OTD in 1990, Space Shuttle Discovery launched @NASA & @ESA #Ulysses mission to explore the poles of the #Sun. After 30yrs, AmericaSpace looks back on this dramatic mission. […]
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By the time Galileo eventually left Earth in October 1989, it was boosted toward Jupiter by a less powerful Inertial Upper Stage (IUS). Photo Credit: NASA Thirty years ago, this month—had the hands of fate showed greater kindness—two shuttles might have rocketed into orbit within days of each other to deliver a pair […] 
The Centaur-G Prime, mounted in its Centaur Integrated Support Structure (CISS), is readied for launch in the Shuttle Payload Integration Facility at the Kennedy Space Center. Photo Credit: NASA When Challenger was lost in the skies of Cape Canaveral on 28 January 1986, it brought to an end the space shuttle’s “age of […] Mounted atop its IUS and PAM-S boosters, Ulysses departs Earth at the start of its odyssey to explore the Sun. Image Credit: NASA Dick Richards enjoyed a sound night’s sleep on 5 October 1990. In the astronaut crew quarters at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, he was only hours away from […] Ulysses drifts serenely above Earth in the moments after deployment on 6 October 1990, 25 years ago, this week. Shortly after this image was taken, the attached Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) and Payload Assist Module (PAM)-S boosters would propel the craft faster than any previous man-made object out of Earth’s gravitational clutches. Photo […] In one of the most historic shuttle-era photographs ever taken, this image shows the STS-38/Atlantis stack (at right) returning to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for repairs on 9 August 1990. In doing so, it passed the STS-35/Columbia stack (at left), which was returning to the launch pad after several weeks of extensive […] Pictured in September 1990, the problem-plagued STS-35 stack is shown in the foreground, on Pad 39A, with the STS-41 stack in the background on Pad 39B. Photo Credit: NASA A quarter-century ago, in the summer of 1990, the shuttle program was in chaos. Less than two years since the resumption of flight operations […] 
Artist’s concept of the Juno spacecraft approaching Jupiter in 2016. Image Credit: NASA / JPL “Jupiter’s welcome to more from his Juno if he can get it.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe While NASA and space enthusiasts the world over are waiting for New Horizons’ unprecedented Pluto flyby, the space agency […] Pictured in its horizontal position in Discovery’s payload bay, the circular dish antenna and Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) of Ulysses are clearly visible in this image. Photo Credit: NASA Human hands have stretched far into the cosmos during our half-century of exploring the final frontier. Men and women have circled hundreds of miles […] |
 NASA will test fire the 212 foot tall core stage of SLS on the B-2 Test Stand at Stennis Space Center. Programming starts at 4:20 Eastern, test fire from 5pm. Click here for more details...  |
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