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It’s arrival day. The space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to dock with the International Space Station a little after 5 p.m. EST.

The seven members of shuttle Endeavour’s crew, Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Eric Boe and mission specialists Don Pettit, Steve Bowen, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Shane Kimbrough and Sandra Magnus, were awakened at 9:25 a.m. EST for rendezvous and docking day. The wakeup music was “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones.

The primary objective of the crew’s 15-day mission is to prepare the station to accommodate six members for long-duration stays. In addition, traveling with STS-126 is a new Expedition 18 crew member, astronaut Sandra Magnus, who will replace Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff.

Today’s major events include:

• Rendezvous with station
• Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver photography by the Expedition 18 crew
• Docking to Harmony/Pressurized Mating Adapter 2
• Hatch opening and welcome
• Crew exchange of Magnus for Chamitoff
• OBSS handoff from Canadarm2 to the shuttle robotic arm

NASA senior managers expressed their satisfaction with space shuttle Endeavour’s successful launch during a briefing after the liftoff of STS-126.

“It was a great launch and a great team,” said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations William Gerstenmaier talked about the enormous volume of work the Kennedy Space Center team had to deal with to get Atlantis rolled back, Endeavour rolled around and readied for launch, in addition to handling the incoming Ares rocket segments for the upcoming test flight next year.

Gerstenmaier thanked the Kennedy team “for giving us such a great launch.” Even the moon cooperated by adding a beautiful backdrop to an awesome launch.

Mission Management Team Chair LeRoy Cain said, “We’re off to a great start on what’s going to be an extremely complex and challenging mission.”

NASA Launch Director Mike Leinbach remarked how pleased he is to celebrate Endeavour’s launch, although a minor issue arose during the last few minutes of the countdown. A door in the White Room was found to be unpinned, but after discussion with the launch team confirming that it would not affect the safety of the shuttle, the countdown resumed.

“It was a great count and I was very, very impressed with the launch team,” said Leinbach.

NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson commands the seven-member crew, which includes Pilot Eric Boe, Mission Specialists Donald Pettit, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Steve Bowen, Shane Kimbrough and Sandra Magnus.

In Endeavour’s payload bay, the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo is packed full of about 14,500 pounds of equipment and supplies, making it one of the heaviest modules in shuttle history.

Also included in the payload, are additional sleeping quarters, a second toilet, an exercise device and other household-type equipment.

The prime objective of the 15-day mission is to prepare the International Space Station to accommodate six members for long-duration stays.

Four planned spacewalks will focus on servicing the station’s two Solar Alpha Rotary Joints, or SARJ, which are needed to track the sun for electric power.

Endeavour and its crew are set to land at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center after more than two weeks in space.

Liftoff of Endeavour remains on schedule for 7:55 p.m., EST, Friday. The weather forecast calls for a 70 percent chance of acceptable conditions and the launch team reports no technical issues.

The flight of space shuttle Endeavour includes several significant steps to install new crew equipment inside the International Space Station and service the solar array joints of the laboratory. During STS-126, the crew of space shuttle Endeavour and the space station will:

– Exchange crew members. Sandra Magnus will swap places with current station resident Greg Chamitoff.

– Conduct four spacewalks. Working in teams of two, astronauts will emerge from the space station’s Quest airlock and work on the two large joints that turn the station’s massive solar array “wings.” They are to service the starboard side joint and perform preventative maintenance on the port side joint.

– Install new crew quarters, a galley, waste water recycling system and oxygen generator inside the space station. The equipment has been packed inside refrigerator-sized racks that require forklifts to lift them on Earth. But in space, a single astronaut can move a rack around with little problem.

Endeavour and its crew are to land at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center after 15 days in space.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle Endeavour is set for launch on Friday for the STS-126 mission to the International Space Station. Commander Chris Ferguson and his six crewmates are scheduled to lift off at 7:55 p.m. EST.

