Discovery Blasted Successfully Into Space - On Tuesday for a 12 day mission to re-supply the International Space Station, but will it return safely. Large pieces of foam peeled off the fuel tank when it blasted off and 2 tiles shielding the shuttle appear to be damaged. The Managers said that this is unacceptable and the Fleet has been grounded. A one inch thermal tile appears to brake off from near the nose landing-gear doors. The seven man crew are now scanning every inch of the craft's thermal shield with a 100 foot robot which is equipped with lasers and camera. If Discovery is dangerously damaged by these objects hitting it the crew could try to repair it (They have experimental fixes they plan to test) themselves or in the worse case, they could take refuge on the International Space Station and wait until they are rescued. The Shuttle Atlantis would have to be launched, which is a bit difficult as the fleet has been grounded. Nasa said that tile damage is not unusual and nothing so far has been found and "Everything has gone exceptionally well" Astronauts will also check for any cracks that could endanger Discovery on the return flight. The temperature builds upto 2,500 F during re-entry. Before it docks with the Space Station it will perform a back flip so that the Station can photo the underside of the shuttle to see if there are any signs of damage.

Navy Veteran Has Close Encounter - A Navy veteran with over 10,000 hours of flight experience has had his own close encounter in Exeter. A former Flight engineer (Wanted to be known as David) said "This was like nothing I've ever seen before." It was a bright, sunny afternoon at around 3.15 pm. and he was outside attending to his lawn. When he looked up he saw a large cigar-shaped object hovering in the sky. He said the windows were equally spaced around the object but did not see anyone or anything inside. The size of the object was enormous and he said it was about the size of two USS Nimitz aircraft carriers. He first thought it was a Hood Blimp. The object moved from west to east, very slowly, he thought it was around 100 knots but he reckoned that something that size shouldn't be able to stay in the air if it was going that slow. The object began changing colours from a bright silver to an orange-ish red. A strange cloud of red and orange flames then began surrounding the object and the object stretched out like a rubber band. It grew to about twice its original size and then it was gone. The entire incident lasted about 10 minutes.

10th Planet Discovered! - An object that is larger than Pluto has been discovered in our solar system. It is being called the 10th Planet, but already that claim is contested. The new world's size is not the issue but the very definition of planet 10 is. This is the first time since the discovery of Pluto 75 years ago that an object so big has been found in our solar system. The new object which has temporally been named 2003 UB 313 is about three times as far from he Sun as is Pluto.It is colder than Pluto It is round and could be upto twice as large as Pluto. The best estimate is that it is 2,100 miles wide and about 1 and half times the diameter of Pluto. It appears to be surfaced with methane ice, as is Pluto. The new world is about 97 astronomical units from the Sun. An Astronomical unit is the distance between the Sun and Earth. It becomes the farthest known object in the solar system and the third brightest of the Kiuper belt objects.

Water Found On MArs! - Within an unnamed impact crater on Mars a giant patch of frozen water has been pictured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera which is on board the Mars Express, the European Space Agency probe which is exploring the planet Mars. Vastitas Borealis, which is a broad plain that covers much of Mar's northern latitudes is where the ice disc is located and this existence of the water ice patch raises that prospect that past or present life may one day be detected. Because this shows that water has been found boosts the chance for future man missions to the planet. The crater is 35 km wide with a maximum depth of about two km. Scientists believe that the water-ice is present all year round and after studying the images are sure it is not frozen carbon dioxide. They have also detected faint traces of water ice along the rim of the crater on the crater walls.

