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Asteroid mission cancelled

NASA on Thursday canceled "Dawn" mission to visit two asteroids five months after the program was told to stand down because of cost overruns and technical problems.

Dawn was supposed to lift off in June on a nine-year voyage to two of the solar system’s largest asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, which reside in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn project was capped at around $371 million, project scientists said previously. But the program was ordered to stand down after scientists asked for an additional $40 million last year. Exact costs were not available Thursday.

posted by: kyawoo at 11:51 | link | comments |
unmanned missions, asteroids

International partners agree to complete assembly of ISS

The U.S., Russia and the other government partners in running the International Space Station agreed today on a plan to complete the outpost and may resume construction as soon as six months from now.

NASA plans 16 space shuttle flights to finish building the station.

The accord helps finish the space station assembly by the time the shuttle must be retired. The shuttle is the only vehicle capable of delivering modules to the outpost, using a Canadian-built robotic arm to hoist the hardware from its cargo bay.

The space station orbits about 240 miles above Earth and currently has a Russian cosmonaut and a U.S. astronaut as its residents. The number of occupants would rise to six in 2009 under the plan announced today.

The European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory module will be delivered to Kennedy by the end of May and will be launched on the seventh shuttle flight.

The first of three Japanese modules will go up on the eighth shuttle flight, with subsequent modules to be taken on the ninth and 12th missions.

posted by: kyawoo at 20:21 | link | comments |
space station