. Each launch lock is held in place by as many as nine bolts, and each has a cover secured with more bolts.

Today’s efforts follow the spacewalk on Tuesday by Joseph R. Tanner and Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, who did their work so efficiently that they had time left over for a head start on today’s tasks, and removed two of the launch locks.

That “get-ahead” work led to the one stumble in that spacewalk: a spring-loaded bolt got away from Mr. Tanner as he worked, and raised initial concerns that it might become lodged in the rotary joint. Before long, though, analysts on the ground determined that the 1.5-inch bolt and its spring and washer had actually floated harmlessly away.

About two hours into today’s spacewalk, another bolt got away, this time from Mr. MacLean. He reported that one of the four bolts that fasten an insulation cover over a launch lock had gone missing while he had the cover off to remove a lock. He noticed that the bolt was missing as he reattached the cover. “I did not see the bolt go,” he said. “I pulled the launch cover off, all three bolts were there.”

Ground control asked Mr. MacLean to remove the insulation cover over the lock and see if the washer was floating inside.

“I’m looking inside the whole structure here trying to see if anything’s floating,” he said.” Nothing is catching my light inside the structure, nothing at all that looks like a washer.”

Ground crews then had Mr. MacLean search inside the structure for the bolt and washer, but ultimately decided that since all of the other covers were in place, those bits of metal could not have floated into the structure; they had him reattach the cover and move on.

Astronauts commonly lose small objects in their work. In the last shuttle mission, astronaut Piers Sellers lost one of the spatulas that he and partner Mike Fossum were using to test shuttle repair techniques. “It was my favorite spatula,” Mr. Sellers joked during the mission.

John McCullough, the lead flight director for the station, said in a briefing on Tuesday that on Russian spacewalks, “they throw things away all the time” into the void.

Later in today’s spacewalk, Mr. MacLean struggled with a balky bolt — another problem familiar to any weekend handyman, but one with potentially serious consequences for the station.

At first, the extension on a pistol-grip power tool broke under the strain of trying to budge the bolt. “Son of a gun,” Mr. McLean said, exercising more verbal restraint than weekend handymen normally employ.

He stowed the broken bits and went back to get a replacement, and Mr. Burbank joined him to work a wrench with a “cheater bar” extension to try to budge the bolt.

With both of them groaning with the effort, Mr. Burbank said, “Oh, there goes!” and they accomplished one-eighth of a turn. That began the slow and arduous process of removal.

“Be careful with that — where it breaks could be really bad,” said Mr. Tanner, communicating with the spacewalkers from Atlantis.

In fact, “really bad” was an understatement, since a stuck or sheared bolt could have made it impossible to remove a launch restraint, leaving the rotating joint immobilized. And that would have prevented the deployment of the solar arrays on Thursday, with the potential for more lengthy delays.

The astronauts cheered when they finally removed the bolt, and one of the participants in the discussion said, “Now there was much rejoicing.”

Pam Melroy, the astronaut communicating with the shuttle from the ground, said, “And we appreciate your answering that age-old question” for mission control, “how many astronauts does it take to unscrew a bolt? And apparently it takes three, two outside and one inside. We’re very pleased, you guys did an awesome job and that was great teamwork.”

The shuttle commander, Captain Brent W. Jett Jr. of the Navy, added from aboard Atlantis, “You wouldn’t have imagined the drama inside here, and I’m sure the drama on the ground right now, a few minutes ago.”

Mr. Burbank, speaking with the winded astronauts, said, “It would have been a showstopper for rotation and deploy.”

“You betcha,” added Captain. Jett.

Despite the problems, the spacewalkers continued to work well ahead of schedule, and were able to take on a few tasks today that otherwise would have been tackled on the third spacewalk on Friday. The astronauts were back in the Quest airlock shortly before 12:16 p.m. Eastern time, completing a spacewalk of 7 hours, 11 minutes.

Ms. Melroy congratulated the astronauts and told them that she had just spoken with the next crew of the station, the Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and the NASA astronaut Suni Williams, who are waiting in Baikonur, Russia for launching next week along with a space tourist, Anousheh Ansari, a telecommunications entrepreneur.