Shuttles Grounded - Nasa announced that all the shuttles had been grounded after finding that a big piece of fuel-tank insulation from the Discovery launch had been seen.Discovery lost four pieces of foam during the lift-off, they were bigger that Nasa wanted to see come off. It has now been announced by Administrator Michael Griffin that a new "Tiger team" of engineers will seek solutions to the problem that brought down Columbia and continues to haunt the space agency. By being smart and working hard, Nasa might be able to launch another shuttle by year's end. They don't expect it to be a long drawn out affair and they are determined to get back flying. At the International Space Station, Discovery's astronauts are leaving any surplus food, water, laptop computers and other supplies, just in case the shuttle fleet is grounded for longer. It has been two and half years, during which the tank was redesigned and hundreds of millions of dollars spent to make sure that the shuttle's were safe to fly.Nasa has now decided to launch the shuttle's during daylight hours and that severely limits the opportunities for launch. For 2005 it amounts to a two-week period in September and a few days in November.

Messenger Flys To Mercury - The Messenger spacecraft is on it's way to Mercury. The Nasa spacecraft swung by Earth on Tuesday for Gravity assist that would propel it deeper on its long way to Mercury. The spacecraft's systems performed correctly and using the planet's gravity to change its trajectory, it is now heading towards Venus for another gravity-assist flyby, next year. The spacecraft was launched on the 3rd August, 2004 from Cape Canaveral, Florida and the solar powered craft is approximately 581 million miles away from Earth. The voyage is 4.9 billion miles long which will include 14 more loops around the Sun. It will fly past Venus twice and Mercury three times before moving into orbit for a year long science mission around the planet.

South Korea Tourists Spot UFO! - In South Korea yesterday some tourists reported seeing an unidentified flying object over Mt. Baekdu in North Korea in recent months. This followed a report by a Chinese man who said he had encountered a mysterious light there. The Chinese man took a picture of a round shaped object hovering in the sky over a waterfall. This is the highest mountain on the Korean Peninsula and the mountain is located on the border between North Korea and China. This will be the venue for the planned inter-Korean military talks later this year. A few South Korean tourists yesterday reported their UFO experiences to the news agency and posted their own pictures on the Internet.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Launches For Mars - Just three days after the successful return of the shuttle Discovery Nasa has launched a spacecraft to Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was launched from the Florida's Kennedy Space Centre on an Atlas V booster rocket. It will circle Mars for at least four years and the orbiter is expected to reveal information on Mar's weather climate and geology.The two-ton orbiter is equipped with the largest telescopic camera ever sent to another planet. It is also loaded with two cameras that will provide high-resolution images and global maps of the Martian weather and a spectrometer that will identify water-related minerals , plus a radiometer to measure atmospheric dust. This new data could possible help future human exploration of Mars. The MRO is the size of a minibus and this is the biggest spacecraft to be sent to the Red Planet. It is equipped with new tools which have been designed to gather more data on the planet than all the previous Martian missions combined. It will enable scientists to see Mars as it has never been seen before. Later on two robotic explorers will lay the foundation for future manned missions to Mars. The Phoenix Mars Scout will be launched in 2007 and will search for organic chemicals and the Mars Science Laboratory will follow two years later. The two Nasa rovers that were launched in 2003, Spirit and Opportunity will also continue to roam Mars providing information about whether there is any water on Mars.The orbiter is due to reach Mars in March 2006 but it will not start scientific operations until the November.

NASA Grounds Shuttle Flights - Another space shuttle will not now fly until at least late this year as Nasa try and figure out what caused the loss of foam during lift-off on Discovery's last mission.Bill Gerstenmaier, the space agency official leading the investigation into the foam loss said "The shuttle's fuel tanks will need modifications, which eliminates any chance of launching in September." The next launch window would be November, after that Nasa will have to wait until next year. A 1-pound slab of foam insulation broke off Discovery's external fuel tank two minutes after lift off, but luckily missed hitting the shuttle. Also, Discovery's redesigned tank also lost smaller pieces of foam in four other areas including the area where a large piece came off during Columbia's doomed lift-off in 2003. Out of the 4,192 pounds of foam on the spacecraft's fuel tank, only about 1.2. pounds came off at undesirable, even dangerous times. The main worry is the foam that came off a hand-sprayed section of the tank where cable trays and pressurization lines need to be insulated. This piece measure up to 36 inches long and 11 inches wide. The next biggest piece of lost foam measured 8 inch by 7 inch. This came off the same area from which Columbia's slice broke loose. The engineers think that this foam loss may have been caused by a wire to a heater that was installed to prevent dangerous ice build-up during the loading of the super-cold fuel. The heaters were added to make up for the removal of the wedge-shaped blocks of foam in this area. In February, one week before Discovery's fuel tank was shipped to Cape Canaveral, workers repaired a small crack in the foam, in the same place where the biggest piece ended up breaking away. The year 2010 is the deadline for the retirement of the shuttle's, let's hope they can sort this problem out and quick.

