Space Shuttle: March 2009 Archives

credit change.gov / caption: Obama's space policy is still rhetoric

Many scientists will no doubt be cheering the fact that US president Barack Obama has confirmed that he will be greenlighting the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer mission, adding one more flight to the shuttle manifest, not that the manifest on nasa.gov is showing it yet

And well done to Orlando Sentinel's Mark Matthews for putting the question to Obama about the impact of Shuttle's shutdown on the Florida economy, quantified as 28,000 direct and indirect jobs by Matthews. Sadly Obama's response shows that despite the president's fiscal year (FY) 2010 budget proposal for the agency the space programme is some way off from having a clear cut future

credit NASA tv / caption: the hydrogen vent line connects to the external tank for space shuttle Discovery

NASA has set the launch date for space shuttle Discovery's mission STS-119 as no earlier than this Sunday but only what NASA engineers call "wiggle room" in a 30h retorque requirement process holds any hope of lift-off on the 15 March, with a Monday 16 March launch more likely