A Breathtaking Saturn During Closest Encounter

Saturn slices through the Taurus as Orion looks on
Huntsville - Dec 17, 2002

Thirty years ago, Earth and Saturn had an extraordinary close encounter. The ringed planet was only 1.2 billion km from Earth--about as close as it can get--and its rings were tipped toward us. The view through a telescope was simply breathtaking. Next week it's going to happen again.

It started on Saturday, Dec. 7th, when our planet entered a cloud of dusty space-debris. The meteor rate is low now, because we're still in the outskirts of the cloud, but it will increase as Earth penetrates the debris field. "We expect to see more than 100 meteors per hour when the shower peaks on Saturday, Dec. 14th," says Bill Cooke of the NASA/Marshall Space Environments Team.

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There are rumors about the possibility of leaving the ISS unmanned for a bout a year if Russians will fail to deliver their Progress and Soyuz spaceships.

MSNBC wrote a nice article about it. Comments are welcomed.

On Sun, 15 Dec 2002 Robin Haighton, VEFRH the AMSAT-NA president wrote:
... Earlier this month the... ARISS team held one of their semi-annual meetings at... NASA/Goddard near Washington D.C. with...

The ISS Fan Club is proud to announce the introduction of the "ISS Achievement Award".
The IAA is the first ham-radio award issued for the ISS, it is printed on picture quality paper and is so beautiful that your radio shack simply cannot miss it.
Clich HERE for more information.

Submitted by Arthur - N1ORC
It may have been snowing outside, but that did not stop ham radio
delegations from descending on the Washinton D-C area for the Winter 2002
meeting to plan the future of ARISS and manned ham radio on board the
International Space Station. Roy Neal, K6DUE, was there and filed back
this report:.....

Submitted by Arthur - N1ORC
Nearing the end of their third week on orbit, the crewmembers of the
sixth expedition to the International Space Station have dug in to the
agenda of scientific research laid out for their four-month tour of duty.

ISS Partners Agree To Spend More Taxpayer Funds

very expensive eye candy

Paris (ESA) Dec 12, 2002

Space agency leaders from the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia met in Tokyo, Japan, December 6, 2002, to review and further promote International Space Station (ISS) cooperation.

Teacher to Fly in Space

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today announced that Barbara Morgan, the agency’s first Educator Astronaut, has been assigned as a crewmember on STS-118, a November 2003 Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station.