Where Have All The UFO's Gone? The UFO monitoring group in Cumbria are blaming the demise of the TV series the X Files. The county's branch of British UFO Hunters said it responded to 60 reported sightings in the year 2003, but this year 2005 there has not been any. UFO sightings have increased in Cornwall but the lack of reports in Cumbria now means volunteers are been stood down from sky-watching.

Flying Dragons Spotted - On the 22nd June,2004 a photographer went to Tibet's AMdo region to attend the Qinghai-to-Xizang Railroad laying ceremony and then took a plane from Lhasa to fly back inland. When you look at the photo you see two peculiar dragon-shaped objects. They appear to have the characteristics of crawling creatures. The bodies look to be covered by scales and the backs have spine-like protuberances. They gradually thin to the rear ends. They give the appearance of two gigantic dragons flying in the clouds. In previous dynasties in China, there has been various "Falling Dragons", dragons that suddenly fall to the ground under perculiar circumstances and were witnessed by many people. In August, 1944, a black dragon fell to the ground at the Chen Family's Weizi Village which is about 9.4. miles northwest of Zhaoyuan County on the south shore of the Mudan River in Heilongjiang province. The dragon was on the verge of death and a eye witness said that it had a horn on its head, scales covering its body and had a strong fishy smell.

ISS Update - After the successful mission of the space shuttle Discovery, the International Space Station can now function until the year 2010. The shuttle Discovery delivered 12 tonnes of equipment to the Russian and the American aboard the ISS and they retrieved waste to clear out space in the cramped lab. The programme of shuttle launches was planned to end in the year 2010 but the station could continue to function beyond that date with planned launches by Russia and the European Space Agency.

Near Earth Object 1 in 10,000 Chance To Hit Earth! - Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) programme has said that when asteroid, 99942 Apophis passes the Earth during the early morning hours of April 13th, 2029 is will be easily observable with the naked eye. Observers in Asia and North Africa will witness this rare celestial event easily. It is more than 1,000 feet in diameter and it approaches this close to Earth only once every 1,500 years. The tidal forces from Earth's gravity will twist and churn the asteroid and deform its exterior as it passes by. It will be bent by the Earth's gravity and astronomers don't know the exact outcome. It has been named after an Egyptian god of darkness and chaos and it has a 1 in 40 chance of colliding with the Earth. Scientists now predict that there is a 1 in 10,000 chance that the asteroid will hit Earth in 2036 when it next returns.

Shuttle Tank Problems - The external tank from the shuttle Discovery has been sent back to the manufacturing plant in Louisiana from the Kennedy Space Centre. It is part of the investigation into why Discovery's fuel tank lost foam. The orange tank was loaded onto a covered barge for the water trip to the Michoud Assembly facility in New Orleans.The tank called ET-119 was set to fly into space on the third return-to-flight mission. Five oversized pieces of insulation foam fell off it on the 26th July, during the first shuttle launch since the disaster of the Columbia. Nasa now need several months of study to see what went wrong and then fix it. Officials have said it might be used as a test bed and eventually modified to be used as the tank for Discovery's mission tentatively set for March 2006.

