Official News page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS FROM SPACE

by Hazed

Several significant things happened this week.

First, the spaceshuttle Atlantis launched and headed for the Hubble space telescope in order to carry out repairs. It's got a shiny new camera, and some parts have been replaced. The batteries will also get swapped out for new ones.

Then the European Space Agency launched two new satellites on the same rocket. Herschel is the largest telescope ever put into space, with a mirror one-and-a-half times as big as Hubble's. Planck is a survey telescope which will spin to map the sky at even longer wavelengths of light - in the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. It will make the finest ever measurements of what has become known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

This launch was a risky venture since if the launch of the Ariadne spaceship had gone wrong, it would have meant the destruction of two separate missions not just one, which would have been very expensive. In the event, everything worked and the gamble paid off.

Meanwhile, Russia has put the price of rides on its rockets up, so that hitching a lift to the ISS will now cost a few million dollars more. That's inflation for you. Starting in 2012, US astronauts will be charged $51m for a round trip. NASA earlier said it intends to reserve up to 24 seats aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft after the shuttle is retired next year, and has agreed to the raised price.

Finally, the annoying Twitter service has now reached space. Astronaut Mike Massimino became the very first person to Twitter from space. He's on the Atlantis and he found the time on the mission to the Hubble to send a tweet which read:

From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!

Actually, he wasn't logged onto Twitter himself - he sent the message in an email to Johnson Space Center, which then posted it for him.

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