The station astronauts, Ms. Melroy said, “were awed by your professionalism, as we were in Houston, and said ‘Thanks for helping us build our house.’ ”

That was twelve hours after the Atlantis crew started its day, when Mission Control played an adrenaline-infused oldie by the Canadian rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive that set the stage for the day’s activities: “Takin’ Care of Business.”

    Astronauts Overcome ‘Showstopper’ in Spacewalk, NYT, 13.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/science/space/14shuttlecnd.html?hp&ex=1158206400&en=6516b57164c30e6c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Shuttle Docks at Space Station

September 11, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

HOUSTON, Sept. 11 — The shuttle Atlantis slid gently into place this morning at its destination, the International Space Station.

At 6:48 a.m. Eastern time, Capt. Brent W. Jett, Jr. of the Navy, the mission commander, guided the shuttle toward the station at a measured speed of one foot every ten seconds to deliver a 35,000-pound truss that will provide additional solar arrays for the half-built station. The mission allows construction of the orbiting laboratory to resume for the first time since the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew in 2003.

The operation was completed 218 miles over the eastern Pacific Ocean near the coast of Chile. The last time Atlantis had visited the station was October 2002. Live video provided online by NASA showed the shuttle nearing the station.

An hour earlier, Captain Jett stopped the shuttle just 600 feet from the station and put it through a delicate backflip maneuver to expose the shuttle’s belly to the station crew. That delicate flip, known technically as a rotational pitch maneuver, allowed the station crew to take a series of detailed photographs that will be tell NASA whether the shuttle orbiter’s heat shield made the trip into space without significant damage from launch debris.

But mission managers made clear in a briefing for reporters yesterday that after an initial analysis of the quantity of debris shed from the shuttle’s external tank on ascent, and preliminary looks at the shuttle’s thermal protection system, they feel sure that the craft is in good shape.

John Shannon, the chairman of the mission management team for orbital operations, said the group had already decided that, barring new evidence, the shuttle’s heat tiles and panels are not “suspect,” and said, “right now, I have high confidence in the thermal protection system.”

At 8:30, the crews opened the hatch separating the shuttle and station, and the shuttle crew went aboard the station to meet its crew, Pavel V. Vinogradov of Russia, Col. Jeffrey N. Williams of the Army and Thomas Reiter of Germany.

The shuttle had been racing to rendezvous with the station since taking off on Saturday, the last possible day of the current launch window after a series of delays for weather and technical glitches.

For the shuttle crew, the next major task after the rendezvous was to pass the enormous truss from the shuttle’s cargo bay to the station. By 11 a.m., the truss, which contains a solar array that will bring additional power to the station, had been handed off from the shuttle’s robot arm to the space station’s robot arm, which will hold it temporarily.

Meanwhile, two shuttle astronauts, Joseph R. Tanner and Heidemarie M. Stefanshyn-Piper, are preparing today for the mission’s first spacewalk, scheduled for Tuesday. Their assignment will be to connect the truss to the station’s power systems, so that its electronic components can be kept from freezing in the chill of space.

At a briefing this morning, Paul Dye, the lead flight director for the mission, called today “an extremely busy day — one of the fullest days I’ve ever put together on paper for a mission.”

But he said that the crew, which has been training for four years, is continuing to work well ahead of schedule.

After the briefing, Mr. Dye stood with reporters watching on a television monitor as the shuttle’s robot arm deftly moved the enormous truss out of the payload bay — with just an inch of clearance between the craft and the truss — as the earth slid by below. “We’re up and clear!” he exclaimed. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

This particular operation was such a challenging test of the shuttle arm operator’s skill that NASA uses a simulation of it to train astronauts in the use of the arm.

Visibly moved, Mr. Dye said, “It’s wonderful to see it actually happening for real.”

    Shuttle Docks at Space Station, NYT, 11.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/11/science/11cnd-shuttle.html?hp&ex=1158033600&en=5b4e598f9b45281c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Space shuttle finally lifts off from Florida

Sat Sep 9, 2006 12:48 PM ET
Reuters
By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Space shuttle Atlantis roared off its seaside Florida launch pad on Saturday after two weeks of delays, setting the stage for NASA to resume assembly of the International Space Station.

