ULA Delta II rocket Launch: OCO-2 Heads to Orbit

A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket launches with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite onboard from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

OCO-2 will measure the global distribution of carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth’s climate.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

JAXA Space probe Hayabusa heads home

Japan is counting down to the homecoming of a space hero next week: not an astronaut but a battered machine limping back from a seven-year odyssey to a distant space rock.

It is hoped the small probe Hayabusa ("Falcon") may have beaten bigger US and European projects to become the first spacecraft to bring home raw material from an asteroid, part of the primeval rubble left over from the making of the solar system.

Hayabusa, which cost 12.7 billion yen (138 million dollars) to develop, is approaching the end of a five-billion-kilometre (three-billion-mile) trek with broken engines, failed posture-adjusting devices and disfunctional batteries.

The spacecraft is due to release a canister expected to contain asteroid dust as it approaches Earth, aiming to land it at the Woomera Test Range in the Australian outback on June 13 -- if all goes well.

Hayabusa itself will be incinerated as it smashes into the atmosphere, prompting devout fans to declare that the falcon will be reborn as a "Phoenix" -- a mythical firebird.

The journey has captured the public imagination, with a computer-graphics movie "Hayabusa back to the Earth" drawing some 150,000 people at planetariums across the nation and proposals that the spacecraft be given a National Honour Award.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), on a special website (http://hayabusa.jaxa.jp/), has received nearly 1,000 messages treating the probe as a human boy and cheering him on in the lonely, difficult journey.

"What's special to Hayabusa is it has enthusiastic fans. I believe ordinary people love it because it tried what is unprecedented," JAXA associate professor Makoto Yoshikawa, told AFP.

The car-size probe with solar paddles has already become the world's first spacecraft to land on and lift off a celestial body other than the moon after it made a rendezvous with the potato-shaped asteroid Itokawa.

ESA Johannes Kepler: Second ATV heading to Kourou for launch

The second of ESA’s ATV automated cargo craft has been cleared for shipping to the launch site in Kourou. Its launch on an Ariane 5 to the International Space Station is scheduled for late this year.

ATV-2, named after German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler, has undergone extensive system testing at EADS Astrium’s site in Bremen, Germany, over the last few months and has now been given the go-ahead for shipping.

It will be dispatched to Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana in several sections, accompanied by 59 containers with test equipment. In Kourou, it will be assembled and extensively tested before being loaded with cargo and fuelled. The launch is now planned for the end of 2010.

"After an internal review of ATV Johannes Kepler, we have given Astrium 'consent-to-ship', which is an important milestone," says Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA Director for Human Spaceflight.

"This demonstrates the ability of European industry under the lead of Astrium to provide the requested status of the vehicle on time and with the requested quality."

"When the US Space Shuttle retires, ATV will be the largest vehicle supplying the ISS. Considering its technological challenges, like automatic rendezvous & docking, ATV is the most sophisticated space vehicle ever built in Europe."

"The technology and experience gained with ATV are assets for Europe and its industrial competitiveness as well as a solid basis for further developments to position Europe among the leaders in the exploitation and exploration of space, in low Earth orbit and beyond," Di Pippo adds.

For more information, check out the ESA portal and ATV site

100 Icebergs heading towards New Zealand: Threat to shipping

More than 100, and possibly hundreds, of Antarctic icebergs are floating towards New Zealand in a rare event which has prompted a shipping warning, officials said on Monday.

An Australian Antarctic Division glaciologist said the ice chunks, spotted by satellite photography, had passed the Auckland Islands and were heading towards the main South Island, about 450 kilometres (280 miles) northeast.

Scientist Neal Young said more than 100 icebergs -- some measuring more than 200 metres (650 feet) across -- were seen in just one cluster, indicating there could be hundreds more.

He said they were the remains of a massive ice floe which split from the Antarctic as sea and air temperatures rise due to global warming.

"All of these have come from a larger one that was probably 30 square kilometres (11.6 square miles) in size when it left Antarctica," Young told AFP.

"It's done a long circuit around Antarctica and now the bigger parts of it are breaking up and producing smaller ones."

He said large numbers of icebergs had not floated this close to New Zealand since 2006, when a number came within 25 kilometres of the coastline -- the first such sighting since 1931.

"They're following the same tracks now up towards New Zealand. Whether they make it up to the South Island or not is difficult to tell," Young said.

New Zealand has already issued coastal navigation warnings for the area in the Southern Ocean where the icebergs have been seen.

"It's really just a general warning for shipping in that area to be on the alert for icebergs," said Maritime New Zealand spokesman Ross Henderson.

The icebergs are smaller remnants of the giant chunks seen off Australia's Macquarie Island this month, including one estimated at two kilometres (1.2 miles) and another twice the size of Beijing's "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium.

Young earlier told AFP he expected to see more icebergs in the area if the Earth's temperature continues to increase.

"If the current trends in global warming were to continue I would anticipate seeing more icebergs and the large ice shelves breaking up," he said.

When icebergs last neared New Zealand in 2006, a sheep was helicoptered out to be shorn on one of the floes in a publicity stunt by the country's wool industry.