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Discovery in the VAB
Shuttle Discovery enters into the Vehicle Assembly Building after a 10-hour journey from launch pad 39B. (4min 29sec file)
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Memorial Day message
The International Space Station's Expedition 11 crew pays tribute to our fallen heroes for Memorial Day. (1min 00sec QuickTime file)
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Apollo-era transporter
In the predawn hours, the Apollo-era crawler-transporter is driven beneath shuttle Discovery's mobile launch platform at pad 39B in preparation for the rollback to the Vehicle Assembly Building. (2min 37sec QuickTime file)
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Unplugging the shuttle
Workers disconnect a vast number of umbilicals running between launch pad 39B and Discovery's mobile launch platform for the rollback. The cabling route electrical power, data and communications to the shuttle. (2min 32sec file)
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Shuttle rollback
The crawler-transporter begins rolling space shuttle Discovery off launch pad 39B at 6:44 a.m. EDT May 26 for the 4.2-mile trip back to the Vehicle Assembly Building. (7min 28sec file)
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Voyager adventures
This animation shows the Voyager spacecraft heading into the solar system's final frontier and the edge of interstellar space. (1min 24sec file)
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Mike Griffin at KSC
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and Kennedy Space Center Director Jim Kennedy chat with reporters at the Cape on a wide range of topics. The press event was held during Griffin's tour of the spaceport. (27min 48sec file)
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Delta rocket blasts off
The NOAA-N weather satellite is launched aboard a Boeing Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

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   Liftoff | Extended clip
   Umbilicals | IR tracker

NOAA pre-launch
Officials from NASA, NOAA, the Air Force and Boeing hold the pre-launch news conference at Vandenberg Air Force Base to preview the mission of a Delta 2 rocket and the NOAA-N weather satellite. (29min 54sec file)

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Countdown culmination
Watch shuttle Discovery's countdown dress rehearsal that ends with a simulated main engine shutdown and post-abort safing practice. (13min 19sec file)
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Going to the pad
The five-man, two-woman astronaut crew departs the Operations and Checkout Building to board the AstroVan for the ride to launch pad 39B during the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test countdown dress rehearsal. (3min 07sec file)
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Suiting up
After breakfast, the astronauts don their launch and entry partial pressure suits before heading to the pad. (3min 14sec file)
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Mercury-bound probe snaps shots of Earth and Moon
JHU APL NEWS RELEASE
Posted: May 31, 2005

NASA's Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft - less than three months from an Earth flyby that will slingshot it toward the inner solar system - successfully tested its main camera by snapping distant approach shots of Earth and the Moon.


Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
 
MESSENGER took a set of six pictures on May 11 with the narrow-angle camera in its Mercury Dual Imaging System, or MDIS. Earth was about 18.4 million miles (29.6 million kilometers) from MESSENGER at the time, but the main processed image clearly shows bands of clouds between North and South America on Earth's sunlit side. The image is cropped from the full MDIS image size of 1024x1024 pixels, and the contrast has been adjusted slightly to bring out the Moon in the same frame. The Moon was 248,898 miles (400,563 kilometers) from Earth.

Dr. S. Edward Hawkins III, lead engineer for MDIS at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., said finding the Moon in the pictures was an unexpected bonus. "As we stretched the image we saw this little object to the side, which turned out to be the Moon," he said. "That was exciting."

One of seven instruments in MESSENGER's science payload, the multispectral MDIS has wide- and narrow-angle imagers, both based on charge-coupled devices (CCDs) found in common digital cameras. MDIS has taken nearly 400 test shots since MESSENGER launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last Aug. 3, but all were of star fields, dark space or a calibration target on MESSENGER's lower deck. "The team is elated," says Dr. Louise M. Prockter, MDIS instrument lead scientist at APL. "These were our first Śreal' images, and they're only going to get better as MESSENGER moves closer to Earth."

The photo session was just part of the preparations for the Aug. 2 Earth flyby, the first major adjustment to MESSENGER's flight path toward Mercury. While MDIS took its pictures, the Mercury Laser Altimeter team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland checked its instrument's alignment by firing a high-powered laser at it from a ground-based Goddard telescope. The mission operations and science teams are also finalizing plans to calibrate several instruments - including the Magnetometer, Energetic Particle and Plasma Spectrometer, and Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer - during approach and departure observations of Earth and the Moon. Closest approach will bring MESSENGER 1,458 miles (2,347 kilometers) over northern Asia; observers with small telescopes in Japan, Eurasia and Africa will have the best chance to spot the spacecraft.

During a 4.9-billion mile (7.9-billion kilometer) journey that includes 15 trips around the Sun, MESSENGER will fly past Earth once, Venus twice and Mercury three times before easing into orbit around its target planet. The upcoming Earth flyby and the Venus flybys, in October 2006 and June 2007, will use the pull of the planets' gravity to guide MESSENGER toward Mercury's orbit. The Mercury flybys in January 2008, October 2008 and September 2009 help MESSENGER match the planet's speed and location for an orbit insertion maneuver in March 2011. The flybys also allow the spacecraft to gather data critical to planning a yearlong orbit phase.

MESSENGER, short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging, is the seventh mission in NASA's Discovery Program of lower cost, scientifically focused exploration projects. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, leads the mission as principal investigator. APL manages the mission for NASA, built MESSENGER and operates the spacecraft.

The Applied Physics Laboratory, a division of The Johns Hopkins University, meets critical national challenges through the innovative application of science and technology.