Space Shuttle

MARYLAND Astronaut faces charges An astronaut who grew up in Rockville, graduated from the Naval Academy and last summer flew on the space shuttle Discovery was charged with the attempted murder of a woman she believed to be the rival love interest of a space shuttle pilot. pg 1a Md. weighs terrapin ban Maryland is considering a ban on the capture of diamondback terrapin after watermen reported trapping more than 10,000 of the rare turtles last year, a twentyfold increase from the year before.

A Maryland start-up company has entered a race that could put the first tourists in space.TGV-Rockets Inc., of Bethesda, has joined 16 other entrants in the $10 million X-Prize competition to fly the first privately built, manned spaceship to the edge of space and back, and do it again two weeks later.The contest is designed to spur the development of private technology that will make access to space more affordable to science and industry, and even to wealthy tourists.Patrick Bahn, TGV-Rockets' chief executive officer, says he's not really after the cash.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- With their flawless docking behind them, Discovery's astronauts went on a spacewalk late last night to spruce up the outside of the new international space station.Tamara Jernigan and Daniel Barry floated out of the space shuttle around 11 p.m. The seven-story-plus station loomed above them, jutting straight out of Discovery's cargo bay."Unbelievable!" Jernigan said as she unlocked the hatch.Among their duties during the six-hour outing: attaching a pair of 5-foot cranes to the exterior of the station, hanging out three bags of tools for future spacewalkers, installing a glare-reducing shroud over a docking target, and covering an exposed pin.The spacewalk was expected to last into the wee hours of this morning.

The first African-American in space remembers every detail of his maiden voyage: riding through the rain after midnight to the launch pad, batting away those oversize Florida mosquitoes and strapping himself into the space shuttle. Then the blastoff, and within two minutes, he is on a noisy, bumpy ride, roaring into the sky at three times the speed of sound."It's a fabulous vehicle, American-made," said Guion S. Bluford Jr., who flew four shuttle missions from 1983 to 1992.Bluford spoke to a packed auditorium of about 200 people yesterday at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, as part of its celebration of the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, which was 30 years ago Tuesday.

Marshall Barer,75, who wrote the words for the Broadway musical "Once Upon a Mattress" and for the "Mighty Mouse" cartoon theme song, died in Santa Fe, N.M., on Tuesday of cancer.Fritz Haber,86, an aeronautical engineer who developed a way to simulate the gravity-free environment of space in the training of Apollo astronauts by flying a plane in a roller-coaster pattern, died Aug. 21 in Norwalk, Conn. He was one of the German scientists recruited after World War II to work on the U.S. space program.

JOHN Glenn's 1962 spaceflight and the Apollo moon landings were inspiring achievements. Unfortunately, the recently announced plan to give the 77-year-old Mr. Glenn a seat on a space shuttle is NASA's version of bread and circuses. It is entertainment, a way to draw attention from that agency's truly astronomical costs.Why are no regularly scheduled commercial spaceflights available for Mr. Glenn to book? Because no government agency that runs with the efficiency of the Pentagon and the U.S. Postal Service will ever realize the dream of commercially viable orbiting stations or moon bases.

A TIME MACHINE. That's another way to describe the Hubble space telescope. This week's successful space shuttle mission included installation of a new instrument, the Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, which will extend the Hubble's vision in distance and thus through time. Johns Hopkins astronomers will have much new data to analyze.The resulting images provided to astronomers will be of objects as they appeared in space millions of years ago. Scientists using these pictures from the past will gain important information about the creation of the universe, distant galaxies, stars forming, comets falling.

WASHINGTON -- In the bitter strife between mainstream science and animal-rights advocates, the scientists have made a strong case for experimenting on animals to advance human welfare. In fact, anyone who disputes them is likely to be relegated to the nut fringe.But you don't have to be an animal-rights zealot to wonder about NASA sinking 31 million scarce government dollars into an international study of how monkeys with electrodes in their brains and wires in their bodies react to a two-week space voyage.

SO IT'S VACATION -- and all the little ones are out enjoying a sneak preview of what summer will be like.It will be vastly more pleasant now that Savage Park is being renovated.Recently, the tennis courts were resurfaced. Instead of a peeling deck that looked like a sci-fi landscape, the new courts look terrific -- if a bit underused.However, this problem will soon disappear. The Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks is holding tennis classes this month at the park.Six-week sessions for middle schoolers, at 10 a.m. Saturdays, begin April 19. Classes for parents are at 11 a.m.For information about the tennis lessons, call 410-313-7275.

NASA admitted yesterday that the X-33 space plane will probably not go as fast as planned, but gave Lockheed Martin Corp. clearance for final construction of the $1 billion craft.Engineers at Lockheed Martin's fabled Skunk Works design shop in California have struggled all year with the weight of the plane, which will be asked to perform unlike anything ever made.The X-33 is the small-scale prototype of a craft that will take off like a rocket, fly into space and return to Earth like an airplane -- all without the external fuel tanks or disposable parts that help make the Space Shuttle so expensive.

