Astronauts

Two astronauts on a spacewalk failed to free a jammed equipment shelf. Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold II pushed and pulled the stuck equipment storage platform but finally gave up. NASA officials at Cape Canaveral instructed them to tie the platform down using sturdy tethers. Meantime, inside the space station, the recycling system that's meant to turn astronauts' urine and condensation into drinking water finally completed a full cycle and yielded four or five liters to bring back to Earth for testing.

Lights out, camera, action? Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers will have the perfect spot to watch Earth Hour unfold around the world Saturday evening from his seat on the International Space Station, about 240 miles above the planet. Kuipers, who has been named an Earth Hour ambassador by the World Wildlife Fund, plans to take photos and videos of the planet as the lights go out and share them online, according to the European Space Agency . Look for Kuipers' real-time coverage from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. Saturday on his logbook blog and via tweets from @Astro_Andre . (One caveat: Don't expect to see much if it's foggy or overcast.)

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

Hawthorne rocket venture Space Exploration Technologies Corp.  announced it has assembled a team of independent experts to help the company create a safe spacecraft for NASA astronauts. The company, better known as SpaceX, is already building its Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules to deliver cargo to the International Space Station and has a $1.6-billion contract to do just that for NASA. SpaceX plans to send its unmanned Dragon capsule to dock with the International Space Station on April 30 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in a demonstration flight for NASA.

A dispute between NASA and former astronauts over ownership of space artifacts has led to a bill in Congress that would give the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts "full ownership rights" to items such as checklists and personal logs from their missions. The legislation grows out of an effort last year by Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell to sell a checklist he used in his 1970 mission -- the one featured in the movie "Apollo 13," which starred Tom Hanks as Lovell. The checklist brought nearly $390,000 at auction.

I must express my deep disappointment in a statement in your Aug. 8 editorial, "NASA: Fewer and Better." The statement, "It should begin by scrapping ridiculously unworkable plans like sending astronauts to Mars, which could cost up to $30 billion," shows The Times' shortsightedness. The $30 billion would be spent over an extended period of time, probably around 15 years, resulting in a cost of less than $10 per year for each U.S. citizen. Concerning the "ridiculously unworkable plan," it's a good thing that The Times was not advising the Spanish royalty in 1492.

A massive piece of space junk drifted toward the International Space Station and its 13 astronauts Wednesday, although NASA officials said the threat would not delay tonight's spacewalk. Mission Control kept close tabs on the piece of debris because there was a chance, however unlikely, that it could come too close or even hit the linked shuttle Discovery and space station if their path is not altered. As of Wednesday night, the junk was expected to pass within two miles of the outpost Friday, said John McCullough, chief of NASA's flight director office.

Capt. Frederick H. Hauck, USN Hauck, 47, will serve as Discovery commander. A native of Long Beach, he now lives in Winchester, Mass. He is the father of two children. Hauck joined the astronaut corps in 1978 and has flown on two previous shuttle flights, logging 339 hours in space. A former Navy test pilot, he flew 114 combat and combat support missions in Southeast Asia and among other decorations has received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

NASA doesn't have nearly enough money to put astronauts back on the moon by 2020 -- and it might be the wrong place to go, anyway. That's one of the harsh messages emerging from a sweeping review of NASA's human space flight program. The Human Space Flight Plans Committee, appointed by President Obama and headed by retired aerospace executive Norman R. Augustine, has been trying to stitch together a plausible strategy for America's manned space program. The panel has struggled to find options that stay under the current budget and include missions worthy of the cost and effort.

After becoming the first private company ever to blast a spacecraft into Earth orbit and have it return intact last month, Hawthorne rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is pushing toward its next big step. The company known as SpaceX wants to be the first commercial firm to launch astronauts into outer space and has submitted a proposal to NASA. SpaceX wants in on the potentially multibillion-dollar job of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station after the space shuttle is retired this year.

A dispute between NASA and former astronauts over ownership of space artifacts has led to a bill in Congress that would give the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts "full ownership rights" to items such as checklists and personal logs from their missions. The legislation grows out of an effort last year by Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell to sell a checklist he used in his 1970 mission -- the one featured in the movie "Apollo 13," which starred Tom Hanks as Lovell. The checklist brought nearly $390,000 at auction.

