The Last 30 Days in Astronomy

JUN-16-2007 • Suni Williams sets the record • Sunita Williams broke the record for the longest single flight duration for a woman. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition15/s_williams_record.html

JUN-22-2007 • Atlantis completes mission • Atlantis completed its STS-117 mission. It landed at Edwards AFB in California after weather scrubbed landing attempts at Cape Canaveral. The shuttle would not return to Florida until July 3. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/behindscenes/sts117_overview.html

JUL-01-2007 • More arms for the Milky Way • A recent study looking at open clusters has uncovered some interesting statistics regarding the Milky Way’s spiral arms. In particular, some of the spiral arms appear to actually be 2 or more arms. The differences are apparent when looking at the speed of the stars as they move in orbit the galactic nucleus. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007NewA...12..410N

JUL-03-2007 • Plan B for Spacecrafts • A pair of NASA missions that you might have thought were completed are now moving into new assignments. The Deep Impact spacecraft will fly by the short-period comet Boethin on December 5, 2008. Along the way it will also look at extrasolar planets in the mid-infrared range. The Deep Impact mission encountered comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005 and the Stardust spacecraft will fly by it again on Feb. 14, 2011. Stardust’s first mission was completed when samples from the Comet Wild were recovered from a canister that returned to earth in January of 2006. http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/jul/HQ_07147_Discovery_missions.html

JUL-07-2007 • Dawn will rise late • The oft-delayed Dawn mission to explore the asteroids Ceres and Vesta has now been postponed until September. A number of problems caused small delays and eventually NASA decided the Dawn mission was endangering the Phoenix mission to Mars. Phoenix only has a 3 week window or else it has to wait for two years. Dawn will be able to perform all of its scientific goals even with the delayed launch. But August will be a busy time at Cape Canaveral. Phoenix is scheduled to launch on August 3, the STS-118 mission onboard the Endeavor shuttle is scheduled on August 7, and a military satellite has an August 11 launch date. http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/070708_dawn_update.html