Mars Closes In! - We are racing towards Mars at a speed of 23,500 mph and you will notice that Mars is getting brighter and bigger. When we get to October the two planets will be closest together and Mars will shine brighter than Venus and the Moon in the evening sky. We will be only 43 million miles away from Mars compared to an average distance of about 140 million miles, it would be a good time to send a spacecraft to Mars then. So look up into the sky, anyone with a telescope should be able to spot polar ice caps and dust storms and strange dark markings on the planet.

Joint Space Venture - A crewed spacecraft called Kliper may be jointly developed by Russia, Europe and Japan. The Kliper may ferry as many as six astronauts to and from the International Space Station and could be launched as early as the year 2010. Nasa plan to retire the shuttles in the year 2010. The Kliper is intended to be a replacement for the Russia's Soyuz spacecraft which has been the workhorse of Russia's human spaceflight programme and is based on 40 year old technology and the components are becoming obsolete. The Soyuz carries three people and can stay docked to the Space Station for just six months, but the Kliper may transport twice as many and could stay in orbit for up to a year. Officials estimate that the first un-crewed flight could take place in the year 2010 and the first crewed flight in 2011. Nasa are developing a shuttle replacement called the Crew Exploration Vehicle. It is hoped it will be launched by 2014. ESA is also hoping to secure about $61 million from its governing minister in December to develop a preliminary design, as well as financial and legal agreements for the project over the next two years. The cost for Russia to build and fly the first Kliper is estimated at about $1 billion and it is hoped ESA will participate at a level of 20% to 30% in the project. The design is still be worked out but it may have stubby wings to enable it to steer and land on a runway. It will also be designed to operate completely autonomously. Also it be may be launched on an upgraded Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan's Baikonbur Cosmodrome or ESA's South American spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

80% Believe In UFO's! - According to the latest survey, 80% of us believe in UFO's. The person who we would like to represent Earth in the close encounter would be Nelson Mandela. 1 in 15 people think they have seen an UFO and the most sightings are in the North West. If you are in London in October you might like to visit The Science Museum who are hosting a new exhibition, "The Science of Aliens."

Moon Bases - Potential sites for human bases on the Moon are being scouted out by scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope can identify features just 50 metres across over swathes of lunar terrain. The team hope to be able to identify a mineral called ilmenite or iron titanium oxide, this has been found previously in lunar soil samples. This has properties which would be useful in constructing a lunar base. It contains oxygen, which could be extracted for breathing. It also contains Hydrogen and Helium absorbed from the solar wind. If this was heated, the mineral would release the gases which could then be used as a power source for the base. Iron in the mineral might eventually be used to produce construction materials, such as steel. This would be useful for lunar buildings. When the Apollo astronauts visited the Moon in the 70's Ilmenite was found in different concentrations in several of the areas visited by the astronauts. Hubble is also looking at a 42 kilometre wide crater called Aristarchus, which is near the Moon's equator. This crater lies near the edge of a plateau that rises about 2 km above the vast lava plains that surround it. When the crater was made, materials that were thrown up from it are more likely to contain useful minerals. The observations made by the Hubble telescope of the Moon and the results are due to be released by Nasa by early October, 2005.

Kaiser Dune - On Mars, the Kaiser Dune is among the largest in the Solar System and spans 6.5.km and rises 475m above the Martian surface and this icy dune could be a valuable resource for future missions.It may contain over 500 cubic metres of water alone. In 2002 the Gamma Ray Spectrometer onboard the Mars Odyssey detected solid water on Mars. The data from this mission allowed the scientists to make a map of the water content in the Martian soil The Polar Ice Caps were found to contain upto 70% water by mass. It was Dr Bourke, of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, US. who first identified sand dunes as another possibly reservoir of water-ice by overlaying this water content map on detailed geologic maps of Mars. She found that the regions containing sand dunes in the planet's northern hemisphere contained perhaps 40 to 50% water by mass. If we are to send any future manned missions to Mars they will need a supply of local water to survive.

