I found this little bit of news embedded in an article on Reuters.com. While focusing on NASA's wave off again for a landing in Florida - the decision to stay up an additional day due to bad weather, the Obama White House announced the following news.
President Barack Obama would nominate Charles Bolden, 62-year-old retired Marine Major General, and four-time space shuttle astronaut; to serve as the new NASA Administrator.
Now, speaking on the shuttle Atlantis. Hubble Space Telescope repair mission was a success. The shuttle still has enough supplies to remain in orbit until Monday. If Kennedy Space Center doesn't clear up in the meantime, NASA is staffing its Edwards Air Force Base recovery team in case the shuttle must land in California in the Mojave Desert.
Repairs to Hubble included outfitting it with a new panchromatic wide-field camera. This will hopefully let Hubble image objects formed about 500 million years after the birth of the universe according to current thinking. It also has a new light-splitting spectrograph to check out the chemical composition of gas and dust between the galaxies.
UPDATE: from Reuters, I found a photgraph of Charles Bolden on May 24, 2009.
___
Ref. "NASA cancels Saturday shuttle landing, to try Sunday" by Irene Klotz. May 23, 2009. (http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE54E35D20090523).
+033.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment