Space shuttle Atlantis and its seven astronauts took a detour across the US and landed safely in California, ending a two-week mission of construction on the international space station.

Atlantis’ homecoming yesterday was the 51st time a space shuttle touched down at the Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert since 1981.

“It’s just great to be back on planet Earth,” shuttle commander Rick Sturckow said while standing on the tarmac. “There were a lot of challenges on this mission and they were all dramatic. All the solutions worked well.”

NASA had hoped to bring Atlantis home to Florida, but bad weather for two days forced them to divert it to California – a move that will cost US$1.7m because the shuttle has to be ferried back to Kennedy Space Center atop a jumbo jet.

Backdropped by the blackness of space and Earth’s horizon, the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Atlantis move farther apart at the end of STS-117’s mission, during which the shuttle and station crews concluded about eight days of cooperative work. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 10:42 a.m. EDT on June 19, 2007. STS-117 pilot Lee Archambault was at the controls for the departure and fly-around, which gave Atlantis’ crew a look at the station’s newly expanded configuration.

It make me want to go out and get one of these. Who would not want to see what is going on in the space station?

Sometimes baby monitors pick up more than they should. People have gotten radio stations or images of a neighbor’s baby. Now Nancy Pender reports a Palatine mom got quite a shock when here baby monitor started picking up broadcasts from the International Space Station.

Baby Monitor Picks Up NASA Signal of Space Station

Thanks Lynn!

In what had to have been among the eeriest sensations ever felt by a human being, Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean took this photograph of astronaut Charles Conrad examining the Lunar Surveyor 3, a craft that landed on the moon nearly two years prior to Bean and Conrad’s own arrival.

A half-century of exploration has left the lunar surface littered with discarded spacecraft, and a bevy of upcoming missions means there’s more moon mess to come.

Man’s exploration of the moon has left behind over 20 tons of probes, rovers, rocket boosters and assorted other detritus scattered around the whole of the lunar surface. The moon has no atmosphere to burn up incoming objects, so once a spacecraft’s orbit decays, it will eventually end up in a pile somewhere on the surface.

The next four lunar probes are to eventually be added to the great lunar junkyard.

Junkyard on the Moon

A true US space pioneer Walter “Wally” Schirra, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts who flew in the early days of NASA and the space race has passed away.

He was the only man to fly on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. He is a true “Space Cowboy”. In 1962 he became the third American to orbit the Earth. Three years later he led the first meeting of two spacecraft in orbit, as commander of Gemini 6.

He was the first to rendezvous with a spacecraft in earth orbit. He did not walk on the moon, but was key in ensuring that the Apollo program continue after the events around Apollo 1. He was the commander of the first man-flight in the program Apollo 7.

Schirra stated a clear definition of a space rendezvous. He said:

“Somebody said … when you come to within three miles, you’ve rendezvoused. If anybody thinks they’ve pulled a rendezvous off at three miles, have fun! This is when we started doing our work. I don’t think rendezvous is over until you are stopped - completely stopped - with no relative motion between the two vehicles, at a range of approximately 120 feet. That’s rendezvous! From there on, it’s stationkeeping. That’s when you can go back and play the game of driving a car or driving an airplane or pushing a skateboard — it’s about that simple.”

“It’s a terrible loss of a dear friend, cherished comrade and a brother,” said Schirra’s fellow Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter. “Despite our good natured competition for flights into space, Wally strove to bring a smile to everyone he met and its with a smile that I will forever fondly remember him.”

“We at NASA note with sadness the loss of yet another of the pioneers of human space flight,” a Nasa statement said.

“We who have inherited the space program will always be in his debt.”

Mr Schirra, died of natural causes on Wednesday night at a hospital in La Jolla, California, the space agency said.

There are now only two surviving members of the Mercury Seven astronauts, who became national heroes as the US took on the former Soviet Union in the space race.

Original Astronaut Wally Schirra Dies at 84

This is great and some of the best news about getting into space for the average person. I mean who has the millions of dollars to visit ISS on the a Russian Soyuz spacecraft .

I mean hats off to the Russians, who not only are getting people into space but funding their program with space touriusm. The $20 million a ticket is just a little more than I can afford to get up there, but someday perhaps.

But the Russian Space Agency is not the only player in space. Virgin Galactic is going to get that $20 million down to about $200,000.

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, announced plans Tuesday for a lottery that would send its winner into space in a bid to spread the dream of extraterrestrial travel beyond the super-wealthy.

Aldrin, who followed U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong onto the moon in July 1969, said the lottery would be run through his ShareSpace Foundation, which he set up to promote interest in science and space travel in schools.

Details of the competition are still sketchy, Aldrin said at a space investment conference on Wall Street on Tuesday, with the legal status of selling lottery tickets still to be resolved.

He said the idea was to offer the top prize of a flight into earth’s orbit, but it was not yet decided on what spacecraft.

Aldrin added that the winner would have to be over 18 years old and in good physical condition. The prize would not be transferable or salable on eBay.

Astronaut Aldrin plans space travel lottery

Google News

So, you can be an uber geek and get this little Java app to run on your PDA or cool Java enabled phone. Because, everyone is going to call you and will need to know what time it is on the red planet.

Mars24 is a Java program and browser applet which displays a Mars “sunclock”, a graphical representation of the planet Mars showing its current sun- and nightsides, along with a numerical readout of the time in 24-hour format. Other displays include a plot showing the relative orbital positions of Mars and Earth and a diagram showing the solar angle for a given location on Mars.

NASA GISS: Mars24 - Time on Mars

This is really cool. Satellites have lots of camaras, beware!

To view the Earth as currently seen from a satellite in Earth orbit, choose the satellite from the list below and press the “View Earth from Satellite” button. The satellite database is updated regularly but may not reflect the current position of satellites, such as the U.S. Space Shuttle, which maneuver frequently after reaching orbit.

View from Satellite