Space Station

Among the important cargo onboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule is material to create Silly Putty as well as ice cream. And it's not that freeze-dried "astronaut" kind. The ice cream is tagging along on the space flight that launched Sunday night from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The capsule is expected to reach the International Space Station on Wednesday.  The ice cream is encased in a GLACIER refrigerator, which is an ultra-cold freezer that stores samples at temperatures as low as minus 301 degrees Fahrenheit.

Look hard and the ghosts of the nation's 40-year-old space shuttle program can be found hidden in plain sight across Southern California. They inhabit a sprawling, virtually lifeless building in Canoga Park, where an army of Rocketdyne aerospace engineers once forged shuttle engines amid a haze of cigarette smoke and the clatter of mechanical calculators. They can be found in the Mojave Desert, at a secured Air Force base in Palmdale, where the shuttles were assembled in a hangar now being used by Boeing Co. to temporarily store office furniture.

A towering white rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla. and sped toward the International Space Station in a resupply mission that heralds a new era for NASA. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launched at 5:35 p.m. PDT Sunday from Space Launch Complex 40, carrying a Dragon capsule packed with 1,000 pounds of food, experiments and supplies. The spacecraft is expected to reach the space station Wednesday. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, is aiming to become the first private company to resupply the space station on a contracted mission for NASA.

SpaceX is set to usher in a new era for NASA's space flight program when a towering white rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and heads to the International Space Station on a resupply mission.   If successful, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, will be the first private company to resupply the space station on a contracted mission for NASA. The company has a $1.6-billion contract to carry out 12 such cargo missions for the space agency in the coming years.

Hawthorne-based rocket maker SpaceX is poised to return to the International Space Station with its Dragon spacecraft to carry out the first contracted cargo resupply flight in NASA's history. SpaceX performed a successful demonstration mission to the space station in May, showing NASA that the company could do the job. SpaceX has secured a $1.6-billion contract to carry out 12 such cargo missions, and Sunday's mission would be the first. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is set to blast off at 8:34 p.m. EDT Sunday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Fla., carrying the Dragon capsule packed with 1,000 pounds of food, water and supplies.

While all eyes are on the arrival of space shuttle Endeavour to Southern California, engineers at rocket maker SpaceX in Hawthorne are readying its spacecraft for the first NASA contracted cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station. On Thursday, NASA confirmed that the much-anticipated launch of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft aboard the 18-story Falcon 9 is scheduled for Oct. 7 at 8:34 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Fla. The Dragon will be filled with about 1,000 pounds of supplies.

Surrounded by expensive, high-tech equipment, astronauts Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide had to resort to a toothbrush and elbow grease to fix a bolt on the International Space Station on Wednesday. This added credence to a lesson NASA's Williams said she'd learned before: "You can't get married to a plan. " She added: "It seems like something you thought was going to be difficult turns out to be easy, and something you thought was going to be easy turns out to be hard. " PHOTOS: Awesome images from space Williams wrote about the "sticky" bolt in a blog post earlier this week that revealed the patience and stamina of the Indian American astronaut, who reportedly holds the record as the woman with the longest space flight: 195 days.

On a cloudless morning, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden stood at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. — where the U.S. dominated human spaceflight for half a century — and revealed plans for the space agency's next chapter. On Friday, NASA handed out $1.1 billion in contracts to three companies to privately develop a new generation of spacecraft that could one day ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Now that the space shuttle fleet has been retired, NASA has no way to travel to the space station other than shelling out $63 million each time one of its astronauts rides on a Russian Soyuz rocket.

Space may be a near-vacuum, but apparently it has a distinct odor, and now NASA has hired a scent chemist to try to reproduce that characteristic smell.  The odor might prove intriguing to visitors at exhibitions, such as when the space shuttle Endeavour is exhibited at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, but NASA has a more practical purpose in mind: to acclimate potential astronauts before they make their first visits to orbit. For a short article in the Atlantic, author Megan Garber talked to several astronauts, who noted that food, body odors and other expected scents are present, of course.

In "Earthbound," a new original musical by Skypilot Theatre Company receiving its world premiere at T.U. Studios, seven people remain on the space station Miami, which orbits the Earth. We're not sure why Miami was built, but it's been in orbit for 100 years. Its inhabitants were all born on board and have never been to the planet they call "our home. " We first meet them at a funeral, a trance-like ritual in which they send the body of a dead comrade to Earth, believing that he will come back to life when he gets there.