Check out the lunar eclipse picture by Ed Parsons (former CTO of Ordnance Survey) shot in England. Similar shots available all over the net (thanks to digital cameras), but here are a few others I found: Austin, TX via Weather Underground Enid, OK via Weather Underground Minneapolis, MN via Weather …

According to an article from this morning's Washington Post, the Hubble Space Telescope, producer of many of the best space images the world has seen, is now limping along without the use of its Advanced Camera for Surveys. The project page provides some details of the ACS, which is the …

From Space.com, and JHU's Applied Physics Lab, Pluto's moons (heretofore referred to as S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2) have now been christened Hydra and Nix. The press release (from APL, not from the moons, which could not be reached for comment) details the mission that …

Saying that the focusing problem wouldn't adversely affect the mission to visit comet Tempel 1 in July, NASA announced that Deep Impact (launched in January) has a focusing problem. This according to an article from SpaceToday.Net

According to SpaceFlight Now's article (thanks to SpaceToday.net for the pointer), NASA has set May 15 at 3:50pm as the launch date for the next shuttle (Discovery). If all goes well, the next launch after that will be July 12.

In 10 countries in the South Pacific, they certainly did. According to an article from News Interactive, ten countries in the South Pacific are without general telephone and internet service until they are able to get their dishes re-pointed and service re-established through another carrier. Left in the virtual dark …

According to press reports, including this article from BBC News, Sir Richard Branson has entered into an agreement with Scaled Composites (Burt Rutan's company) to create and fly a commercial space vehicle for tourism purposes starting in 2007.

As Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites attempts to put Space Ship One up for the second time in four days, two schools from outside of Boston and the Clay Center for Science and Technology are tracking to the ship to the edge of space. Unfortunately, I can't find a feed online …

The XPrize folks have announced that two teams (Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne and the Canadian da Vinci Project) have officially announced that they will compete this fall to launch competitors for the prize. SpaceShipOne will have its first official flight on or about September 29th, which gives it until October 13th …

NASA announced that they have redesigned the bipod fitting between the external tank and the main body of the shuttle. In response to concerns over falling debris from the previous design (which involved foam insulation around the bracket in order to keep the bracket from icing), the designers have now …

The FAA's Office of the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) has published a bunch of information including a very nice glossy brochure about the launch vehicles and launch sites in the US being used for commercial launches. Find them here.

CNN will have live coverage starting some time before the 0630 PDT launch of the Scaled Composites Space Ship One commercial spacecraft. If you can, keep your eyes on this one. Burt Rutan's engineering funded by Paul Allen's money.

NASA has extended the mission of the Mars Rovers to an additional 5 months. The press release, dated April 8, details the successes of the current program and offers the possibility that even though the mission is being extended to September (including $15 Mil in funding for the human staff …

I first met Burt Rutan in the 1970's at an EAA(Experimental Aircraft Association) convention in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. At the time, I was just a kid fascinated with planes, but my grandfather (building a BD-5 at the time) took me to see the planes and we got to have a …

According to an article from Wired, NASA has made a final decision to stop flights to the Hubble Space Telescope, despite complaints from amateur and professional astronomers alike. The big claim is that they can't rescue the crew of the shuttle if it goes up there to service the Hubble …

NASA has posted details on how the zoom sequence at the SuperBowl was created. I didn't watch it, so all I've seen was the footage on the NASA site, but it looks pretty cool. It took a number of satellites to do it, and not all of them are part …

A quick update from the New York Times about the Mars Rovers. Spirit (the one with the memory problem) is busy erasing its flash memory in hopes that will solve its storage problem, while Opportunity continues to look at soil samples. So far, the most interesting thing found are some …

On the anniversary of the explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia upon reentry to the atmosphere, the Washington Post has an article about Jon Clark (husband of one of the fallen astronauts) and his son, Iain. The article is a sometimes-unpleasant account of some of the family events that preceded …

With the recent problems with the Mars Rover, Spirit, the fine folks at Wired did an interview with Glenn Reeves, the software architect for the Mars Rover. In it, Reeves describes the basic process of bringing the rover back on line and how they wee able to regain control. He …

If you're looking for an answer to one of those annoying astronomy questions (such as "Will the Galileo probe blow up Jupiter in a chain reaction?"), the Christian Science Monitor has an article pointing you at astronomer Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy web page. The page contains a wealth of good …