Endeavour’s STS-126 flight will feature important repair work to the station and prepare it for housing six crew members during long-duration missions. The primary focus of the 15-day flight and its four planned spacewalks is to service the station’s two Solar Alpha Rotary Joints, which allow its solar arrays to track the sun. Endeavour will carry about 32,000 pounds to orbit, including supplies and equipment necessary to double the crew size from three to six members in spring 2009. The new station cargo includes additional sleeping quarters, a second toilet and a resistance exercise device.

Ferguson will be joined on STS-126 by Pilot Eric Boe and Mission Specialists Donald Pettit, Steve Bowen, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Shane Kimbrough and Sandra Magnus. Magnus will replace space station crew member Greg Chamitoff, who has been aboard the station for more than five months. She will return to Earth during the next shuttle mission, STS-119, targeted to launch in February 2009.

The mission comes as Atlantis’ STS-125 Hubble Space Telescope servicing flight, originally set for last month, was put on hold when Tropical Storm Fay closed the Kennedy Space Center. Serendipitously, during that delay, a data recorder aboard the Hubble failed. Mission managers opted to push back Atlantis’ mission to allow for a spare part to be added to the repair checklist.

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has ceased communications after operating for more than five months. As anticipated, seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot’s arctic landing site is not providing enough sunlight for the solar arrays to collect the power necessary to charge batteries that operate the lander’s instruments.

Mission engineers last received a signal from the lander on Nov. 2. Phoenix, in addition to shorter daylight, has encountered a dustier sky, more clouds and colder temperatures as the northern Mars summer approaches autumn. The mission exceeded its planned operational life of three months to conduct and return science data.

The project team will be listening carefully during the next few weeks to hear if Phoenix revives and phones home. However, engineers now believe that is unlikely because of the worsening weather conditions on Mars. While the spacecraft’s work has ended, the analysis of data from the instruments is in its earliest stages.

“Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I’m confident we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Launched Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix landed May 25, 2008, farther north than any previous spacecraft to land on the Martian surface. The lander dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Red Planet’s soil. Among early results, it verified the presence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface, which NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter first detected remotely in 2002. Phoenix’s cameras also returned more than 25,000 pictures from sweeping vistas to near the atomic level using the first atomic force microscope ever used outside Earth.

“Phoenix not only met the tremendous challenge of landing safely, it accomplished scientific investigations on 149 of its 152 Martian days as a result of dedicated work by a talented team,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Phoenix’s preliminary science accomplishments advance the goal of studying whether the Martian arctic environment has ever been favorable for microbes. Additional findings include documenting a mildly alkaline soil environment unlike any found by earlier Mars missions; finding small concentrations of salts that could be nutrients for life; discovering perchlorate salt, which has implications for ice and soil properties; and finding calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.

Phoenix findings also support the goal of learning the history of water on Mars. These findings include excavating soil above the ice table, revealing at least two distinct types of ice deposits; observing snow descending from clouds; providing a mission-long weather record, with data on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind; observations of haze, clouds, frost and whirlwinds; and coordinating with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to perform simultaneous ground and orbital observations of Martian weather.

“Phoenix provided an important step to spur the hope that we can show Mars was once habitable and possibly supported life,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Phoenix was supported by orbiting NASA spacecraft providing communications relay while producing their own fascinating science. With the upcoming launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, the Mars Program never sleeps.”

The University of Arizona leads the Phoenix mission with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin Corporation in Denver. International contributions came from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; the Finnish Meteorological Institute; and Imperial College of London.

Space Shuttle Atlantis arrived at Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A this afternoon for it’s October mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

It is the last flight of the shuttle program scheduled for a destination other than the Imternational Space Station.

Liftoff is currently targeted for October 8.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s Kennedy Space Center will be closed Tuesday, Aug. 19, because of the potential threat from Tropical Storm Fay. Current plans call for the center to be closed for 24 hours, starting with workers’ first-shift Tuesday morning. Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex also is closed Tuesday.

Kennedy managers are scheduled to meet again at 5 p.m. EDT to reevaluate the storm’s status and its impact on the center.

Fay made landfall Tuesday morning along Florida’s southwest coast. It is forecast to affect Kennedy Tuesday afternoon with heavy rain and possible tropical storm force wind.

