September 13

Russia Says Bye, Bye to Bass

MOSCOW. Sept 13 (Interfax) - On Friday the Dutch MirCorp. was officially notified by the Russian Aerospace Agency that member of the American pop group N'Sync Lance Bass, 23, was denied a flight to the International Space Station (ISS), company president Jeffrey Manber told Interfax.

Bass hoped to become the third space tourist by flying on a taxi mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on the Russian spaceship due to take off on October 28.

However, MirCorp. doesn't rule out that Bass will be able make the cherished spaceflight next year. He is leaving Moscow Friday evening.

On September 3 the Russian Aerospace Agency issued a statement noting that Bass had been informed about the termination of his training at the Gagarin space training center and the impossibility of his flight to ISS with a taxi mission due to the failure of the American side to stand by contract terms.

Listening to an Asteroid Crater

This week, flags are going up every 15 feet along roads in five areas of Virginia. Each flag will mark a 10-inch hole in the ground. Next week, geologists will drop "geophones" in the holes, fire "noise-making projectiles" into the ground, and then listen.

The goal: To better analyze the rim of a 35-million-year-old crater carved out by an asteroid (or possibly a comet).

According to the Daily Press of Hampton Roads, Virginia, a computer analysis of the sound waves should reveal the density of the soil along the outer rim of the 56-mile-wide (85 kilometers) crater. It's the latest in a series of efforts to understand how the impact changed the Chesapeake Bay region back then and how it creates groundwater problems today.

El Nio Builds, Limited Drought Relief in Sight

After months of developing in the tropical Pacific Ocean, El Nio is poised to influence fall and winter weather across the United States, climate experts said Thursday. Satellite and other data allow researchers to monitor the phenomenon, and this one is not expected to be particularly strong.

Only limited relief from drought around the country is expected, said Jack Kelly, director of the National Weather Service. . While some improvement in the drought is possible, namely across the Southwest and southern and central Plains states, it may not be enough to alleviate dry conditions entirely, particularly in the Northwest, Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and the Ohio Valley," Kelly said.

Other expectations: drier-than-average conditions in the Pacific Northwest and mid-Atlantic states during fall; drier-than-average conditions in the northern Rockies and the Ohio Valley states during the winter; wetter-than-average conditions in the southern tier states during winter; and warmer-than-average conditions in the northern tier of the United States during winter.

September 12

Kennedy Space Center Team Saves Diver in Distress

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Equipment aboard one of NASA's solid rocket booster recovery ships happened to be in the right place at the right time on Wednesday and helped save the life of a local diver.

Jack Wilcox of Orlando was diving for lobsters 20 miles offshore of Cape Canaveral on Wednesday when he ran out of air. Still 100 feet below the surface, he approached his dive buddy and shared air to about 60 feet. Having difficulty getting enough air, Wilcox then made a free ascent to the surface.

Wilcox experienced chest pain and difficulty breathing so they headed into port and radioed the U.S. Coast Guard for help. The Freedom Star booster recovery ship, deployed on a crane certification exercise, was nearby and offered assistance.

By coincidence the Freedom Star had a diver medical technician and other divers available wgo are trained for situations like this in case of a dive accident during a retrieval mission. The hyperbaric chamber on board is used to help a diver suffering decompression sickness -- too many nitrogen bubbles in the blood, which can cause injury or death if untreated.

"I didn't know if I was going to make it. It's a huge relief to be in the hospital recovering thanks to the KSC guys," Wilcox said from Florida Hospital Orlando.

"We only did what anyone would do," said Freedom Star Capt. Dave Fraine. "It's the law of the sea. You help when you can. We're just grateful to God we were able to help."

The SPACE.com Mailbag: Amateur Photographer Catches ISS

Tom Gwilym of Bellevue, WA, captured this picture of the International Space Station after having read SPACE.com writer Diana Jong's article on summertime space station spotting in August.

"I'm still trying to figure out the automatic tracking on it," Gwilym wrote to SPACE.com, "so I had to hand-guide the scope to follow the station across the sky.  After it disappeared I searched through the video that I took and found a few frames that contained an image."

For all you photo bugs out there, Gwilym says he took the picture at a shutter speed of about 1/250sec at 5 frames per second with a gain and brightness of 50 percent. He enlarged the image 200 percent in Photoshop and made some sharpness adjustments.

Catch a pic of the ISS or any other man-made object floating above us? Send us your pics via e-mail.

September 11

India to Launch Nation's First Weather Satellite

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- India's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is scheduled on Thursday, Sept. 12, to carry into orbit METSAT, the nation's first satellite completely dedicated to weather observation, Indian space officials announced this week.

Liftoff is expected between 6 and 7:05 a.m. EDT (1000 and 1105 GMT) Thursday.

The mission will mark the first time the PSLV rocket will send a spacecraft into a geosynchronous transfer orbit -- a feat that required the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to modify the booster's stages with lighter casings and larger amounts of propellant.

Weighing in at 2,337 pounds (1,060 kilograms),  METSAT also will be the heaviest payload lofted into orbit by the PSLV booster, which will be launched from the recently re-christened Prof. Satish Dhawan Space Center.

Previous weather monitoring services were incorporated into the communication satellites built under the INSAT series. By launching this dedicated weather satellite on its own Indian launcher, ISRO officials hope to lower their cost of launching spacecraft into by not having to rely on foreign commercial firms such as Europe's Arianespace.

The most recent launch of a PSLV was on Oct. 22. It carried a trio of satellites -- Technology Experiment Satellite from India, BIRD from Germany and PROBA from Belgium.

Mini-Astronote: Today is the 5th anniversary of Mars Global Surveyor's arrival at the red planet.

Septmember 10

Buzz Aldrin Assaults Moonwalk Skeptic

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that the Beverly Hills police are investigating a complaint that Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin struck a man Monday after the alleged victim asked Aldrin to swear on a Bible that he had been to the moon.

Detectives told the newspaper that they responded to a disturbance Monday at the Luxe Hotel on Rodeo Drive and took a report from one Bart Sibrel, 37. Video of the incident has been released. Sibrel was accompanied by a television crew at the time.

Aldrin was unavailable for comment, but his wife, Lois Aldrin told SPACE.com that Sibrel has approached the retired astronaut several times before Monday's incident. "He has approached many of the Apollo astronauts in the past and this was just another example of him pestering the astronauts again," Aldrin said.

Sibrel, who doesn't believe Aldrin, or anyone else for that matter, walked on the moon, said he was hit in the face by the 72-year-old astronaut. Aldrin, who took part in the 1969 lunar mission, left the scene before police arrived, Beverly Hills Police Lt. Joe Lombardi told the Times.

Sibrel is the writer, producer and director of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon", a documentary that alleges that the Apollo 11 moon mission was faked by NASA.

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