USAF: C-17 crash false report

(CNN) -- Emergency crews have called off the search in Texas for a C-17 transport plane.

Initial Air Force reports of a crash were incorrect, an Air Force spokesman told CNN affiliates.

The Olney Police Department had reported that callers said a plane was flying low to the ground, and then crashed.

Olney is about 45 miles south of Wichita Falls and 130 miles west of Dallas.

A rancher in the area reported that a search was conducted in the area.

Breaking News: C-17 Crashes Near Olney Texas

CNN) -- An Air Force C-17 transport plane crashed Monday near Olney, Texas, callers to police there said.


The C-17 is used for airlift of troops and cargo to operating bases.

The Olney Police Department reported that callers said the plane was flying low to the ground, and then crashed.

Olney is about 45 miles south of Wichita Falls and 130 miles west of Dallas.

A spokesman for Sheppard Air Force Base, which is north of Wichita Falls, said he could not confirm the crash.

A rancher in the area said a search was under way.

"All the emergency vehicles and everything are still scouting around here," said Clint Neal, who owns 1,000 acres in southern Archer County, just north of Olney. "There's some spotter planes flying around, but nobody's found anything."

He described his land as thickly wooded, "a lot of thick brush, deep canyons."

The C-17 is a large, military transport aircraft. It measures 174 feet long (53 meters) with a wingspan of 169 feet, 10 inches (51.75 meters).

The aircraft is operated by a crew of three -- pilot, copilot and loadmaster, according to the Air Force.


View Larger Map

Deconflicting

Deconflicting: "

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER - Shuttle commander Lee Archambault has used the thrusters on the space shuttle Discovery to maneuver the International Space Station 180 degrees from its normal attitude when an orbiter' is docked to it, adding drag to the two big spacecraft to lower their orbit out of the way of a threatening piece of space debris.

NASA TV

Archambault will leave the shuttle/station stack in the attitude normally used for docking and undocking,' with the orbiter forward instead of bringing up the rear in orbit. The tenuous atmosphere at the station altitude will supply enough drag to slow the two spacecraft by by about 1 foot per second over the three hours it will take to complete two orbits.

The maneuver , which started at 4:01 p.m. EDT, will lower the orbit enough to get the station and shuttle out of the way of a' 4-inch piece of an old Chinese rocket body that would otherwise pass too close to the docked spacecraft for comfort tomorrow. The projected conjunction is particularly worrisome because astronauts Joe Acaba and Richard Arnold are scheduled to go outside then for the third and final spacewalk of the STS-119/15A station assembly mission.

However, mission managers believe that by letting nature take its course in lowering the orbit, the Chinese' debris -- left over from' a 1999 launch -- won't pose a danger to the spacecraft or the spacewalkers.

Meanwhile, inside the ISS Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke has been working all day to test the new urine distillation assembly Discovery took to orbit to replace a unit that' failed soon after it was installed last November. The unit worked well during dry run yesterday, but today Fincke and his crewmates have had trouble filling it with urine stored in the Russian section of the station.

NASA TV

After consultations with station controllers here, Fincke replaced the filter in the water recycling unit that includes the circular distiller, which must rotate to function in microgravity. That improved the flow, but the five-hour test still hasn't started.

"

(Via On Space.)

Fully Deployed!

Fully Deployed!: "

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER' - The International Space Station has its full set of solar arrays at last, after an almost faultless deployment today.

With engineers at Mission Control Center - Houston here watching over their shoulder electronically, the crew inched out the two halves of the final solar array wing out one at a time.

NASA TV

The crew stopped motion in the middle of each deployment to give the arrays time to warm in the sunlight. Past array deployments have been hampered by chemical 'stiction' as the polymers in the array-blanket surfaces bond when they are jammed against each other in their launch boxes, and warming loosens the bonds.

The station also maintained a 'solar inertial attitude,' with the Sun beaming on the same side constantly, for more of the warming effect.

Each array measures 115-by-38 feet when fully extended. First the crew deployed the array designated 1B to the aft of the starboard end of the station truss, using thrusters on the forward-facing shuttle orbiter to maintain attitude control without damaging the unfolding array.

After that they switched control of the station to engines on the Russian side of the massive spacecraft, and deployed array 3B forward toward the orbiter. That array had been packed longer than its counterpart, and gave the crew their only bad moment of the deployment when one of the 'bays' appeared out of line when it stopped at the halfway mark.

NASA TV

After warming in the Sun for about 45 minutes,' the wrinkled bay flattened out as the array was cranked out to its full extension.

'

NASA' TV

Throughout the deployment, the combined station and shuttle crews monitored the action on the arrays carefully, both through windows and with video displays on the laptops they use to manage the station's systems. NASA managers here were prepared to rewrite the scripts for the spacewalks scheduled tomorrow and' Monday if it was deemed necessary to to outside to correct a problem.

But in the end the arrays deployed fully in a little more than two of the four-and-a-half hours allotted to the task today, and the upcoming spacewalks will go as planned.

"

(Via On Space.)

Report: U.S. journalists held in North Korea

Report: U.S. journalists held in North Korea: "North Korea's state news agency said Saturday the country detained two Americans this week for illegally entering the country, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

"

(Via CNN.com.)