It was the final possible day for the launch before NASA would have faced a lengthy postponement while Russia flies a replacement crew to the space station.

The U.S. space agency is eager to resume construction of the $100-billion orbital complex, which was halted after the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster, and has only four years to finish the job before the shuttle fleet is retired.

"It looks like your long wait is over," shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach told the Atlantis astronauts just before takeoff. "We wish you all the best luck in the world, Godspeed and we'll see you back here in about two weeks."

"We're ready to get to work," replied Atlantis commander Brent Jett.

Carrying one of the heaviest payloads ever hauled into space by a shuttle, Atlantis blasted off at 11:15 a.m. (1515 GMT), soaring through pockets of puffy white clouds as it headed up over the Atlantic Ocean.

Two minutes after liftoff, the shuttle jettisoned its twin solid rocket boosters, which will be recovered and refurbished for a future flight.

Atlantis' hydrogen-fueled engines continued firing for another 6 1/2 minutes, catapulting the shuttle to a speed of 17,500 mph (28,160 kph) and into an orbital perch about 140 miles above the planet.

Atlantis' astronauts started working even before reaching orbit, scrambling out of their seats to grab cameras and photograph the shuttle's nearly empty fuel tank separating from the shuttle and falling back toward Earth.

Engineers will scrutinize the images to determine if the tank's insulation remained intact during the supersonic climb to space.

Falling foam insulation caused the loss of the shuttle Columbia, which was struck by a piece of debris shortly after liftoff. The impact damaged the ship's heat shield and the shuttle broke apart 16 days later as it returned through the atmosphere for landing. All seven astronauts aboard died.

BUSY SCHEDULE

NASA spent 3-1/2 years redesigning the tank so that it would no longer shed dangerous debris, then tested the modifications during a pair of test flights in July 2005 and two months ago. Atlantis is only the third shuttle to fly since the accident.

The six astronauts aboard the shuttle face a jam-packed, 11-day schedule. They will carry out time-consuming heat shield inspections mandated since the accident, and also have a complicated installation to perform on the space station.

The shuttle carries a $372-million truss segment that contains the station's second set of solar arrays and a rotary joint so the panels can track the sun.

The chore requires careful coordination between the shuttle and the station's robotic cranes, oversight from NASA's Mission Control in Houston, as well as the full attention of the shuttle and station crews.

Three spacewalks are planned during the flight. NASA has one extra day available if problems develop during the solar array deployment or if engineers need the crew to make additional inspections of the ship's heat shield.

Atlantis must leave the station by September 18 to clear the way for the arrival two days later of a Russian Soyuz rocket carrying two new station crew members and Iranian-born American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari, the first woman to fly as a tourist to the outpost.

Atlantis is scheduled to return to the Kennedy Space Center before dawn on September 20.

Crew members aboard are commander Brent Jett, 47, pilot Chris Ferguson, 45, flight engineer Dan Burbank, 45, lead spacewalker Joe Tanner, 56, Canadian space agency astronaut Steve MacLean, 51, and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, 43. She and Ferguson are the only rookie fliers.

    Space shuttle finally lifts off from Florida, R, 9.9.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-09-09T164758Z_01_B405032_RTRUKOC_0_US-SPACE-SHUTTLE.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

Crew boards space shuttle for launch

Sat Sep 9, 2006 9:30 AM ET
Reuters
By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Six astronauts climbed aboard the space shuttle Atlantis on Saturday for a last-ditch attempt to launch a mission to resume construction of the International Space Station.

With weather conditions forecast to be favorable after a run of bad luck, liftoff is targeted for 11:15 a.m. (1515 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the final day of the shuttle's two-week launch window.

NASA has been trying to get the shuttle and its six-member crew off the launch pad since August 27. Another delay would force NASA to wait until Russia completes a mission to the space station that is scheduled to begin next week.

Weather problems bedeviled the U.S. space agency during its first week of launch attempts. A massive bolt of lightning struck the launch pad, prompting a two-day review to check the shuttle and ground equipment. Then the spacecraft was temporarily removed from the seaside pad because of threatening winds from a tropical storm.

