Nasa

With a flourish of new images - from exploding stars to colliding galaxies and a new impact scar on Jupiter - NASA officials finally pulled the wraps off the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope on Wednesday, almost four months after astronauts completed a final round of repairs and upgrades. "Hubble is back in action," said Heidi Hammel, senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.. "You're only getting the tiniest taste of what astronomers are planning to do with Hubble over the many years it's going to last."

American astronauts undergo a psychological assessment when they join NASA but face no further evaluations during their careers unless issues arise during their annual flight physicals, the space agency said yesterday. "No other psychological assessments are done for shuttle astronauts after that initial one unless a concern is raised," said NASA public affairs officer Katherine Trinidad. Navy Capt. Lisa M. Nowak's problems had slipped below NASA's radar and surfaced Monday in a bizarre meltdown and alleged assault on Air Force Capt.

With apologies to the esteemed Diane Rehm of National Public Radio, please join us for Susan's Tuesday news roundup, during which a roundtable of her multiple personalities, each representing a different mood, will dissect the headlines. Doping scandals in the Tour de France. Gambling among NBA refs. Dog-fighting in the highest reaches of NFL stardom. And suspected steroid abuse by a home-run record-challenger. And nothing but yawns from the fans over what one sportswriter described as the "shocking nadir" of professional sports.

A crowd at the Johns Hopkins University erupted in applause yesterday as a satellite that Homewood scientists spent 17 years dreaming about and five years building finally flew.More than 400 people jammed the Bloomberg Center auditorium to watch, by television hookup, as a slender Delta II rocket fired its engines and pierced a cloud above Cape Canaveral, Fla. The rocket carried a $200 million telescope developed and built by Hopkins astronomers, with the help of more than 600 people in three countries.

With the failures of two costly Mars spacecraft still painfully fresh, NASA is gearing up to tackle two more chancy missions. And this time the glare of public scrutiny will shift from NASA's Mars teams in California to Maryland.At the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, scientists are waiting out more delays in a space shuttle mission to replace failed gyroscopes that have idled the Hubble orbiting observatory. "I think we're aware we need to do well. NASA needs a winner," said the institute's director, Steven V. W. Beckwith.

Capturing data on the most powerful and mysterious explosions in the universe is a bit like swatting at flies. The blasts, called gamma ray bursts, are usually too quick.Astronomers need hours to swing their telescopes around to record the blasts, which typically last just seconds. And they're left with only a fading afterglow to examine.But a team led by Neil Gehrels of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt says an orbiting observatory it's proposed to NASA could provide a reliably fast response to gamma ray bursts and simultaneous observations in a variety of wavelengths.

WASHINGTON -- John Mankins' government career can be traced through the drawings on his office wall: a rocket whizzing from an Earth-based slingshot into outer space, a glittering moon colony, a giant bug-like contraption fueling a spacecraft in interstellar darkness.Crazy ideas? Not to Mankins. In his job at NASA, he is paid to come up with concepts so far-out they sometimes only get laughed at. Consider him one of NASA's sci-fi guys."I try to be reasonably conservative with my ideas," Mankins says, looking as though he hasjust come through a brainstorm, with his rumpled hair and government ID dangling askew.

MIAMI -- Insisting that you're never too old for high-flying adventure, John Glenn -- the first American to orbit Earth and an influential senator -- is this close to blasting back into space this year.At the age of 77.The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is leaning toward approving his 10-day flight aboard shuttle Discovery in October. A decision could come in a few days."We're certainly looking at it," NASA spokesman Brian Welch said yesterday. "We take him seriously. There's a lot of buzz about it around here."

NASA stuck with the tried-and-true yesterday in awarding a landmark space privatization contract to a team led by Lockheed Martin Corp. and featuring AlliedSignal Technical Services Corp. Columbia.The Consolidated Space Operations Contract, known as CSOC, is valued at more than $3 billion over the next 10 years and is intended as a turning point in the way the space agency does business.The winning team of companies, which features more than three dozen subcontractors, will take over management of most of NASA's unmanned spacecraft.

WASHINGTON -- It's possible that Sen. John Glenn's plan to go where no senior citizen has gone before will help yield a treatment for ailments of the elderly and give NASA insight into ways to keep astronauts alive on the long trip to Mars.But the flight of Space Shuttle Discovery in October, when NASA's Mission Control bids "Godspeed" to Glenn for the first time in 36 years, will certainly serve as a nostalgia trip that could revive lagging interest in the shuttle program. At 77, the Ohio Democrat would be the oldest person ever in space.

With a flourish of new images - from exploding stars to colliding galaxies and a new impact scar on Jupiter - NASA officials finally pulled the wraps off the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope on Wednesday, almost four months after astronauts completed a final round of repairs and upgrades. "Hubble is back in action," said Heidi Hammel, senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.. "You're only getting the tiniest taste of what astronomers are planning to do with Hubble over the many years it's going to last."

