Kennedy Space Center

Vice Admiral John A. Baldwin Jr., who was born in Baltimore and attended school here, is retiring from the U.S. Navy Oct. 1 after 37 years of active service. He is currently serving as president of the National Defense University at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington.*Sekai R. Chideya of Forest Park, who is a life sciences major at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, is one of 48 students selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to participate in a six-week Space Life Sciences training program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Everything appeared normal June 5, 2002, as the shuttle Endeavour thundered into orbit from Kennedy Space Center through hazy afternoon skies. Unknown to the public, however, the Air Force's top two safety officials at Cape Canaveral had tried to stop the countdown. Air Force technicians could not verify that a critical backup system used to destroy errant rockets was working properly. In an apparently unprecedented move, the safety officers were overruled after a phone conversation between Brig.

Darwin E. Smith, 69, the former head of Kimberly-Clark Corp., died of a heart attack Tuesday at his vacation home in Florida.He retired in 1992 after 20 years as the leader of the Irving, Texas-based health care and paper products company.A native of Garrett, Ind., he was known for his no-nonsense management style. Soon after becoming chief executive, he closed the executive dining room and once banned corporate titles to help make all employees feel like part of a team.Mr. Smith, a Harvard Law School graduate, transformed Kimberly-Clark from a commodity papermaker into a maker of several products.

Riddled with holes drilled by woodpeckers, the space shuttle Discovery will have to retreat to the hangar for repairs to its fuel-tank insulation, forcing an indefinite postponement of the launching that had been scheduled for this week, NASA officials at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., say.The birds were identified as yellow-shafted flickers, a common woodpecker in eastern North America. Technicians counted at least six dozen holes. Some birds penetrated to the tank's metal wall, but caused no damage to it.At a news briefing Friday, Al Sofge, assistant launching director at the Kennedy center, tried to be philosophical about having one of the $2 billion spaceships, built to withstand the rigors of orbital flight, driven off its launching pad by a flock of birds with mating on their minds.

HOUSTON - Hours after Discovery astronaut Steve Robinson made the first repair of a shuttle by a human walking in space look easy, NASA said yesterday that it has ordered more tests to determine whether another spacewalk will be needed to fix a damaged thermal blanket. Yesterday's emergency repairs had been expected to take much longer than the few seconds it took Robinson to pull two pieces of fabric from the shuttle's underside. Tethered to a robotic arm in space, Robinson used his gloved fingers to gently extract the protruding gap fillers.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Nineteen women have flown aboard U.S. spacecraft, starting with the celebrated Sally Ride in 1983.But when Air Force Lt. Col. Eileen Collins buckles herself into her seat aboard the space shuttle Discovery this week, she alone will realize the crowning achievement of female aviators.Colonel Collins is a female spacecraft pilot, the world's first.The women before her were astronauts, but they were passengers aboard their shuttles, there to conduct scientific experiments or operate payload equipment.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - It's a photo that has been viewed by millions - a small white puff coming off the left underbelly of the space shuttle Columbia 82 seconds after it lifted off the launch pad. The puff was a doormat-size piece of foam that had peeled off the external fuel tank and caromed off the orbiter at nearly 500 mph. It could be the key to what caused Columbia to break into pieces in a fiery streak across the sky when it tried to return to...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Nineteen women have flown aboard U.S. spacecraft, starting with the celebrated Sally Ride in 1983.But when Air Force Lt. Col. Eileen Collins buckles herself into her seat aboard the space shuttle Discovery this week, she alone will realize the crowning achievement of female aviators.Colonel Collins is a female spacecraft pilot, the world's first.The women before her were astronauts, but they were passengers aboard their shuttles, there to conduct scientific experiments or operate payload equipment.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A faulty valve switch and threatening thunderclouds forced NASA yesterday to postpone the liftoff of the shuttle Atlantis again, this time for 24 hours.More equipment trouble struck last night. The latest problem hit electronics gear in the crew cabin.Launch is now set for 11:02 this morning, although controllers can send Atlantis on its way as late as 3:06 p.m., or about five hours after the astronauts board the shuttle, whichever comes first.The electrical problem could further delay the launch, they said.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Assigned to rescue the still-under-construction International Space Station, seven astronauts orbiting Earth aboard shuttle Atlantis whisked ever closer last night to a rendezvous with their quarry. Capping a perfect countdown, Atlantis blasted into space at 6:11 a.m. yesterday from the Kennedy Space Center, the shuttle and its tower of smoke catching the rose-colored rays of dawn. At that moment, the space station was passing over Turkey, northeast of Ankara near the Black Sea. Eight minutes later, the crew achieved orbit and Atlantis began a 42-hour chase of the space station, which is slowly falling back to Earth.