SonicSpike writes " NASA has discovered a chunk missing from the underside of the space shuttle Endeavour. It was discovered after the shuttle docked with the ISS earlier today. Technicians theorize it may have been caused by ice ripping free of a fuel take during takeoff. From the article:'The gouge — about 3 inches square — was spotted in zoom-in photography taken by the space station crew shortly before Endeavour delivered teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan and her six crewmates to the orbiting outpost ... On Sunday, the astronauts will inspect the area, using Endeavour's 100-foot robot arm and extension beam. Lasers on the end of the beam will gauge the exact size and depth of the gouge, Shannon said, and then engineering analyses will determine whether the damage is severe enough to warrant repairs. Radar images show a white spray or streak coming off Endeavour 58 seconds after liftoff. Engineers theorize that if the debris was ice, it pierced the tile and then broke up, scraping the area downwind. Pictures from Friday's photo inspection show downwind scrapes."

Raver32 writes with the news that a partial restoration of computer control was established on the International Space Station (ISS) Thursday. Systems controlling critical elements like navigation and life-support failed on Wednesday. "Flight controllers were able to re-establish some communication with the computers overnight, with Russian engineers working Thursday to restore the rest of the system, NASA space station flight director Holly Ridings said. The U.S. space agency and Russian officials are still trying to determine the cause of a failure affecting multiple computers in the Russian network ... Since an earlier failure on Monday, thrusters on the space shuttle Atlantis have been fired periodically to help maintain the station's position. The Russian and U.S. space agencies said they could extend Atlantis's mission by one or two days to fix the problem. In the worst-case scenario, NASA said the ISS crew members -- two Russians and an American -- may be evacuated from the station."

A number of readers wrote us with news of the computer problems on the International Space Station. Space.com has one of the better writeups on the failure of Russian computers that control the ISS's attitude and some life-support systems. Two out of six computers in a redundant system cannot be rebooted. The space shuttle Atlantis may have its mission extended until the problem is fixed. A NASA spokesman was optimistic that the problem can be resolved; worst-case scenario would be for the shuttle to evacuate everyone onboard the ISS. Engineers are working on the theory (among others) that the failure may have been triggered by new solar panels installed earlier in Atlantis's mission.

SumDog writes "The international space station's newest power source, a set of solar wings, made its debut yesterday. The solar array is part of a new 17.5-ton space station segment that was connected to the orbiting outpost during a spacewalk Monday."

gadgetopia writes "On Russian state television, cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin tells journalists in a live video interview from the ISS that "Charles said that Bill Gates is also preparing to visit space"." Gotta wonder what that insurance premium is going to look like.

Stony Stevenson writes "Organised gangs are taking a page out of security vendors' books and setting up their own websites that offer support and subscriptions for malware and spyware. From the article: 'For subscriptions starting as low as $20 per month, enterprises can sell fully managed exploit engines that spyware distributors and spammers can use to infiltrate systems worldwide, said Gunter Ollmann, director of security strategies at IBM's ISS X-Force team. Many exploit providers simply wait for Microsoft's monthly patches, which they then reverse engineer to develop new exploit code against the disclosed vulnerabilities, Ollmann said. "Then all you've got to do is just subscribe to them on a monthly basis.'"

DarkNemesis618 writes "NASA is now optimistic Atlantis' fuel tank will be able to be repaired in Florida. Due to a freak hail storm February 26 that had golf-sized hail chunks raining down on the launchpad put several thousand dings in the foam covering the external fuel tank as well as damaging 28 tiles on Atlantis' wing. 20 of the 28 tiles have been repaired and workers have started sanding down the damaged area of the tank itself. After it was decided that Atlantis needed to return to the VAB, NASA was unsure as to whether or not the tank could be repaired. But after bringing it back and doing more extensive inspections, the tank appeared to be in good enough shape that repairs could be done on the spot and a replacement was not necessary. This will allow for Atlantis to be launched late April for its construction mission to the ISS as well as not interfering with the remaining 4 launches planned this year. If the tank needed to be replaced, Atlantis would not have launched until June at the earliest."

Sda~ writes "You learn something new everyday: There is nothing in the astronaut training manual about how to clean up flying wasabi. An inadvertent Wasabi spill this week aboard the ISS has made space agencies re-evaluate including the spicy paste in future meals. The astronauts are allowed some of their favorite foods on each trip, to alleviate homesickness. 'Williams, whose father was born in India, has several Indian dishes in her bonus container, including Punjabi kadhi with pakora - vegetable fritters topped with yogurt and curry - and mutter paneer, a curry dish. The dishes are packaged to have a long shelf life in space. Her U.S. crew mate, astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, is an even bigger foodie. Lopez-Alegria, who was born in Madrid but grew up in California, had Spanish muffins known as magdalenas, chorizo pork sausage and latte in his bonus container.'"

greysky writes "On the 45th anniversary of his first trip into space, astronaut John Glenn says the U.S. is not getting it's money's worth out of the International Space Station. From the article: "Diverting money from the orbiting research outpost to President Bush's goal of sending astronauts back to the moon and eventually on to Mars is preventing some scientific experiments on the space station"."

