This Week @ NASA 10-17-08

This Week At NASA

SHUTTLE UPDATE - KSC
The STS-126 crew continues to prepare for its November mission aboard space shuttle Endeavour. Commanded by Chris Ferguson, Endeavour will deliver equipment to the International Space Station that'll enable larger crews to reside aboard the complex. The crew also will deliver astronaut Sandy Magnus, shown here on STS-112 in 2002, to the station. Magnus will serve as an Expedition 18 flight engineer and NASA science officer.

Sandy Magnus: "One of my responsibilities and goals is to equip the station for habitation by six people so I'll get to work on sort of assembling the station as it were. And as science officer, I'm also going to play a big part in conducting the science experiments and, taking care of some of our payloads, so I get to actually split my time between the assembly and the utilization parts of the station, so I'm pretty excited about that."

Magnus will replace Expedition 17/18 Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff, who'll return to Earth with the STS-126 crew.

OCHOA HONORED - HQ

Announcer: "HENAAC's first woman engineer of the year, Dr. Ellen Ochoa."

Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman in space, was honored at the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference as the 2008 Hispanic Engineer of the Year. Each year HENAAC honors the contributions of outstanding Hispanic American science and technology professionals from industry, government, education and the military.

Mission Control Announcer: "This is mission specialist Ellen Ochoa."

Ochoa first flew in space in 1993 aboard space shuttle Discovery on STS-56, a 9-day science mission to study the effects of solar activity on the Earth's climate and environment. She flew three more shuttle missions to log a total of more than 978 hours in space. Ochoa currently serves as Deputy Director of the Johnson Space Center.

AWARD WINNER - JPL
Jon Giorgini, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has received the prestigious Harold Masursky Award from the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. Giorgini runs JPL's Horizons system, an online database able to generate locations and orbits for the almost half-million known celestial bodies in our solar system. Since its inception in October 1996, the Horizons system has filled more than ten million requests from the world's scientific community. The Harold Masursky Award, named for the father of Martian geology, recognizes individuals for outstanding service to planetary science and exploration.

FINAL WING - HQ
A wall-breaking ceremony at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center launched construction of the second and final wing of the complex in Chantilly, Virginia. "Phase Two" will highlight the behind-the-scenes care of the Smithsonian's extraordinary collection of aircraft, spacecraft, artifacts and archival materials. NASA mission artifacts are among the 60-thousand pieces in the Udvar-Hazy collection, the largest and most significant of its kind in the world. When Phase 2 is completed in 2011, visitors will have a firsthand look at the process of restoring aircraft and spacecraft.

"OBSERVE" - JPL
The works of five contemporary artists who used data and discoveries from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are on display at Pasadena, California's Art Center College of Design. The show, named "Observe," explores what it means to watch and examine our universe. The exhibits are the result of a yearlong collaboration between the Art Center and the Spitzer Science Center at CalTech.

NASA 50th ANNIVERSARY: October 18, 1989 - Galileo

Launch Announcer: "3-2-1 we have ignition and lift-off of the Galileo spacecraft bound for Jupiter."

Nineteen years ago in NASA history, Space Shuttle Atlantis and its five-member crew lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center carrying the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft.

Mission Control: "Spacecraft is stable. Galileo is on its way to another world. It's in the hands of the best flight controllers in this world. Fly safe!"

Galileo achieved many firsts, including the flyby of an asteroid and discovery of an asteroid's moon. It made the only direct observations of a comet colliding with a planet. Galileo found evidence of subsurface saltwater on Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto and revealed the intensity of volcanic activity on Io. The mission ended when Galileo was deliberately plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere on Sept. 21, 2003.

And that's This Week At NASA!

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