NASA Monday named Dulaney High School graduate and Navy Lt. Commander Gregory Reid Wiseman, 33, as one of nine candidates to begin astronaut training this summer. The Baltimore native is a test pilot serving with Strike Fighter Squadron 103 aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower out of Oceana, Va. He was selected from among 3,500 applicants for the 2009 astronaut class and begins training in August. "Complete disbelief. It still hasn't sunk in," Wiseman said of his selection, in an interview released by the space agency.

The space shuttle Endeavour landed safely in Florida yesterday after a 13-day mission marred by damage to the spacecraft's heat shield that led to a lengthy debate about whether to risk returning to Earth without fixing it. The dinged-up spacecraft touched down at Cape Canaveral at 12:32 p.m. after completing a 5.3 million-mile mission to the International Space Station. NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin said the damaged tiles "did very well on re-entry." After examining the gouged thermal tiles on the tarmac at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, shuttle Commander Scott J. Kelly said he was "a little bit underwhelmed by the size of the gouge.

Along with "Trump Admits Hair Looks Ridiculous" and "Baltimore Rated Safest Place to Live," here is a headline you never expect to see: "Astronauts Flew Drunk, Report Says." Are you kidding me? Getting tanked up before they strap you into the top of a huge rocket and send you roaring into space, where you'll be expected to perform complicated docking maneuvers, meticulous scientific experiments and demanding space walks, among other duties? Do you even want to do this with a hangover, never mind drunk?

CAPE CANAVERAL -- NASA has delayed space shuttle Atlantis' planned March 15 launch until at least late April to fix hail damage to the ship's external fuel tank. A ferocious thunderstorm packing 62-mph gusts pelted Launch Pad 39A with golf-ball-size hailstones Monday, carving an estimated 7,000 divots in the foam insulation that covers the giant tank. Engineers must repair hundreds of the worst gouges and minor damage to about 27 heat-resistant tiles on Atlantis' left wing before the shuttle is allowed to fly. "This constitutes, in our evaluation, the worst damage that we have ever seen from hail on the external-tank foam," said Wayne Hale, NASA's space shuttle program manager.

MARYLAND Astronaut faces charges An astronaut who grew up in Rockville, graduated from the Naval Academy and last summer flew on the space shuttle Discovery was charged with the attempted murder of a woman she believed to be the rival love interest of a space shuttle pilot. pg 1a Md. weighs terrapin ban Maryland is considering a ban on the capture of diamondback terrapin after watermen reported trapping more than 10,000 of the rare turtles last year, a twentyfold increase from the year before.

Perhaps from space, this wondrous blue orb suspended in the cosmos has such a oneness to it that the difference between Baltimore and, oh, let's say Indianapolis, doesn't appear so great. Well, that would at least be one rationale for why astronaut and Baltimore native Robert Curbeam remains a diehard Colts fan -- even to the extent that he held up a "Go Colts" sign before his space shuttle launch last month. But to hear Curbeam, a 44-year-old Navy captain tell it, his team loyalty is simple.

If you own an older vehicle, such as the space shuttle, you can expect to replace parts more frequently. Note: By the words "space shuttle," I am referring to my 1999 minivan, which has sustained one $2,500 altercation with an eight-point buck, and one $5,000 whack by a driver who failed to look past a snow bank. Since these collisions, the minivan has developed a few unexplained rattles and tremors, yet it continues valiantly on its scheduled missions; hence its nickname. Recently, the space shuttle required a replacement passenger seat belt.

Tomorrow's planned launch of the space shuttle Discovery will be watched with special interest in Baltimore as city native and 1980 Woodlawn High School graduate Robert L. Curbeam Jr. blasts off on his third voyage into space. The nighttime liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will mark NASA's fourth space shuttle flight since the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew in February 2003. Discovery and its crew of seven are heading for a construction mission to the International Space Station.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's first night space shuttle launch in more than four years is officially set for Dec. 7. Wrapping up a two-day Flight Readiness Review yesterday, NASA officials identified no outstanding shuttle issues that would prevent Discovery from lifting off next week on a mission to the International Space Station. Countdown clocks at the Kennedy Space Center are scheduled to start ticking late Monday toward a 9:35 p.m. launch three days later. "We're ready to resume night launches," said Wayne Hale, NASA's space shuttle program manager.

GREENBELT -- Now that NASA has the green light to launch astronauts on one final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists and engineers in Baltimore, Greenbelt and elsewhere will have just 18 months to perfect their plan for pulling it off. A critical part of that plan will be preparing a rescue shuttle to be fueled and poised on a second launch pad, ready to fly if the Hubble repair crew is stranded in orbit. Although all flights will continue to be risky for their crews, "the space shuttle can be flown safely if we are very careful.