While most of Kennedy’s almost 15,000 employees will not be at work, the center will have a small group of emergency personnel, known as a “ride-out crew,” who will stay at the center to provide real-time assessments of the storm situation. There are about 200 people on the ride-out crew.

All three space shuttles have been secured in their Orbiter Processing Facilities. The shuttles have been powered down in their hangars and their payload bay doors have been closed to protect them from possible damage. Critical Hubble Space Telescope and International Space Station flight hardware has been protectively covered.

Kennedy workers should check with the center’s hurricane information phone line for the latest status at 321-861-7900 or 1-866-572-4877

Center storm updates also will be available online at the agency’s emergency operation center Web site at: http://www.nasa.gov/eoc

By Marc S. Posner
SOAR Magazine

The first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket essentially crashed into the second stage as the two were attempting to separate during Saturday’s launch, the company’s founder said in a statement released in the last few minutes.

Under the heading “Timing is Everything,” Elon Musk said the origin of the problem stems from the shift to a new first-stage motor used during the launch — the third attempt for the Los Angeles-area company.

The issue deals with a “thrust transient” in which the first-stage’s unburned fuel “combined with a small amount of residual oxygen to produce a small thrust,” SpaceX said.

That surge from the first stage was stronger than the thrust produced by the mechanism used to separate the two stages, causing the “first stage to recontact the second stage”

“As it turned out, a very small increase in the time between commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation would have been enough to save the mission,” Musk said in the statement.

The company was aware of the potential, but simply didn’t compensate enough for the issue, Musk said.

SpaceX’s conclusion was reached through four methods of analysis, the statement said.

Resolving the issue does not require a change in technology — as was the case with the switch in rocket engines from flight 2 to flight 3 — and, thus, the turnaround between launch attempts will be short, Musk said.

The company’s second flight attempt was made on March 20, 2007. According to SpaceX, the Falcon 1 rocket reached space, but not orbit. Issues identified in the failed attempt resulted in the complete re-design of the first-stage engine.

“It looks like we may have flight four on the launch pad as soon as next month,” Musk said in Wednesday night’s statement. “The long gap between flight two and three was mainly due to the Merlin 1C regen engine development, but there are no technology upgrades between flight three and four.”

Musk took seven positives from Saturday’s launch:

However, Musk said, because of when the failure happened in the flight sequence, the company was unable to test changes made to resolve the issue leading to the loss of the second flight.

Still, he said “I feel confident that this will not be an issue for the upcoming flight four.”

The first flight, on March 24, 2006, ended when a fuel leak caused the rocket to catch fire about 25 seconds into the flight.

Earlier this week, the privately-held Hawthorne, CA-based company announced a $20 million equity investment from Founders Fund, a San Francisco venture capital firm. The Founders Fund’s existing portfolio includes Facebook, Powerset, Slide and Quantcast, and Managing Partner Luke Nosek will join the SpaceX board as part of the financing, SpaceX said in an August 4 news release.

Musk prevously co-founded PayPal, the world’s leading electronic payment system, which was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. In 1995, Mr. Musk co-founded Zip2, which sold to Compaq Computer Corporation for more than $300 million.

In a message to SpaceX employees, the Southern California company’s founder Elon Musk addressed the third consecutive launch failure by the private company hoping.

The memo, titled “Plan Going Forward” was shared this evening after the company’s Falcon 1 rocket failed to reach orbit when the second stage didn’t separate from the first.

Here is the text of Musk’s memo:

It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight [Falcon 1, Flight 3]. On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened.

–Elon–

The Falcoln 1 lifted off at a 8:33 p.m., but SpaceX reported “an anomoly” at 8:37 p.m., PDT. — just seconds after a live video feed of the launch cut off abruptly.

Video of the first Falcon 1 launch also cut off when that vehicle was lost during ascent.

This was the third Falcon 1 launch attempt by SpaceX.

The company said updates would be available on their website.

UPDATE: From SpaceX, “Posted August 2, 2008 - 20:38 PDT

We have heard from launch control that there has been an anomaly. More details will be posted to the website as available.”