NASA recently snatched headlines with the news of Charles Bolden's nomination as NASA's new administrator and the Atlantis shuttle crew's final upgrade of the Hubble telescope. Next, there will be numerous TV documentaries as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of man's first moon landing on July 20. Yet the news for NASA now is a pale comparison to 1969, when two Americans first stepped on the moon. Forty years later, we have to ask: What happened to man and woman on Mars and Venus? By now we thought we'd even be on the outer reaches of the solar system, to Pluto.

Astronomers around the world got their first close-up look at the Hubble Space Telescope in seven years Wednesday as astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis closed in and captured the orbiting observatory for its final round of repairs and upgrades. "When we first had images of the Hubble Space Telescope, there were audible gasps of elation. This was truly a wonderful sight after seven years," said Jon Morse, NASA's director of astrophysics. Mission specialist Megan McArthur grabbed the 12-ton telescope with the shuttle's robot arm at 1:14 p.m. while orbiting 350 miles above western Australia.

As a kid growing up in Bowie, Richard Arnold's heroes included Orioles third baseman Brooks Robinson, undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau and the Apollo astronauts who landed on the moon. He realized quickly that he did not have the makings of a major league ball player. So he set his sights instead on science. And now, after teaching in middle and high schools for 15 years, Arnold, 45, is preparing to follow the astronauts into space. He and another former science teacher will be on board the shuttle Discovery tonight, ready for a scheduled 9:20 p.m. launch on a mission to the International Space Station.

Syrian president orders an embassy in Lebanon Beirut, Lebanon : The president of Syria ordered his government yesterday to establish formal diplomatic relations with Lebanon, a move that could pave the way for normalizing decades of tangled ties between the two countries. President Bashar Assad issued a decree calling for the establishment of Syria's first-ever diplomatic mission in Lebanon, a small mountainous country carved out of the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire and long dominated by its larger neighbor.

GREENBELT - Astrophysicists like to dance. Who knew? Another thing you might have learned yesterday at the Goddard Space Flight Center was that if you zip yourself into a striped suit of a certain adhesive material you will stick to a wall made of Velcro. And if you do it once, you'll have to do it twice. "I just want to go on the Velcro again," said Maria Cummings, one of seven children in a Gaithersburg family, who was so excited by the prospect of reconnecting with the wall that she became momentarily confused as to whether she was 8 or 9. Her 6-year-old brother John - no question about his age - was more concerned with the cookies being doled out by members of the Goddard Dance Club, run by scientists and other brainy types who apparently like to shake a leg when they're not busy figuring out the trajectory of some billion-dollar spaceship hurtling toward the stars.

The Russian invasion of Georgia complicated what was already a major headache for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration: how to get to and from the International Space Station, which was funded mostly by U.S. taxpayer dollars, after NASA's aging fleet of space shuttles retires in 2010. NASA expected Russian rockets to ferry its astronauts between 2010 and 2015, when the shuttle's replacement is due to fly. But a chill in U.S.-Russian relations could throw a monkey wrench into that plan.

NASA officials said yesterday that they have found no evidence that any astronauts ever flew while inebriated, or even showed up for work impaired, as was recently asserted by an outside investigative panel. In particular, agency Administrator Michael D. Griffin said an account of an unnamed astronaut flying drunk on a Russian Soyuz flight was false. "I'm saying I think our guys are doing a heck of a job, and these allegations are untrue," Griffin said at a briefing in Washington. His remarks came with the release of a 45-page internal review of the claims made in July by a panel that criticized the culture of NASA's astronaut corps in the wake of the Lisa Nowak case.

With apologies to the esteemed Diane Rehm of National Public Radio, please join us for Susan's Tuesday news roundup, during which a roundtable of her multiple personalities, each representing a different mood, will dissect the headlines. Doping scandals in the Tour de France. Gambling among NBA refs. Dog-fighting in the highest reaches of NFL stardom. And suspected steroid abuse by a home-run record-challenger. And nothing but yawns from the fans over what one sportswriter described as the "shocking nadir" of professional sports.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- When space shuttle Challenger blew up, Barbara Morgan watched from a NASA viewing area as seven friends and colleagues - including fellow teacher Christa McAuliffe - plunged to their deaths. Seventeen years later, when Columbia disintegrated over Texas, Morgan was in a NASA plane waiting to escort the ship home. She had been scheduled to fly on its next mission. Now it's Morgan's turn to board a shuttle, and she is unfazed by past tragedies. When Endeavour lifts off - the launch is set for tomorrow - the teacher-turned-astronaut will be strapped into the orbiter and hurled skyward by almost 7 million pounds of thrust.