Columbia disaster

(Newser) - A hard drive recovered from the Columbia shuttle disaster confirms an old theory about why people shake ketchup before pouring it, LiveScience reports. Astronauts on the craft were conducting a zero-gravity experiment with xenon, a gas, to study viscosity, but scientists feared the results were lost after Columbia burned up...

(Newser) - A pair of Endeavour astronauts completed the last spacewalk of their historic assembly mission tonight, the Houston Chronicle reports. Over 6 hours, Mike Forman and Bob Behnken set up an inspection boom outside the International Space Station to help future shuttles avoid disasters like the 2003 Columbia tragedy. The boom...

(Newser) - The space shuttle Atlantis parted ways with the International Space Station this morning and headed back towards the confines of Earth, even as NASA was rolling another shuttle onto the launch pad, preparing for its March 11th mission. In its 9-day stay, Atlantis attached Europe’s first permanent laboratory to...

(Newser) - NASA is speeding up its space shuttle flight schedule to meet the 2010 deadline for the completion of the International Space Station. This year alone, the space agency will launch six missions—twice the number of the last two years—and some experts worry that the crunch is a recipe...