NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station have started beaming live videos, enabling viewers to see crew members performing maintenance procedures on its life-support systems and using exercise equipment to perform physical-fitness activities.

The video and audio are now available on the Web from where you can access them. The video and audio access will be possible when the International Space Station is in contact with the ground and also during regular crew working hours.

NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis is ready for another mission to the Internation Space Station. The STS 129 mission will be blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in a little less than 30 minutes, carrying 6 astronauts and several tons of cargo, which includes two gyroscopes for the International Space Station.

A scarf from the famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart is also among a collection of commemorative items flown on the STS 129 . The crew includes

If you remember, last month, NASA had sent a rocket stage and a spacecraft on a kamikaze dash to the moon in the quest to find water. It seems all the hard work paid off. Today, some very happy NASA scientists announced that they have found tell-tale signs of water on the Southern pole of the moon in the form of ice and vapor. After the rocket stage smashed into the moon, the trailing spacecraft flew through the plume and detected clear signs for around 26 gallons of water mostly as vapor.

On the other hand, NASA’s discovery may have raised the stakes for the multi-million dollar Google Lunar X Prize being conducted by Google and the X Prize Foundation. The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international competition that challenges and inspires engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. $20 million will be awarded to the first team to land a privately funded spacecraft on the moon and transmit a required set of high definition videos and images from the moon. Bonus prizes exist of $10 million for detection of water. Until today’s announcement, it was uncertain if this bonus would be obtainable.

After being delayed many times yesterday and finally scrubbing the launch, NASA today successfully launched the first test flight in their Ares I development program, the Ares I-X from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

The 327 feet tall rocket, weighing 1.8 million pounds lifted off from Launch complex 39B at 11:30 AM EDT ( 1530 GMT ) after being delayed from its slated launch time of 8 am due to weather. Problem faced by the vehicle included winds and a phenomenon called triboelectrification, which is the build-up of electric charge in the rocket as it passes through clouds. The launch has been declared a success. The dummy upperstage impacted in the ocean and the first stage deployed chutes and is reported to have splashed down safely in the Atlantic. The powered flight lasted 2 minutes and the data collected will help in the development of future missions as well as the design and modelling of future launch vehicles.

NASA’s first test flight in their Ares launch vehicle development program is slated to lift off around 30 minutes from now. The Ares I-X is the tallest rocket in existence today , at 327 feet tall and weighing 1.8 million pounds, and not since the 1970’s has a rocket this large rolled out of NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building ( VAB ). It is outdone only by the Saturn V rockets ( 363 feet tall ) which were used in the Apollo moon missions.

You can see a live feed of the launch here: NASATV WMV feed
More feed resolutions and formats here: NASATV

Launch Updates below the cut.

NASA is all set for the first flight-test of the agency’s next generation launch vehicle system , called  the Ares I-X. It is the first test flight of the Ares-I development program and is part of the Constellation Program, which has set exploration goals of NASA following the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2010.

Ares I-X Computer Generated Launch image

The Ares I-X flight will provide NASA an early opportunity to test and prove some hardware, facilities, and ground operations associated with the Ares I. The test will also allow them to collect data during ascent of the simulated Ares-I stack at the different points in the flight to verify the effectiveness of the rocket’s design and to ensure that it is safe and stable in-flight before actual manned flights can begin. The Ares I-X test is part of a larger test program that will include 3 tests of the Orion “Launch Abort System” between 2009 and 2010 followed by an Ares I-Y test in 2014 and a test with an actual unmanned Orion space craft, called the Orion 1 in 2015. The Constellation Program has the first crewed mission with the Ares/Orion vehicle planned no later than 2015.

The Kepler space telescope was launched in March 2009, with the mission of discovering Earth-like planets orbiting starts outside the solar system ( exoplanets ) and possibly searching for signs of life on these planets.

Kepler Space Telescope. Courtesy NASA.

The Kepler recently improved the positional data available of a Jupiter-sized exoplanet, HAT-P-7b orbiting a star in the Cygnus constellation, by observing a transit of the planet in front of its home star. HAT-P-7b planet is not a habitable one as it is located very close to its star and has daytime temperatures over 2000 degrees Celsius.  The observation of HAT-P-7b was a test which proved that the Kepler telescope is sensitive enough to detect exoplanets. Additional confirmation tests are expected to follow soon.

We live in a time where even something as magical as a space craft is usual for us. But, 400 years ago, all wasn’t the same and even a source to view the space was hailed as a major invention. It was 400 years ago that the great Galileo Galilei invented his telescope and Google salutes the spirit of that great invention with a changed Logo inspired by the invention.

Google needs to be credited for remembering this day as otherwise a great historical moment could have gone unnoticed.

The entire South Korean Nation would be celebrating in a couple of days for the first S. Korean Space Rocket-KSLV-1-would be leaving for space on Wednesday. This development will see South Korea joining an elite group of countries, an ‘expectation’, which will be fulfilled in a matter of hours.

Russia is the one that has helped South Korea build the 33-meter tall rocket which has seen the Korean government invest hundreds of millions of dollars to boost the technology sector.

The Indian Space & Research Organization has gone ambitious with the launch of Bhuvan (means earth in Sanskrit)-a satellite mapping tool from ISRO which is ready to pose a challenge to the likes of Google Earth (primarily) and Wikimapia in general.

The current Beta version is the basis for a web-based tool which was launched on the 12th of August.