Rockets

Every day, the Hamas rocket teams sneak through the fire and fury of Gaza to launching sites such as trucks, rooftops, school courtyards and mosques. Groups of three to five militants scramble to set up short-range Qassam rockets made in clandestine workshops in the Gaza Strip and longer-range Grads smuggled from Iran. Wary of Israeli jets hunting above the squalid urban maze, the rocket teams aim with the aid of Google Earth and landmarks such as the twin smokestacks of an Israeli power plant.

The pickup with "Official Rocket Recovery Vehicle" on its side bounced across the rutted dry lake bed kicking up silt. Andy Tryon glanced over his shoulder at his baby cradled in back. In a few minutes, his crew would gently place the Desert Hawk on the launch pad and arm it with an igniter. Showtime, and Tryon was nervous. The rocket represented three months' labor. He needed to solve the engineering flaw that doomed the Desert Hawk's three previous launches.

Seven people were killed in Iraq's northwest Saturday when a rocket landed amid a gathering of Shiite Muslims marking their most important holiday of the year. The young pilgrims had just completed reenactments of the slaying of the prophet Muhammad's grandson and revered saint, Imam Hussein, when the Katyusha rocket exploded. Another seven people were critically injured in the attack in Tall Afar, 240 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Iraqi police officers attempting to dismantle rockets primed for launching from the back of a truck were caught up in a series of blasts Tuesday that killed at least 13 of them. There were different reports on what caused the explosions in eastern Baghdad. An official in the Ministry of Interior, which oversees police, said the area around the truck had been booby-trapped with roadside bombs that detonated as police arrived.

In a major boost to Southern California's aerospace industry, a Hawthorne start-up founded by an Internet entrepreneur has been awarded a NASA contract potentially worth $3.1 billion to lift supplies to the International Space Station. Space Exploration Technologies, also known as SpaceX, beat out aerospace behemoths Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. for the contract to build rockets that would replace the space shuttle when it is slated for retirement in 2010.

A crude rocket fired by Palestinian militants Friday fell short of its target in Israel, striking a house in the northern Gaza Strip and killing two schoolgirls. The attack came as Israel sent mixed signals as to how it might respond to continuing Palestinian rocket fire. Israeli defense officials say politicians have approved a large-scale incursion into the territory once rainy conditions clear.

A rocket hit the U.S. Embassy here early today but no one was hurt, officials said. Dozens of police cars surrounded the embassy and officers cordoned off all roads in the area, including a major boulevard in front of the mission. Greek antiterrorism officers rushed to the compound. Investigators found the device used to fire the rocket at a construction site nearby. "This was a rocket attack launched from a building across the street.

A rocket launched in the Pacific Ocean by Long Beach-based Sea Launch Co. exploded during liftoff, destroying a Boeing Co.-built commercial communications satellite. The rocket, which was being launched from an oceangoing platform in the equatorial Pacific, was carrying an NSS-8 satellite built at Boeing's El Segundo factory and intended for use by Netherlands-based SES New Skies.

Dramatic video images captured Sea Launch Co.'s oceangoing platform being engulfed in a massive fireball when a rocket being launched from it exploded. But the Long Beach-based company said Thursday that the damage appeared to be limited.

Mounds of titanium and steel glinted in the afternoon sun, valves and pipes protruding in all directions like half-formed metal organisms. In one corner of the warehouse was a twin of the Apollo command module engine that brought Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong back from the surface of the moon nearly 40 years ago. Nearby was the second-stage motor for a Saturn V, the most powerful rocket ever used in the U.S. space program.