Palljon1123 writes "A stack-based buffer overflow in the Snort intrusion detection system could leave government and enterprise installations vulnerable to remote unauthenticated code execution attacks. The flaw, found by researchers at IBM's ISS X-Force, affects the Snort DCE/RPC preprocessor and could be used to execute code with the same privileges (usually root or SYSTEM) as the Snort binary. No user action is required." Sourcefire has an update to fix the vulnerability in versions 2.6.1, 2.6.1.1, and 2.6.1.2; Heise Security spells out the workaround for the 2.7.0 beta version.

sloit writes "Just spotted, the CERTStation Threat level Aggregator displays the current threat level, in real-time, as assessed by 8 of the Internet's leading vulnerability watch services such as Symantec Threatcon, ISS Alertcon and SANS Infocon on one publically accessible Web page. Well, that saves a lot of daily trudging!"

duh P3rf3ss3r writes "As reported by the BBC, the space shuttle Discovery safely landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2232 GMT. Discovery's 13-day mission is being called a success after astronauts undertook four space walks to install new wiring and to do battle with a recalcitrant solar panel. The next scheduled flight is the Atlantis shuttle in March. A video chronicle of the mission, including the landing, is available at NASA's video gallery."

MattSparkes writes "The International Space Station is home to an increasing amount of unwanted goods, and NASA has just approved a policy where these could be thrown out of the door into space. 'Tools and other gear have accidentally floated away during spacewalks. But NASA has shied away from intentionally jettisoning gear off the ISS in the past because of the threat of space junk hitting the station or other spacecraft.' The loosening of the rules on this comes just as Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin is about to take a space walk where he will hit a golf ball from the ISS in a promotional stunt for a golf company."

DIRECT Launcher writes, "A grass-roots effort, based around a group of engineers, managers, and others involved in the US space program, is proposing an alternative launch vehicle for NASA to adopt for the new Lunar Exploration program. The new vehicle offers serious performance and cost savings totaling $35 billion over the next twenty years. The proposal was presented to NASA last week. The concept would make possible future Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions after Shuttle has retired, allow for all the remaining ISS elements to be launched after all, free up cash to fund the JIMO mission again, and also allow NASA to return to the moon three years early."

mysterystevenson writes "After bringing more mass than ever before up to the ISS, one of the gyros has failed. Gyros help maintain attitude position in space; the more mass needed to be controlled, the more force that is exerted on the gyros. Now there is the danger that the Shuttle may be bringing yet more mass and starting construction while turning off another gyro, which could cause a need for thrusters to maintain attitude. The assemblies are not all constructed to be able to withstand such force and in a bad situation there could be a collapse which could affect the Shuttle and the ISS as well. Worse case could be total loss; a wise idea might be to alter the construction schedule and address the Gyro and Gyro design problems, before going forward with the introduction of more mass."

Random Utinni writes "It looks like the Russian Elektron system on the ISS may be causing problems again. Today the crew discovered potassium hydroxide leaking into the space station. This comes right after delivery of new ISS components and right before the arrival of a new crew and first female space tourist."

gerald626 writes "IBM announced today that they have formed an agreement to purchase ISS for 1.3 billion dollars." From the article: " The all-cash transaction of about $28 per share is meant to bolster IBM's ability to deliver security services to corporations, the company said. ISS builds network protection products and services, including intrusion detection and monitoring tools. IBM said it intends to use ISS's expertise and software to provide more robust security-related services to its corporate customers."

avtchillsboro writes "The NY Times has an article detailing new construction on the International Space Station (ISS) and the additions via coming Space Shuttle missions through 2010. From the article: 'For more than three years, the International Space Station has floated half-built above the Earth. Maintained by a skeleton crew, the station — an assemblage of modules and girders — has not come close to its stated goal of becoming a world-class research outpost. But now construction, which has hung in limbo since NASA's space shuttle fleet was grounded after the 2003 Columbia disaster, is scheduled to resume. The shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to lift off next Sunday carrying a bus-size segment of the station's backbone that includes a new set of solar-power arrays.'"

rufey writes "An article over at Space.com mentions two new tools that Space Shuttle Discovery will have aboard during its upcoming flight, designated STS-121, scheduled to lift off on July 1, 2006. One tool is for tile repair. The other tool is a 28-foot-long cable that would be used to connect an avionics bay located on the mid-deck with the flight-deck controls. The cable enables flight controllers on the ground to land the Shuttle completely by remote control, including the ability to lower the landing gear. The remote control landing would be used in the case where the Shuttle was damaged to the point that it would be too risky to land it with humans aboard, but could be landed without humans aboard in an attempt to save the vehicle. The astronauts would take refuge on the ISS while mission control in Houston attempt to land a damaged Shuttle."

sam0ht writes "NASA has just named July 1st as the launch date for the space shuttle Discovery, a year after the last shuttle mission. Last July's mission was the first since the break-up of Columbia in 2003, but after foam again broke away from the main tank, the shuttle fleet was grounded. More foam has been removed from the main tank, but NASA staff are divided over whether this is enough to ensure the flight's safety, with some reporting that both the lead engineer and top safety official are against launching again so soon. Managers want to make only one major change at a time, and plan that if damage does occur, the crew would be able to stay in the International Space Station, to which they are delivering supplies, rather than trying to land a damaged shuttle."