NASA announced that they are hosting their first space shuttle launch tweet-up. A tweet-up is when a group of Twitter users around the same area of residence meet up. The Atlantis shuttle has been moved to its launch pad earlier this week. The Atlantis plans to launch on November 12. Atlantis will be delivering goods to the International Space Station.

Who gets to see the shuttle lift off? The first 100 NASA Twitter followers that sign up for the Kennedy Space Center tour. The registration begins later today.

NASA astronauts have been tweeting for quite some time now including Michael Massimino. I’m sure the event will be memorable. If anyone reading this ended up attending the event, let us know about your experience.

NASA has been working on a project called LCROSS which is going live tomorrow. The LCROSS project involves sending a rocket into the moon in order to eject debris to find out for sure whether there is frozen water.

The event will be taking place on October 9 at 6:15AM EST and 3:15AM PST. The video can be watched at the following link:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

The live footage will be from a first person view of a spacecraft camera. There will also be real-time telemetry animation along with commentary from a NASA official. There may even be some live footage from an 88″ telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

NASA will also be live tweeting and live Facebooking the event.

This event is going to be huge, but I doubt that I will be awake to see it all going down. Hopefully the video will be added to YouTube shortly after it is filmed. If that happens, then I’ll embed it to this post.

Remember Buzz Lightyear? Buzz was the astronaut toy in the movie Toy Story that competed for Andy’s affection against Woody. A Buzz Lightyear toy has made it into outer space and the NASA astronauts that took him up there made the above video showing proof.

Buzz returned to Earth last Friday from the shuttle Discovery after it launched aboard the STS-124 on May 31. Buzz went into outer space as part of a partnership between NASA and Disney to encourage students to study science, math, and technology.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has made an interesting discovery.  Using their Kepler space telescope, NASA has discovered the atmosphere of a planet that is 1,000 light years away from Earth.  This planet orbits its own star just like how the Earth orbits the Sun.

The data was collected from HAT-P-7, an extrasolar planet that astronomers have labeled “Hot Jupiter.”  NASA said that this discovery demonstrates the amazing abilities that the Kepler space telescope has in finding information despite how far objects are.  The Kepler space telescope deliberately seeks out objects that are similar to Earth in size and are located at a distance from the Sun that makes it possible to have water on the planet.

The Kepler space telescope will keep looking for these extrasolar planets over the next three years.  It was launched this past March from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The Kepler space telescope detects the existence of the objects by detecting the dips in brightness of the stars.  This occurs when orbiting planets travel across the face of its sun.  It takes planet Earth 365 days to orbit the Sun, but it takes HAT-P-7 only 2.2 days to orbit its own sun.  Talk about a constant shifting in seasons! HAT-P-7 is 26 times closer to its Sun compared to Earth.

[via InformationWeek]

Gary McKinnon is a hacker in the U.K. that was responsible for one of the biggest military hacks of all time.  He tried to break into NASA’s security data to find out if UFOs exist.  McKinnon claimed that he did not cause any damage to NASA’s systems as part of the hack, but the U.S. government claims he stole 950 passwords and deleted files responsible for replenishing supplies of an Atlantic fleet.

This event took place in 2001 and the estimated damage was about $700,000.  The U.S. government filed to have McKinnon extradited from the U.K. to face trial.  A British Court ruled that they would not stop the extradition last week.  But now McKinnon’s mother is attempting to make a plea with U.S. President Barack Obama to stop the litigation.

The U.K. court that said that they would not stop the extradition based their decision on the fact that they do not have enough evidence to reflect upon the seriousness of the charges being held against him by the U.S.

“After so many years, it would be refreshing to see Mr. McKinnon actually have his day in court,” stated Scott Christie, who served as a New Jersey assistant U.S. attorney and was one of the first prosecutors brought into the case. “But as I’ve come to learn, nothing is certain until he actually steps foot on U.S. soil, so I will withhold my feelings of relief.”

“Obama, please hear about us,” pleaded McKinnon’s mother Janis Sharp. “Stand by us and make this world a better place, a more compassionate place. Please hear us, Obama. I know you’d do the right thing.”

McKinnon’s attorney Edward Fitzgerald said that McKinnon has Asperger’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder that is related to autism.

Making the case more interesting, rock group Pink Floyd singer David Gilmour is apparently recording a song for an upcoming CD that is made to support McKinnon.

British hacker Gary McKinnon was responsible for one of the biggest military hacks of all time.  He had admitted to data intrusion to find out whether UFOs exist.  The computers he attacked belong to NASA.

McKinnon said that he did not cause any damages while hacking NASA’s systems, but the U.S. government claims that he stole 950 passwords and deleted files that were necessary for replenishing the supplies of an Atlantic fleet.  This took place in 2001.  The U.S. government also believes that McKinnon disrupted military network operations conducted after 9/11.  The damages caused by McKinnon’s behavior is estimated to be around $700,000.

