As the crew of
Atlantis prepares to come back to Earth tomorrow following their successful Hubble Servicing Mission (weather permitting), I received an email from JPL inviting me to register for a
Hubble Educator Conference to be held at JPL the weekend of May 30-31. Unfortunately I can't make it, but the email also reminded me of what a "spacey" month May is turning out to be:
- Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) successfully launched and completed Hubble Servicing Mission-4.
- Astronomical observatory satellites Herschel and Planck were successfully launched by a European Ariane 5 booster.
- A Russian supply spacecraft arrives at the International Space Station (ISS).
- At the end of the month a Russian Soyuz will bring three more astronauts/cosmonauts to ISS to join the three onboard for the first crew of six. The station will be truly international with a crew of two Russians, an American, a Canadian, a Japanese and a European Space Agency astronaut (from Belgium).
- The Spitzer Space Telescope, one of the "Great Observatories" like Hubble, used up the last of its coolant as expected, and began its "warm mission" to look at near-Earth objects and extrasolar planets.
Quite an eventful month in space!
As the crew of Atlantis prepares to come back to Earth tomorrow following their successful Hubble Servicing Mission (weather permitting), I received an email from JPL inviting me to register for a Hubble Educator Conference to be held at JPL the weekend of May 30-31. Unfortunately I can't make it, but the email also reminded me of what a "spacey" month May is turning out to be:
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