Wow! Space.com has a story suggesting Hubble might get a manned servicing mission.

Griffin did promise to reconsider a Hubble mission when he took over. It is worth
mentioning everything is contingent on a successful Return to Flight mission, which has been
delayed until July. Hubble’s batteries and gyroscopes need to be replaced in two or three
years, so there isn’t a whole lot of time (considering the number of launches in that time
period) to play with. With any luck things will go as planned and the demise of Hubble will
be put off for a time.

Whew! Like I said in yesterdays post, I upgraded the blog software. Had a few troubles though.

Started at 6 this morning, had everything backed up, ok manual or auto install, auto thank you very much. Half way through the auto install the host’s server crashed HARD! It was after 1:30 this afternoon I could even get to the site. So in the mean time I still had FTP access so I did a blind manual install.

Looks like it was pretty sucessful because it seems all is pretty much restored, still have a few details to work out but the majority of everything is done.

WHEW!

These two craters are the smallest ever “seen” by either of the Mars Rovers. Both of the craters in the image are less than a foot in diameter and a half inch deep. See JPL

Photo Credit:JPL

Probably will take the scope out to see what I can find in gaps in the clouds and may be catch a few meteors although we are in a little gap in between the Lyrid and Eta Aquarid showers.

It is forcast to rain until Wednesday, So I will be upgrading the blog installation this weekend and have already modified the necessary files to upload. All I have left is to back up the database again, and do the actual upgrade.

If the blog dissapears for a short time you will know it didn’t go well at all. I will have a full back up on this computer in case of emergency.

Space-Ref is reporting that

around 6:00 pm EDT Thursday evening NASA decided to delay the launch of STS-114 until July. The new launch window extends from 12 – 31 July.

Although NASA will eventually have to roll Discovery back to the VAB for External Tank modifications, it is not likely to do so right away.

Instead, NASA will continue to conduct tests at the pad to better understand several anomalies observed during tests last week – tests that could only have been done at the pad.

Indystar.com is saying this morning the announcement of whether or not to delay the flight will come today.

They were to have a dress rehearsal of simulated countdown activities May 1 to 4 so that may not happen either.

Personally I’d rather see a delay and have them get it right.

Source: Space Ref/Indystar.com

First I’d head over to Space Tramp’s site and read her Comet Collision post, then I’d enter the GREAT COMET CRATER CONTEST from the link there, finally I’d give her a big wave and say HEY!

If you were me you’d have already done it. Don’t believe me? Check her comments!

After that I’d listen to a sample of music by Carla Lynne Hall called Supernova and there is more on her website Mama Soul. It’s likely a good thing it’s only a 35 sec clip, otherwise she’d probably be out of bandwidth in short order, that’s how good it is. It is on iTunes though.

But like I said if you were me you’d have already done it.

Of course I’d see what was up with NASA’S Galaxy Evolution Explorer on it’s second birthday, over at JPL.

Lastly before dinner you’d go to the Cassini site and check out the story behind the stunningly good picture of Saturns moon Epimetheus at the top of this post. The image was taken by Cassini and according to them: The slightly reddish feature in the lower left is a crater named Pollux. The large crater just below center is Hilairea, which has a diameter of about 33 kilometers (21 miles). At 116 kilometers (72 miles) across, Epimetheus is slightly smaller than its companion moon, Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across), which orbits at essentially the same distance from Saturn.

Virgin Galactic delays the target date for launching the first commercial spaceflight by at least a year because of red tape.

I’m not exactly surprised.

Click the image for the story.

Photo Credit: UPI