This week's delays were caused by technical concerns: an unusual voltage spike in one of the shuttle's electricity generators and the unwelcome return on Friday of a mysterious fuel sensor problem that dogged NASA last year as it attempted to fly the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

The sensor is one of four that serve as a backup system to make sure the shuttle's engines shut down before the tank runs out of fuel.

Technicians filled the shuttle's 154-foot-(47-metre-)tall fuel tank with a half-million gallons of cryogenic propellants early on Saturday.

The crew, led by commander Brent Jett and including pilot Chris Ferguson, mission specialists Joe Tanner, Dan Burbank, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean, took their seats aboard the spacecraft for the second day in a row. Friday's flight was called off less than an hour before launch.

With Atlantis' flight, NASA plans to restart construction of the International Space Station, which has been on hold since the Columbia accident. The crew is to deliver and install a $372 million solar power module.

About half of the $100 billion orbital outpost remains in pieces at the Kennedy Space Center awaiting rides on the shuttles.

NASA plans to stop flying the space shuttles by 2010 as the United States moves to a new spacecraft to fly crews to the space station and the moon.

The station components were all designed, however, to be launched only on the shuttle, putting pressure on NASA to operate its three-ship fleet consistently and safely so the station can be finished.

    Crew boards space shuttle for launch, R, 9.9.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-09-09T133024Z_01_B405032_RTRUKOC_0_US-SPACE-SHUTTLE.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

NASA to Try 5th Launch Attempt Saturday

September 9, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:54 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- NASA makes its fifth attempt to get Atlantis off the launch pad at 11:15 a.m. EDT. If the mission is scrubbed again, the space agency must abandon for a few weeks efforts to send the shuttle off on a construction mission at the international space station.

NASA stopped Friday's launch try only 45 minutes before its scheduled launch. This time it was a faulty fuel tank sensor -- the same glitch that thwarted two previous missions. The launch delay cost NASA $616,000.

The shuttle's external fuel tanks were filled as scheduled in about 3 hours Saturday morning, exhibiting no problems with any sensor. Weather continued to look favorable, with only a 20 percent chance of storms interfering.

Atlantis, which was supposed to launch on its 11-day mission on Aug. 27, has been kept earthbound by a lightning strike to the launch pad, Tropical Storm Ernesto, a glitch with a 30-year-old motor in an electricity-generating fuel cell, and finally the fuel tank sensor error. Originally the mission was scheduled for May 2003 but was first postponed by the 2003 Columbia accident.

Saturday is the last time NASA has to launch Atlantis before it has to go to the back of the line, behind a Russian Soyuz capsule that is slated for liftoff Sept. 18 on a flight to the space station. Both Atlantis and the Soyuz cannot be at the space station at the same time.

If Atlantis cannot lift off on Saturday, it will have to wait at least until late September -- and even then, NASA will have to waive a post-Sept. 11 rule that says launches must be conducted in daylight so that the spaceship can be photographed for signs of damage.

Friday's launch was scrubbed because a sensor in the hydrogen fuel tank gave an abnormal reading during a test as the shuttle was being fueled.

Atlantis had been fueled with more than 500,000 gallons of supercold liquid hydrogen and oxygen, the six astronauts had donned their orange flightsuits and strapped themselves in, and the hatch to the shuttle had been closed, when NASA decided to postpone the launch with just 45 minutes to go until liftoff.

After problems in previous flights with the sensor, NASA created a new rule requiring a stand-down of 24 hours when one of the hydrogen tank's four engine cutoff sensors doesn't work properly; such a delay would allow engineers to gather more data on the problem.

''We had a lot of discussion. ... We follow the rules,'' launch director Mike Leinbach radioed Atlantis' crew, notifying them about the scrub. ''Ought to feel good that we did that.''

''We understand. We concur 100 percent,'' responded Atlantis' commander, Brent Jett. ''It's the right thing to do.''

A large number of managers favored flying, but opposition to launching was led by NASA's flight crew operations director.

Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said top officials ''decided staying with the plan ... was the prudent thing to do.''

Aboard Atlantis is one of the heaviest payloads ever carried into space -- 17 1/2 tons of girders that will be added to the half-built space station. It includes two solar arrays that will produce electricity for the orbiting outpost.

Atlantis' crew members will make three spacewalks during the 11-day mission to install the $372 million addition.

