NASA will likely have to continue flying its aging space shuttle fleet beyond its planned 2010 retirement date in order to complete construction of the International Space Station, a presidential panel said Tuesday.

Former astronaut Sally Ride, a member of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, said that it was unlikely NASA could meet the current deadline of retiring the space shuttle by next year, as is currently planned. The first operational flights of the agency's replacement for the shuttle, the Orion spacecraft, may also be delayed a year or so beyond its 2015 target, she added.

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:48:51 AM CDT

Space shuttle Endeavour touched down at 10:48: a.m. EDT. at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Commander Mark Polansky is expected to make a brief statement on the runway after the post-landing walk-around of the shuttle. The post-landing news conference is set for approximately 1 p.m. and will air live on NASA Television. The crew's news conference is set to begin at about 3:15 p.m. The astronauts return to Houston's Ellington Field is tentatively set for about 5 p.m. Saturday.

STS-127 was the 127th space shuttle mission, the 23rd flight for Endeavour and the 29th shuttle visit to the station.

Twin satellite deployments and a check of the systems that will control Endeavour's return home to the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, are on tap today as the shuttle leads the International Space Station in orbit.

Early in the day, STS-127 Commander Mark Polansky and Pilot Doug Hurley will test the thruster jets and aerodynamic control surfaces that will be used to guide Endeavour to a landing planned for 10:48 a.m. EDT Friday.

Once those checks are complete, the crew will deploy two pairs of small satellites.

The first, called Dual RF Astrodynamic GPS Orbital Navigator Satellite (DRAGONSat), will look at independent rendezvous of spacecraft in orbit using Global Positioning Satellite data. The second, called Atmospheric Neutral Density Experiment-2 (ANDE-2), will measure the density and composition of the rarified atmosphere 200 miles above the Earth's surface.

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:02:20 AM CDT

The shuttle crew was awakened at 3:03 a.m. EDT to the strains of "Proud to Be an American" performed by Lee Greenwood. The song was selected for spacewalker Chris Cassidy, a former Navy SEAL, who now has 18 hours, five minutes of extravehicular activity to his credit over three spacewalks.

Commander Mark Polansky and his team will begin checking out the laser rangefinders and other equipment that will be used to provide precise readings on the distance between the two spacecraft.

The station will be reoriented for undocking by 12:38 p.m., and docking latches will open at 1:26 p.m.

The University of Texas at Austin announced this week they will deploy a satellite in space on July 30, 2009 at 7:27 AM CDT via the STS-127 Space Shuttle Picosatellite Launcher (SSPL).

BEVO1 is a 12.5 cm cube and 3 kg in mass. The purpose of the mission is to collect data from NASA's DRAGON GPS receiver.

BEVO1 has two modes, data and beacon. The data mode is on over most parts of the United States, and the rest of the time, the satellite is in beacon mode. Also, anyone tracking BEVO1 can record what they hear at http://paradigm.ae.utexas.edu/ops. The University of Texas also has additional information at: http://www.utexas.edu/news/2009/06/09/picosatellite/

The orbiter Discovery is in the Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building today after a move Sunday from its nearby processing hangar.

Mounted atop a 76-wheel transporter, the spaceship was backed out of its hangar around 7:22 a.m. and rolled into the 52-story assembly building about an hour later.

Discovery is tentatively scheduled to launch Aug. 25 on an International Space Station outfitting mission. Its move into the assembly building was delayed so engineers could perform tests on its external tank.

An unusual amount of foam loss was noted on Endeavour's intertank area during its July 15 launch. Engineers tested Discovery's tank to ensure that the problem would not recur on NASA's next mission to the station.

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:31:50 AM CDT

Spacewalkers Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy completed a four hour, 54 minute spacewalk at 12:27 p.m. EDT.

Marshburn and Cassidy secured multi-layer insulation around the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator known as Dextre, split out power channels for two space station Control Moment Gyroscopes, installed video cameras on the front and back of the new Japanese Exposed Facility and performed a number of "get ahead" tasks, including tying down some cables and installing handrails and a portable foot restraint to aid future spacewalkers. The deployment of the Payload Attach System on the Starboard 3 truss was deferred to another spacewalk sometime in the future.

[img]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/368958main_s127e008608.jpg[/img] Image above: A record 13 astronauts and cosmonauts assemble for a shuttle-station group photo on the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA Sunday morning, the space shuttle robotic arm grabbed the Japanese Exposed Section cargo carrier from the International Space Station's robotic arm and carefully placed the cargo carrier back into Endeavour's payload bay bringing to close this mission's robotics work on the space station's new porch. The 13 crew members aboard the space station and space shuttle transitioned back to work by tucking the Exposed Section away, hosting a joint crew news conference and studying the new procedures for Monday's fifth and final spacewalk.

STS-127 Mission Specialists Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn will tackle a challenging 7 ½-hour spacewalk today to finish swapping out batteries for the International Space Station's oldest set of solar arrays.

Their outing will be devoted entirely to finishing the work started on the third spacewalk of the mission - removing old batteries from the Port 6 truss structure and transferring new batteries from the Integrated Cargo Carrier on the end of the station's robotic arm to the empty sockets on the truss.

Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialist Julie Payette will position Canadarm2 near the truss for the spacewalk and, once all of the battery swaps are complete, maneuver the carrier back into Endeavour's cargo bay. That maneuver will require them to hand off the carrier to the shuttle's arm for re-berthing by Hurley and Commander Mark Polansky.

Japan's Koichi Wakata will inaugurate the use of Kibo's robotic arm for scientific purposes today to install a trio of components on the station's new "front porch."

Today, the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image experiment will be moved first, then the Inter-orbit Communication System and the Space Environment Data Acquisition Equipment-Attached Payload.

After the robotics are complete, the entire shuttle crew will field questions from television reporters.

While the crew slept, Mission Control updated Friday's spacewalk plan. Mission Specialists Cassidy and Tom Marshburn will swap all four of the remaining Port 6 batteries on the fourth of five spacewalks. In addition, they'll install a camera on the Kibo porch that was deferred from the first spacewalk. Cassidy and Wolf completed two of the battery swaps on the third spacewalk, but had to end the excursion early because of rising carbon dioxide levels in Cassidy's suit.