Janice Voss, 55, a NASA astronaut who first worked for the space agency as a teenager and flew five shuttle missions in seven years, died Feb. 6 in Scottsdale, Ariz., where she was receiving treatment for breast cancer. Voss flew four missions in the 1990s before a flight to the International Space Station in 2000. Her final trip was part of a radar topography mission that mapped more than 47 million square miles of Earth's surface. NASA said Voss was one of six women to fly in space at least five times.

For half a century, the sprawling 110-acre aerospace complex in Redondo Beach has played host to the development of the nation's most advanced and secret spacecraft. Known as Space Park, the site was built at the height of the Cold War after the launch of Sputnik for engineers to develop a high-powered rocket that could deliver a nuclear warhead 6,000 miles away in less than an hour to virtually wipe out an entire city: the intercontinental ballistic missile. The complex's 47 buildings have served as a nerve center for the development and construction of high-powered lasers, cutting-edge electronics and sophisticated spacecraft.

If NASA ever wants to send astronauts to Mars, it first must solve a problem that has nothing to do with rockets or radiation exposure. A newly discovered eye condition found to erode the vision of some astronauts who have spent months aboard the International Space Station has doctors worried that future explorers could go blind by the end of long missions, such as a multiyear trip to Mars. Although blindness is the worst-case scenario, the threat of blurred vision is enough that NASA has asked scores of researchers to study the issue and has put special eyeglasses on the space station to help those affected.

Purporting to be edited from 84 hours of footage recently uploaded to the Internet — by whom, it is not stated — "Apollo 18" would have viewers believe that this is the true story of how NASA and the Department of Defense sent a secret final manned mission to the moon in 1974 after the lunar program had been officially shut down. What the astronauts found there has been kept under wraps ever since. In reality, "Apollo 18" is a faux found-footage thriller directed by Spanish filmmaker Gonzalo López-Gallego from a script by newcomer Brian Miller and produced by Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov.

A 330-pound humanoid robot has been electronically awakened aboard the International Space Station, beginning its life as an astronaut's assistant. The robot named Robonaut 2, or R2, will help with routine tasks such as holding tools and vacuuming air filters. The robot was sent up on the space shuttle Discovery in February, but it wasn't powered up until this week. Clad in a gold helmet with a shiny metallic visor, R2 has a torso, two arms and two five-fingered hands. For now, it sits on a fixed pedestal inside the space station.

Seven astronauts preparing to embark on the longest space shuttle flight yet arrived Monday at Kennedy Space Center. "We're looking forward to a launch on Thursday morning," said John Blaha, shuttle commander. The medical research mission is to last 14 days.

A giant black granite "space mirror" that tracks the sun was dedicated Thursday to the memory of 15 fallen astronauts, five years after the Challenger explosion inspired the $6.2-million national monument. "We dedicate this monument to the memory of strong, courageous, smart and daring astronauts who pursued an adventurous career and who died in peaceful service to their country," Vice President Dan Quayle said. "Today and forever, the space mirror will send their names into the heavens."

Quite a few of those who gathered Thursday along the angled Little Tokyo block named for the first Japanese American astronaut said it was the closest they would ever get to a space shuttle launch. They had come to see a newly restored one-tenth-scale model of the Challenger space shuttle be hoisted atop the memorial to Ellison S. Onizuka, one of the seven astronauts who died when the shuttle exploded on Jan. 28, 1986. At 1 p.m., when the big moment was scheduled, people clutching cameras positioned themselves, lining the balcony of the Weller Court shopping center on one side of the monument as well as the roof and each level of the parking garage on the other side.

As a teenager in Costa Rica, Franklin Chang-Diaz had an improbable goal: becoming an American astronaut. Ultimately, he would fly a record seven shuttle missions and today wants to fly to Mars. Scott Parazynksi also wanted to go to space and figured becoming a doctor at Stanford University would help him get there. He became a jack-of-all-trades spacewalker, and went on to climb Mt. Everest and become chief of medicine and technology at a research hospital. Curtis Brown Jr. dreamed of cockpits while growing up on a North Carolina tobacco farm.