Hurricane Katrina - It now looks like Hurricane Katrina has caused some more disruption. The date of the next space shuttle launch is in doubt. Over $1 billion in damage to two NASA centres on the Gulf coast has been done. Nasa don't have a date, except that right now they think it is somewhat earlier than October, 2006. it could be Autumn 2006. The scheduled launch was March, 2006. Nasa Administrator Michael Griffin told NASA employees. Half of the contract workers at Michould Assembly Facility (MAF) - where the shuttle's external fuel tanks are made, are unaccounted for. Martin employs about 2000 people at Michoud, all of the dozen or so Nasa employees at Michoud, located 24 kilometres east of New Orleans city have been contacted. 37 workers stayed at Michoud during the hurricane. They ensured that the pumps and generators were kept working and that the fierce winds did not blow open doors and damage the sensitive flight hardware. Michoud suffered roof damage and lost power, water and sewage treatment. Also situated near the eye of Hurricane Katrina was NASA's Stennis Space Centre in Mississippi. As many as 900 people who work there -not all for Nasa - lost their homes in the storm. It is now a base for 1,500 relief workers. Tropical Storm Ophelia is now lurking off Florida's Atlantic coast. Lets hope it does not threaten the Kennedy Space Centre.

Solar activity - Solar activity occurs on an 11 year cycle and the current cycle is on a downswing, the last peak occurred in 2001 and activity ought to be on the decline. Now a sunspot which at its peak has been five times larger than the Earth is likely to release fresh solar flares. These could cripple satellites and black out any radio communications. Sunspot 798 has already fired seven enormous X-class eruptions of radiation since September 7th. One of the monstrous flares was measured as the fourth largest on record. It is rotating across the Sun's surface so as to line up with the Earth. It has shrunk a little but it is more likely to strike the planet head on rather than catching a glancing blow. This could cause serious disruptions to telecommunication. Also, two days after a solar flare event there also remains a small risk from the streams of charged particles, known as a coronal mass ejection. The particles linked with eruption caused a spectacular display of the aurora borealis. Also known as the Northern Lights, these occur as streams of charged particles from the Sun exciting molecules in the atmosphere to produce bright colours in the night sky. The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describe solar activity as at "very high levels" and has already reported some problems on Earth. Electrical power systems, spacecraft, high frequency communications and satellites are experiencing impacts due to the strong to seven solar activity. Luckily, none have been knocked out.

Alien Type Bogyman Spotted - Over 10 Villages of Huay Nam Rak Village in the Mae Jan district's Tambon Janjawa claimed that they had witnessed an "alien" being which appeared like a small bogyman with large head and about 70 centimetres tall. Sawaeng Boonyalak, 35 said friends claim they saw the alien so he rushed to see it. It was about 70 cm high and had yellow skin and a flat chest. Its mouth was very tiny and it had a big head which was bald. It had big eyes and big ears. Several villages also witnessed the ET at the same time as he did. The ET wandered around the field for about a hour and then suddenly floated to a tree top, and then floated into the sky into a bright light.

Students Capture Dragon On Video phone! - Two students coming out of their Library in Jillian University happened to look up into the sky and saw a dragon. Student Li caught the image on his picture phone. This is the second time a dragon flying over China has been captured by a phone's camera. The photo taken shows in the middle of the photo is a dragon shaped object complete with four limbs and a tail. It was glowing red and it streaked across the sky, illuminating the evening sky just after the sun had disappeared. Li estimates the object to have been over ten metres long and was flying very fast. At first the object radiated a low metallic light and then became more and more dazzling over the next two minutes before it disappeared into the southeast. Early this summer a man travelling by aeroplane into China from the Tibet region took a picture of what he believes were two peculiar dragon shaped objects. They were flying into the clouds.Unlike our Dragons in the West, Dragons in the East are thought to be benign, powerful creatures.