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.

When you think of February 11 from now, remember it as the first time in history that one of the thousands of satellites orbiting the Earth have collided.  Scientists at NASA is closely monitoring the after-effects of the collision.  The accident took place about 400 miles above Siberia.  After the collision, a large debris cloud formed and is drifting in space.

NASA wants to make sure that the damage from these satellites do not damage other spacecraft.  It is pretty unlikely that this will happen.

“It will be weeks at least before the true magnitude of these clouds are known,” stated NASA in a message. “The risk to the space station is considered to be very small and within acceptable limits.”

The two satellites believed to be involved is one that belongs to Iridium, a U.S. company and a Russian Cosmos satellite that was no longer being used.  The Iridium satellite was launched around 1997 and the Russian satellite was launched around 1993.  Both were used for telecomm purposes.  The Iridium satellite provided telephone service to 250,000 people around the world.