Construction on the space station has been at a standstill ever since Columbia broke apart on its return home in 2003, killing its seven astronauts.

    NASA to Try 5th Launch Attempt Saturday, NYT, 9.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Space-Shuttle.html?hp&ex=1157860800&en=7cf2132e396f3ec2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Shuttle, Delayed by Faulty Sensor, Will Try Again Saturday

September 9, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Sept. 8 — NASA will try on Saturday for a fifth time to launch the space shuttle Atlantis after a faulty fuel tank sensor forced managers to call off Friday’s attempt with the six astronauts already on board.

The effort on Saturday, scheduled for 11:14 a.m., will be the shuttle’s last chance before the end of the month to lift off for an 11-day mission to resume construction of the International Space Station.

Weather forecasters said conditions at the Kennedy Space Center here should be very good on Saturday morning, with only a slight chance of showers.

The sensor problem that interrupted Friday’s countdown, just 45 minutes before liftoff, was a familiar one. The shuttle Discovery’s mission in July 2005 — the first since the 2003 Columbia disaster — was delayed two weeks while engineers swapped fuel tanks and wrestled with a faulty sensor. Since then, NASA has been using newer versions of the sensors and putting them under closer scrutiny for flaws.

Early Friday morning, an engine cutoff sensor inside the giant external tank failed a routine test as technicians loaded more than 500,000 pounds of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The sensor is one of four in the liquid hydrogen section of the tank that monitor the level of fuel.

If the fuel tanks were to run unexpectedly low during ascent, the sensors would set off a controlled shutdown of the engines so they did not run on empty, which could result in a disastrous explosion. Malfunctioning sensors could also cause the engines to cut off prematurely, endangering the chance to reach orbit.

NASA rules state that if a single cutoff sensor fails, engineers need to drain the fuel tank and verify that all the sensors are working as they go dry. If the other sensors and system work as expected then or during refueling, the Atlantis could be cleared to launch with three of four working sensors on Saturday.

“We feel very good that we really need only three of those engine sensors to work,” N. Wayne Hale Jr., the director of the shuttle program, said at a news conference. “If everything is performing as expected and we just have one sensor that continues to be a bad actor, we’ll launch tomorrow.”

If the Atlantis misses this last launching opportunity, it will have to wait until at least late September or early October for another chance, and that would require changing a requirement for daylight launchings. After the Columbia disaster, NASA was required to limit launchings to daytime so photographs could be taken of potentially damaging debris from the external fuel tank, the type that damaged and doomed the Columbia.

Any launching after Saturday and before the end of the month would conflict with Russia’s plan to launch a Soyuz spacecraft on Sept. 18 to carry a new crew to the space station and to return the laboratory’s departing crew on Sept. 29.

Russian and American space officials have agreed that if the Atlantis launches on Saturday, it must leave the station on the day of the Soyuz launching instead of the day before, as had previously been planned.

Construction of the half-built space station stopped when shuttles were grounded because of the Columbia accident. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is eager to resume building the orbiting outpost by having the Atlantis take up a 30,000-pound girder section that includes a new set of solar power arrays.

Before Friday’s problem with the fuel tank sensor, the flight of the Atlantis had been delayed for nearly two weeks by a lightning bolt that struck the launching pad; by Tropical Storm Ernesto; and by an erratic electrical reading in one of three fuel cells that produces electricity and water for shuttles in flight.

    Shuttle, Delayed by Faulty Sensor, Will Try Again Saturday, NYT, 9.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/science/space/09shuttle.html

Electrical Problem Leads to Another Delay for Shuttle

September 7, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Sept. 6 — Saying they need more time to analyze an electrical problem aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, NASA officials on Wednesday postponed the next launching attempt until Friday.

Officials had earlier delayed a scheduled liftoff on Wednesday until Thursday, but after a day of meetings on the fuel cell problem they decided to take more time to understand its possible impact on the flight.

The Atlantis is to carry a $372 million, 30,000-pound segment, including a new set of solar power arrays, to the International Space Station. NASA is anxious to resume space station construction, which was suspended for three and a half years because of the 2003 Columbia disaster, which grounded the shuttle fleet.