The lawyers of McKinnon is claiming that the hacker is too sick to travel to the United States.  McKinnon has Asperger’s Syndrome which they are claiming could drive him to suicide if he travels to the U.S.

The House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights have approved McKinnon’s extradition to the U.S. so it is very likely that he will end up going.  If McKinnon is not extradited to the U.S., he may face less serious penalties in the U.K. courts.  The matter is under judicial review by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

About a month ago I wrote about how Michael Massimino is preparing to tweet from outer space.  Massimino’s mission is to overhaul the Hubble telescope.  Well Massimino is keeping up to his promise to live tweet from space under the username Astro_Mike.

He has sent out the following tweets since arriving in space:

Massimino is the first astronaut to “tweet from space.”  Massimino is not necessarily live updating because he writes an e-mail to support personnel on Earth that update his Twitter account for him.

For those of you that have a problem and don’t consider that really tweeting, put this into perspective.  Only recently have they discovered how to get WiFi on plans and that is only 30,000-40,000 feet from the ground.  On average, the moon is about 238,000 feet away from Earth.

Philip Gabriel Pettersson had stolen source code for Cisco Systems’ Internetwork Operating System (ION) software several years ago and now he has been indicted.  The charges are one count of intrusion and two counts of misappropriation of trade secrets.  Pettersson also intruded NASA.  The indictment was set up by attorney Joseph Russoniello and The U.S. Department of Justice.  The FBI handled the investigation of the crimes.

Cisco’s ION software handles packet routing and the source code was posted briefly on a Russian website. “Stakkato” was the hacker name selected by Pettersson.  If charged, Pettersson could face 10 years of prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000.

[via PCW]

Michael Massimino also known as @Astro_Mike is getting ready to tweet from outer space.  Massimino is currently training for overhauling the Hubble Space Telescope.  Massimino will be launching into space on May 12 aboard NASA space shuttle Atlantis.

“Practicing approaches and landings with my crew in the space shuttle simulator,” tweeted Massimino about an hour ago.  Massimino has done two spacewalks so far.  Massimino’s 11 day space mission includes 5 spacewalks and will help extend the Hubble’s lifetime to at least 2014.

Last time Massimino travelled to space, he did some maintenance work to the Hubble telescope.  This time around he will be replacing batteries and gyroscopes on the telescope along with attaching a docking ring for future robotic vehicles to make repairs to the telescope’s systems.

This mission is quite a bit riskier than routine missions because it the shuttle is not bound for the International Space Station.  If the orbiter suffers from damage, astronauts could take refuge at the International Space Station, but in this case Atlantis will have to fly at a higher orbit and different inclination than the station.  If an emergency is necessary, NASA would send a second space shuttle from the launch pad in Florida as a rescue team.

Massimino will be using a mobile device to update Twitter messages.  He is currently the only NASA astronaut to use the micro-blogging tool for space agency business.

“Social media is a large and growing sector of communications,” stated NASA spokesperson James Hartsfield. “So this is a very neat thing and it offers Mike a chance to connect with the public.”

[via FOXNews]

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) are competing for who has more data and imagery of outer space.  Last month Google revealed Mars 3D and now Microsoft released data of their own of the planet Mars on their WorldWide Telescope software.

Through another agreement that Microsoft made with NASA, the software giant now has access to over 100 terabytes of data (20,000 DVDs) from the Ames Research Center.  Ames is based in Mountain View, California and is physically located next to Google’s headquarters.  Microsoft previously used 3D images in their Photosynth software from the Kennedy Space Center.

[via VentureBeat]

I got a little bit carried away with 1960’s Batman lines in the article title here.  This flying furry rodent decided to cling to the fuel tank during the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery during the launch on Sunday, March 15.  The fate of the bat during lift-off is a mystery because the NASA umbilical camera that takes pictures of the external tank was broken after the separation.

The bat may have flown away or might have gotten fried.  Regardless, the “Space Bat” has gotten all the attention it needs, even getting its own website: space-bat.com.  Below is a video tribute that RavenCK uploaded on YouTube.

“The WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe. By combining terabytes of incredible imagery and data with easy-to-use software for viewing and moving through all that information, the WorldWide Telescope opens the door to new ways to see and experience the wonders of space. Our hope is that it will inspire young people to explore astronomy and science, and help researchers in their quest to better understand the universe.”
-Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has announced that they have launched WorldWide Telescope today.  This allows users to see the same imagery in the universe as scientists at NASA.  The imagery is put together using Chandra X-Ray, the Observatory Center, Sloan Digital Sky Survey and other telescopes.

Users will be able to select a telescope that they want to look through.  Users can also view planet locations from the past, present, and future.  The foundation of WorldWide Telescope is based on the work of Jim Gray, Senior Researcher at Microsoft  Microsoft.  As a tribute to Gray, Microsoft is making WorldWide Telescope free. 

Some of the other features includes zooming and panning as well as guided tours.  Some of the features are similar to Google Sky.

Information Source:
[1] Microsoft PressPass: WorldWide Telescope Brings Space Exploration to Earth