I stopped by the New Horizons site, the spacecraft is in the midst of an encounter with the planet that will boost its speed by an astounding 14,000 km/h or 9,000 mph! I just said WOW.

The image is of the Little Red Spot and is a mosaic of three images from the New Horizon’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), taken on February 26th.

If you go to the NH page with this image you will find out more about the Little Red Spot. While there you can also down load a high res version it’s big, but you should get it an look at some of the detail — amazing.

The New Horizons spacecraft hit the point only 2.3 million km (1.4 million miles) at 12:43 a.m. this morning that will put on the proper course for a Pluto flyby.

Check out the press release from the mission, lot’s more there.

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

The hail storm that damaged the insulation on the external tank is extensive enough to delay the launch, tentatively scheduled for mid-March.

The shuttle Atlantis has to be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs because damage has occurred in areas that are inaccessible while Atlantis is on the pad.

Note: the mission will occur, just delayed. Scrubbed connotates it will not occur and it will.  Sorry if I left the wrong impression.

Image Credit: NASA TV

A strong thunderstorm passed over the Kennedy Space Center yesterday about 5 pm. The storm included hail that damaged the external fuel tank attached to the Shuttle Atlantis.

The damage was picked up by remote cameras, is just being fully assessed so we don’t know how much damage was done. The assessment is occurring concurrently with the two-day Flight Readiness Review at KSC. The review is conducted about two weeks before the planned launch date of every mission. During the review, the readiness of the shuttle, flight crew and payloads are evaluated to make sure they are ready to launch.

A briefing will be given to the Flight Readiness Review board about mid-day tomorrow and we should hear something.  One of the outcomes of the review is to set an official launch date.  Atlantis is tentatively scheduled for launch on March 15 as STS-117.

For more information is available at NASA.

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft made it around Mars this past weekend. There is more to come out on that I am sure. The images have been a bit limited so far, hopefully there are more images they deem worthy of releasing. Heh, easy for me to say, I’m not the one sifting through all the data.

The New Horizons spacecraft is about to go around Jupiter and is getting images of the planet. The one above is just one of many and shows the Great Red Spot quite nicely. You can see all of the images at the New Horizons Science Operations Center page.

Image Credit: New Horizons

What is going on with Scorpius?  Ian at Astroblog writes there is ANOTHER nova in the constellation not far from the last one.  That’s two novas in as many weeks.  Check out Ian’s site for a post containing finders charts and more info.

Thanks for the heads up Ian!

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft is returning images from it’s flyby!

Here are the first couple of what should be many. Clicking on the image will take you to the ESA site (they are different) where you can see the rest of the images in the particular release. Do check them out!

The first shows some of the structure of the atmosphere by the OSIRIS imager.

I like this second image. It was taken by a camera on the Rosetta Lander Imaging System. You can see part of Rosetta itself and Mars in the background.

Image Credit: ESA