NASA Announces New Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle

NASA said on Tuesday that a new spacecraft to take humans into deep space will be based on designs of the Orion crew exploration vehicle. The Orion capsule is a surviving component of the Constellation manned space exploration program that President Barack Obama scrapped last year for being behind schedule and over budget.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden said the designs for Orion would be used to push ahead with a new spacecraft known as the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), which would lift off aboard a massive rocket. "We are committed to human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and look forward to developing the next generation of systems to take us there," Bolden said in a statement released ahead of a press conference.

First Man in Space: A Feat Remembered

It was the Soviet Union's own giant leap for mankind, one that would spur a humiliated America to race for the moon. It happened 50 years ago this Tuesday, when an air force pilot named Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. The 27-year-old cosmonaut's mission lasted just 108 minutes and was fraught with drama: a break in data transmission, glitches involving antennas, a retrorocket and the separation of modules. And there was an overarching question that science had yet to answer: What would weightlessness do to a human being?

"There were all kinds of wild fears that a man could lose his mind in zero gravity, lose his ability to make rational decisions," recalls Oleg Ivanovsky, who oversaw the construction and launch of the Vostok spacecraft that carried Gagarin. The flight was to be fully automatic, but what if weightlessness caused Gagarin to go mad and override the programmed controls? The engineers' solution was to add a three-digit security code that the cosmonaut would have to enter to gain command of the spacecraft. It proved unnecessary. The flight went off safely, and the handsome Russian with the big smile became a poster boy for the communist world.

Mock Mars Mission Simulates Landing

After 257 days in a locked, windowless steel capsule, researchers on a mock trip to Mars ventured from their cramped quarters in heavy space suits Monday, trudging into a sand-covered room to plant flags on a simulated Red Planet. The all-male crew of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese entered a network of modules at a Moscow space research center last June to imitate the 520-day flight and see how they cope with the constricted, isolating conditions of space travel — minus the weightlessness.

Several participants donned 30-kilogram (66-pound) suits to perform Monday's mock landing in an adjacent capsule. They planted the flags of Russia, China and the European Space Agency, took "samples" from the ground and conducted faux scientific experiments. Psychologists said long confinement would put the team members under stress as they grow increasingly tired of each other's company. Psychological conditions can even be more challenging on a mock mission than a real flight because the crew won't experience any of the euphoria or dangers of actual space travel.

Discovery Crew Prepares for the Last Lift-off

Thousands of people are expected to turn out on Nov. 1 to watch the final launch of the space shuttle Discovery. Discovery's 35th journey to the International Space Station will be conducted by Commander Steve Lindsey and his five-member crew: Pilot Eric Boe and mission specialists Michael Barratt, Tim Kopra, Alvin Drew and Nicole Stott. The 11-day mission will deliver a pressurized logistics module called Leonardo, a humanoid robot named Robonaut 2 and key spare parts to the space station. Two space walks are also planned, AFP reported.

Lift-off is scheduled for 4:40 p.m. EDT. Tickets for viewing the launch on the NASA Causeway, about 6 miles from the shuttle's Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., sold out weeks ago, Space.com reported. But fans of the space program are also expected to gather in Space View Park and Parrish Park in Titusville, Fla., and at Port Canaveral.

ISS Dodges Piece of Old NASA Satellite

The International Space Station has steered clear of space junk. Flight controllers fired thrusters on the space station Tuesday morning. That moved the orbiting lab and its crew of six safely away from a chunk of an old NASA research satellite.

The debris originally was projected to come within one-tenth of a mile of the space station. The latest estimate put the close approach at a half-mile. Because of the uncertainty, NASA elected to move the space station. NASA says the space station relocation will have no significant impact on next Monday's launch of the space shuttle Discovery.

Astronauts' Fingernails Fall Off Due to Glove Design

Astronauts with wider hands are more likely to have their fingernails fall off after working or training in space suit gloves, according to a new study. In fact, fingernail trauma and other hand injuries—no matter your hand size—are collectively the number one nuisance for spacewalkers, said study co-author Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The trouble is that the gloves, like the entire space suit, need to simulate the pressure of Earth's atmosphere in the chilly, airless environment of space. The rigid, balloonlike nature of gas-pressurized gloves makes fine motor control a challenge during extravehicular activities (EVAs), aka spacewalks. In several cases, sustained pressure on the fingertips during EVAs caused intense pain and led to the astronauts' nails detaching from their nailbeds, a condition called fingernail delamination.

Force Fields Could Protect Mars Missions

NASA is nervous about sending astronauts to Mars -- and understandably so. Six months' exposure to the wind of high-energy particles streaming from the sun could indeed prove deadly. But a team of researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) near Oxford, UK, has hit upon a phenomenon that might just solve the problem.

They have shown that a magnet no wider than your thumb can deflect a stream of charged particles like those in the solar wind. It gives new life to an old idea about shielding spacecraft, and might just usher in a new era of space travel. "Space radiation has been called the only showstopper for the crewed exploration of space," says Ruth Bamford of RAL. "Our experiment demonstrates there may be a way the show can go on."

US-Russian crew blasts off to space station

Two U.S. astronauts and a Russian crewmate blasted off successfully Wednesday on a mission to the international space station that will see the last ever shuttle visit to the orbiting lab.

With the shuttle being phased out, the venerable Soyuz will take over as the only means by which astronauts will be able to travel to the space station, which has raised some concern about over-reliance on the Soviet-designed craft.