National Aeronautics And Space Administration

NASA called off Thursday's launch of the space shuttle Atlantis after a pair of fuel gauges in its big external tank failed to work properly, a recurring problem since the 2003 Columbia disaster. Shuttle managers said the next launch attempt would be no earlier than Saturday. Preliminary indications were that the problem might be with an open circuit rather than the gauges themselves -- perhaps a spliced line or a bad connector -- which would be easier to fix.

It looks for all the world like someplace out of this world, which is pretty much why NASA scientists and engineers recently journeyed here to a remote volcanic cinder field in northern Arizona.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft launched Thursday on a 3.2-billion-mile journey to the asteroid belt, where scientists hope to find clues to the formation of the solar system. The spacecraft, atop a Delta 2 rocket, took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 4:34 a.m. PDT. "We have our time machine up and flying," said UCLA space physics professor Christopher T. Russell, the lead scientist on the project.

State regulators monitoring cleanup of contaminants at a former nuclear research and rocket engine testing facility near Simi Valley have set new rules and deadlines for the contractor and the two government agencies responsible. In a consent decree issued Aug. 16, the state Department of Toxic Substance Control requires Boeing Corp., owner of the Santa Susana Field Lab; the U.S. Department of Energy; and NASA to submit reports by Nov.

NASA said Wednesday that it had found no evidence that any of its astronauts ever flew while inebriated, or even showed up for work impaired, as was recently alleged by an outside investigative panel. In particular, Administrator Michael D. Griffin said a sensational account of an unnamed astronaut flying drunk on a Russian Soyuz flight was false. "I'm saying I think our guys are doing a heck of a job, and these allegations are untrue," Griffin said at a briefing in Washington.

NASA awarded a contract worth as much as $1.13 billion to Boeing Co. to build a key part of its rocket system to send astronauts back to the moon. The Chicago-based aerospace giant, which had worked on every NASA manned spaceship, had been shut out of three earlier large contracts for NASA's new spaceship. The contract is to build the Ares I upper stage of the rocket, which would take astronauts on a short but crucial second phase of their trip to the moon.

Thirty-five Southern California science-loving teachers had stratospheric hopes on Saturday: to follow in the footsteps of Barbara Morgan, the first teacher to complete a mission in space, by learning how to apply in their classrooms what she did during her two weeks in orbit. But instead of traveling to space, the teachers, from grades kindergarten through 12, gathered at the NASA Dryden Education Center in Palmdale, coming from as far as San Diego.

A computer sabotaged by a disgruntled worker of a NASA supplier has been repaired and loaded aboard the space shuttle Endeavour for Wednesday's liftoff. Space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said that it was apparently an isolated event and that there was no reason to believe anyone had tampered with anything else on the spacecraft. "We have found no other areas of concern," Hale said at Cape Canaveral. "We have thoroughly reviewed all the parts made by that contractor."

When NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander rocketed into space Saturday, it went, like all missions, with the assurance that as few Earth microbes as possible tagged along for the ride. Hitchhiking microbes could impair the experiments, or worse -- an errant microbe could contaminate the planet. Keeping the spacecraft sterile was the job of an obscure but crucial part of NASA known as the Planetary Protection unit.

The search for life on other worlds can be boiled down to a simple maxim: Follow the water. Life, at least the carbonaceous form we are familiar with, loves water. Now, for the first time, NASA is about to land a spacecraft in a place on another planet where scientists are confident water exists. The Phoenix Mars lander is set to blast off from Cape Canaveral early Saturday for a journey to near the Martian north pole.