Deep Space 1 Missed Photo Opportunity with Asteroid NASA's advanced Deep Space 1 probe missed its chance to catch pictures of Asteroid Braille when it passed only 10 miles away. The spacecraft's auto-navigation system lost track of the asteroid's target at the last minute, and it only caught photos of open space. ABC News Astronomy [...]

Moon Crash Will Also Help Fulfill Geologist's Last Wish Killed in a car crash in Australia in 1997, Gene Shoemaker – co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet – will have his ashes scattered on the moon when the Lunar Prospector crashes in search of water later this week. BBC News Cosmonauts Perform Final Mir Spacewalk [...]

Safe Landing for Space Shuttle Columbia After an extremely short mission to deploy the Chandra X-Ray observatory, the Space Shuttle Columbia returned safely to Earth piloted by Eileen Collins – the first woman ever to land a shuttle. Columbia had been in space for five days. ABC News BBC News Fox News MSNBC Space Chronicle [...]

Prospector Could be Disabled by Eclipse Final plans for the Lunar Prospector spacecraft may run into a little snag. NASA was planning on smashing the probe into the moon in search of ice; however, there's a possibility the upcoming eclipse may damage the spacecraft. It will spend 3 days flying into and out of the [...]

Chandra Successfully Deployed from Columbia Space Shuttle Columbia has completed its primary mission – to deploy and launch the Chandra X-Ray observatory. Once it was separated from the shuttle, Chandra fired its upper stage booster to carry it to a higher 25-hour orbit. Chandra will be 10-100 times more powerful than any other X-Ray telescope. [...]

Columbia Launches Successfully After the Third Attempt After delays from bad weather, and a falsely detected hydrogen leak, the Space Shuttle Columbia finally launched early Friday morning from Cape Canaveral. If the shuttle hadn't been able to launch on this attempt, it would have been grounded for at least an additional month. This shuttle mission [...]

Columbia Launch Aborted For the Second Time Bad weather at Cape Canaveral scrubbed the launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia for the second time. Thunderstorms surrounded the launch facility, and the director held the countdown at the five-minute mark throughout their entire window of opportunity, but eventually the launch was called off. They'll try again [...]

Shuttle Launch Aborted at Last Second Everything was ready to go, but a hydrogen leak detected in the last few seconds caused NASA to abort the launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia. It turned to be a false alarm, and the shuttle is being prepared for another window on Thursday. ABC News BBC News CNN [...]

Shuttle Ready for Historic Launch on Apollo 11's 30th Anniversary Space Shuttle Columbia sits ready on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral for its historic launch on Tuesday. Carrying the space-based Chandra X-Ray observatory, and led by NASA's first female commander, the launch marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. The shuttle [...]

Progress Supply Ship Docks with Mir Russia was finally able to successfully launch the Progress supply ship to restock Mir for its final days. The launch was in jeopardy because of a launch ban by the Kazakhstan government at the Baikonur cosmodrome after a rocket mishap with a Russian satellite. Progress docked with Mir early [...]