Liftoff is now scheduled for 11:40 a.m. Friday, officials said, adding that there is a 70 percent chance of good weather at launching time.

Before fueling was to begin early Wednesday, technicians discovered that a pump that chills one of the shuttle’s three electricity-generating cells was giving an erratic reading.

N. Wayne Hale Jr., director of the shuttle program, said at a news conference that all of the fuel cells were operating that and flying without fixing or understanding the anomaly would not violate shuttle launching rules. But engineering analysis indicates there is “something funny going on in that fuel cell” that needs to be better understood, Mr. Hale said.

“It’s prudent to spend another 24 hours looking more closely at the engineering analysis to understand what we got,” Mr. Hale said. “We’re going to set up for a launch Friday.”

NASA’s options include flying the shuttle in its current condition or changing the fuel cell, which would take at least a week and end any chance of a launching this month. After this weekend, the flight would be delayed until after the Russians launch a Soyuz spacecraft carrying a new crew to the station on Sept. 18, and bring the outgoing crew back to Earth on Sept. 29.

While only one fuel cell is required for a shuttle to operate, NASA rules call for all three units to be working for the shuttle to lift off. If one of the units fails in flight, rules call for ending the mission and returning home early.

Fuel cell problems have affected several missions in the past, NASA officials said. In 1995, launching of the shuttle Endeavour was delayed eight days so workers could replace a bad fuel cell. A 1997 flight of the Columbia returned to Earth four days after launching when a cell failed. The cell had shown erratic readings before launching, but the Columbia was cleared to fly.

The 260-pound fuel cells combine oxygen and hydrogen to produce electricity for the shuttle’s systems. They also produce water that is used for cooling and for the crew to drink.

The devices, which are serviced between flights, each produce 10 to 12 kilowatts of continuous power in space.

    Electrical Problem Leads to Another Delay for Shuttle, NYT, 7.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/science/space/07shuttle.html

Lockheed Wins Job of Building Next Spaceship

September 1, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY and LESLIE WAYNE

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 — Lockheed Martin won a multibillion-dollar contract from NASA on Thursday to build the nation’s next spaceship for human flight, a craft called Orion that is to replace the space shuttle and eventually carry astronauts to the moon and beyond.

The much-awaited announcement was a major victory for Lockheed and a startling setback for its rival, a joint venture of Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Before the announcement, many analysts had said the deal was the Boeing team’s to lose. A leader in building unmanned rockets and spacecraft, Lockheed has little experience with human spaceflight; by contrast, Northrop, Boeing and their subsidiaries built not only the space shuttle fleet but the Apollo vehicles that took men to the moon in the 1960’s and 70’s.

In a late-afternoon news conference to announce the decision, NASA was tight-lipped about the reasons, saying the details of the two competing bids were “proprietary.” Doug Cooke, a deputy associate administrator who led the selection team, said both proposals “were sound and carefully prepared.”

Mr. Cooke said the Lockheed Martin design looked “achievable,” an indication that it relied more heavily on known technologies than developing new ones. “This is a design that is based on known capabilities,” he said.

The NASA decision is likely to change the dynamics of the space business, setting Lockheed up to be the dominant player in space exploration and perhaps forcing Boeing to rethink its role.

“For both companies, this was a make-it-or-break-it award to stay in the manned space business,” said Brett Lambert, managing director of the Densmore Group, an aerospace consulting firm, adding, “This decision defines who will continue to be a major player in space for the next 10 years.”

The plan calls for building a space capsule with an emergency escape tower similar to the Apollo capsule that ferried men to and from the moon. Orion, though, would be much larger than Apollo. The NASA administrator, Michael D. Griffin, who did not speak at the news conference, has called the new ship “Apollo on steroids.”

Orion is to carry up to six astronauts to the International Space Station; a later version would take four astronauts to the moon, where they would use a separate lander ship to reach the surface. Still later versions could serve as crew-return vehicles for ships that one day may take humans to Mars, NASA officials said.

The shuttle fleet is to be retired in 2010. Orion is to make its first human flight by 2014, but at Congress’s urging NASA hopes to fly at least a year earlier to minimize a gap in the nation’s ability to send people into space. The agency is also developing new booster rockets, based on space shuttle technology, to launch Orion and cargo to the moon. The rocket to launch Orion is set to make its first flight in 2009.

