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Discovery's mission
A preview of Discovery's STS-114 flight is presented in this narrated movie about the shuttle return to flight mission. (10min 15sec file)

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Station's past 2 years
The impact to the International Space Station by this two-year grounding of the space shuttle fleet in the wake of Columbia is examined in this narrated movie. (6min 46sec file)

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Discovery's astronauts
Take a behind-the-scenes look at the seven astronauts who will fly aboard the space shuttle return-to-flight mission in this movie that profiles the lives of the STS-114 crew. (10min 04sec file)

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Walking with Discovery
Walk alongside space shuttle Discovery as the motorized transporter hauls the ship a quarter-mile from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the Vehicle Assembly Building. (3min 21sec QuickTime file)
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Discovery leaves hangar
This time-lapse movie captured from an overhead camera shows space shuttle Discovery's middle-of-the-night departure from its processing hangar at Kennedy Space Center to the roll to the Vehicle Assembly Building. (4min 30sec file)
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Rolling into VAB
Discovery arrives in the Vehicle Assembly Building as viewed in this time-lapse movie. The shuttle will be mated to the redesigned external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters in the VAB before rolling to the launch pad for the first post-Columbia mission. (5min 00sec file)
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Nanosat toss overboard
A foot-long Russian nanosatellite is flung overboard by the spacewalking International Space Station Expedition 10 crew. Station cameras watched the hand-launched deployment and the nanosat as it floated away. (4min 52sec file)
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Spacewalk highlights
Highlights of the second spacewalk of the International Space Station's Expedition 10 crew is compiled into this movie. The crew completed external outfitting of gear that will guide European cargo ships to the outpost during dockings starting in 2006. (5min 00sec file)
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Swift measures distance to star explosion
PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY NEWS RELEASE
Posted: April 5, 2005

The NASA-led Swift mission has measured the distance to two gamma-ray bursts -- back to back, from opposite parts of the sky -- and both were from over nine billion light years away, unleashed billions of years before the Sun and Earth formed.

These represent the mission's first direct distance, or redshift, measurements, its latest milestone since being launched in November 2004. The distances were attained with Swift's Ultraviolet/OpticalTelescope (UVOT).

The Swift science team said that these types of distance measurements will become routine, allowing scientists to create a map to understand where, when and how these brilliant, fleeting bursts of light are created.

"Swift will detect more gamma-ray bursts than any satellite that has come before it, and now will be able to pin down distances to many of these bursts too," said Dr. Peter Roming, UVOT Lead Scientist at Penn State. "These two aren't distance record-breakers, but they're certainly from far out there. The second of the two bursts was bright enough to be seen from Earth with a good backyard telescope."

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known in the Universe and are thought to signal the birth of a black hole --either through a massive star explosion or through a merger smaller black holes or neutron stars. Several appear each day from our vantage point. They are difficult to detect and study, however, because they occur randomly from any point in the sky and last only a few milliseconds to about a minute.

Swift, with three telescopes, is designed to detect bursts and turn autonomously within seconds to focus its telescopes on the burst afterglow, which can linger for hours to weeks. The UVOT is a joint product of Penn State and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in England.

Swift detected bursts on March 18 and 19, as indicted in their names: GRB 050318 and GRB 050319. The UVOT team estimated that the redshifts are 1.44 and 3.24, respectively, which corresponds to distances of about 9.2 billion and 11.6 billion light years. (The second estimate reflects a more precise measurement made with the ground-based Nordic Optical Telescope.) Distance measurements are attained through analysis of the burst afterglow.

Swift has detected 24 bursts so far. GRB 050318 was the first burst in which the UVOT detected an afterglow. The lack of afterglow detection is interesting in its own right, Roming said, because it helps scientists understand why some bursts create certain kinds of afterglows, if any. For example, Swift's X-ray Telescope has detected afterglows from several bursts. The UVOT detected afterglows in GRB 050318 and GRB 050319 in optical light, but not significantly in ultraviolet.

"Every burst is a little different, and when we add them all up we will begin to see the full picture," said Dr. Keith Mason, the U.K. UVOT Lead at University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

Mason said that UVOT distance measurements will become more precise in the upcoming months as new instruments aboard Swift are employed.

Swift is a medium-class explorer mission managed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Swift is a NASA mission with participation of the Italian Space Agency and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council in the United Kingdom. It was built in collaboration with national laboratories, universities and international partners, including Penn State; Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; Sonoma State University in California; the University of Leicester in Leicester, England; the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Dorking, England; the Brera Observatory of the University of Milan in Italy; and the ASI Science Data Center in Rome, Italy.