The Orion contract calls for Lockheed Martin to get $3.9 billion through 2013 for designing, developing, testing and evaluating the new craft and building two for initial flights into space. A second stage, from 2009 to 2019, provides $3.5 billion for building an unspecified number of manned ships to go to the space station and the moon, and some cargo-only versions for supplying the station. The contract also includes $750 million for engineering work to modify or improve the ships.

But some experts say that these numbers are conservative and that NASA projects typically run 50 percent above initial estimates, in part because there is little incentive to stay within budget once a contract has been awarded.

Howard McCurdy, a space policy expert at American University in Washington, said that once Boeing’s subsidiary Rockwell got the contract to build the space shuttle, “they had NASA over a barrel — they were like a monopoly supplier.”

The shuttle program is estimated to have cost around $10 billion since it began in the 1980’s. No price tag has been announced for the Bush administration’s plan for manned exploration of the moon and Mars, but estimates have run above $200 billion.

This will be the first time that Lockheed has been given a lead role in manned space flight. It comes after the company failed in a 1996 attempt to design the X-33 space plane, which was to be a replacement for the quarter-century-old shuttle fleet but was abandoned because of technical problems after NASA spent more than $900 million on it.

Joan Underwood, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said that even her company would not know the exact reasons for its selection “until each team is debriefed by NASA in a week or two.”

But she said Lockheed had been the only maker of capsule systems used by NASA since the Apollo program, from the Viking missions to Mars in the 1970’s to those of the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are still gathering information on Mars.

“We are the capsule company,” she said.

The big loser on Thursday was Boeing, which has stumbled in its space business lately. Its entry into the commercial space launching business came as commercial demand for satellites began to fall. Its spy satellite program was so plagued with problems that the Pentagon took it away from Boeing and gave it to Lockheed.

In addition, it was a major contractor for the International Space Station, which has suffered from enormous cost overruns. Its engineers were blamed, in part, for the problems that led to the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003, and the United States Air Force recently withheld $1 billion of rocket launching contracts from Boeing after it was found that company employees had stolen proprietary documents from Lockheed to compete for Air Force rocket business.

A victory yesterday would have been a signal that Boeing had turned the corner.

“For Boeing, it would have been a real vote of confidence in their ability to manage a major program,” said John Pike, director of Global Security.org, an aerospace research company.

Tanya Deason-Sharpe, a Boeing spokeswoman, said that while Boeing was disappointed, it would compete for other manned space vehicle contracts, including the Ares I rocket that will launch Orion into space and the Ares V cargo launcher, also part of the program.

“Boeing is bigger than any single contract win or loss,” she said.

The blow to Northrop and Boeing is softened by the prospect of additional work as subcontractors to Lockheed or in other parts of the program.

Lockheed plans to spread out the work on the program in a number of locations where NASA already has a strong economic and political presence. Work is expected to be done in Houston, where Lockheed estimates that 1,200 new jobs will be created; in Denver, with 500 new jobs; in Florida, with 300; and at the Michoud plant in New Orleans, with 200.

The announcement was welcomed by members of Congress from those regions. Representative Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, called it “great news for Colorado” and “a boon to Colorado’s aerospace industry, which is third in the nation.”

While Lockheed and Boeing were the big competitors on this contract, they are partners on other government space contracts. Both are partners in United Space Alliance, a joint venture that provides support services for the shuttle. In addition, Boeing and Lockheed have formed another venture, United Launch Alliance, to jointly provide Air Force rocket launchings.

Mr. Griffin, the NASA administrator, who has been a forceful presence in the space shuttle fleet’s return to orbit after the Columbia disaster, stayed in the background at Thursday’s news conference. A spokesman said that the announcement spoke for itself and that Mr. Griffin did not take part because his presence would have been a distraction.

Warren E. Leary reported from Washington for this article and Leslie Wayne from New York. Kenneth Chang contributed reporting from New York.

    Lockheed Wins Job of Building Next Spaceship, NYT, 1.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/business/01nasa.html?hp&ex=1157169600&en=0f1673d2e1f02766&ei=5094&partner=homepage