Discovery's last flight ...

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida (CNN) – You almost want to rub your eyes when you first see it. It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t belong there. But there it is, the space shuttle Discovery mounted on top of a specially modified Boeing 747 airplane.

At first light Tuesday, Discovery flew out from the Kennedy Space Center one last time. In a salute to the past and all those who were part of the shuttle program, the aircraft flew over launchpad A, down the beach and over the space center visitor complex before heading north.

Discovery’s next stop will be its last. The oldest of the three orbiters, with more than 148 million miles clocked, is going to the Smithsonian in Washington.

“Bittersweet,” said Discovery’s last commander, Steve Lindsey, “is an overused word, but it is sad.” Lindsey and the five others who flew last February on mission 133 came out to say goodbye.
With every step toward retirement, the shuttle fleet becomes more a part of history. In 30 years of flying there were grand accomplishments and heart-wrenching tragedies. A space flying machine with wings, it was like nothing ever built.

But dwelling in that past would be a mistake, Lindsey said.
“We’ve got to move on, we’ve got to make sure that spaceflight doesn’t die in this nation,” he said. “We still have (the) space station going, but if we don’t get ourselves heavy lift, get going with exploration or part of what I’m working on — the commercial program — then we risk losing this as a nation, and I don’t want to do that.”

In some ways, the past is meeting the future here. Just a few miles to the south at Cape Canaveral, Space X is in its final preparations to launch its Dragon spacecraft. It is a hugely critical test scheduled for the end of April. Space X hopes to be the first commercial company to rendezvous and then berth with the international space station.

Next year Space X plans to start ferrying cargo to the station and, in four years, U.S. astronauts.
Alvin Drew, a mission specialist on Discovery, said these companies vying to pick up where the shuttle left off are taking a leap of faith.

“These guys who run the commercial companies will tell you with the money they could have been there in 2015 if the money was there,” Drew said. “You tie yourself to government funding, you are making a tough deal, because there’s no guarantee the succeeding administrations or congresses are going to continue your funding.”

Commercial companies say their new vehicles will be many times safer than the shuttles. It has to be that way now, Drew said.

“We had bigger budgets and a bigger tolerance for failure and loss of life back in the ’60s and early ’70s than we have in this particular generation,” Drew said. “So the shuttle was built for that generation of explorers and I’m not sure it fit well in our current society or current culture. The risks you would take for the shuttle I think are higher than most people are willing to accept in 2012.”
When Discovery gets to Washington, it will replace Enterprise, which now sits in the Smithsonian. Enterprise, a test shuttle that never flew in space, will go to New York and eventually into its new home at the Intrepid Museum.

The shuttle Endeavour will, by the end of the year, be heading to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Atlantis will take up permanent residence at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. That will be the final exclamation point to the end of an era of space exploration.

Intercepted North Korean rocket plans

There's your problem!

North Korea -you suck at rocket science!

By EVAN RAMSTAD WSJ

SEOUL—North Korea launched a multistage rocket Friday morning, again defying countries that want it to stop pursuing advanced weapons, but it reportedly blew up less than two minutes into flight and parts crashed in the Yellow Sea off South Korea.

The rocket took off around 7:39 a.m. local time from a new launch facility in the country's northwest corner and flew south towards Japan's Ryuku Islands, the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia.

About 90 seconds into flight, roughly the time its first stage should have burned out and second stage kicked in, the rocket flared brightly and apparently exploded, according to ABC News, which cited U.S. defense officials. Parts fell into water near South Korea's Jeju Island, South Korean media reported.

A South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman said the rocket "seems to have fallen apart" minutes after launch.

Breaking: North Korea launches rocket- fails!

By NBC News and msnbc.com staff
PYONGYANG, North Korea -- North Korea launched a long-range rocket early Friday, U.S. officials confirmed.

The White House said it would issue a statement, NBC News reported.

The launch, which North Korea's neighbors and the West say is a disguised ballistic missile test, will take a three-stage rocket over a sea separating the Korean peninsula from China before releasing a weather satellite into orbit when the third stage fires over waters near the Philippines.
Regional powers also worry it could be the prelude to another nuclear test, a pattern the hermit state set in 2009.

The South Korean Defense Ministry announced that North Korea fired the long range rocket around Friday morning around 7:38 a.m. and the success of the launch was being tracked by the joint military of South Korea and United States.

UPDATE: BEIJING -- North Korea launched a three-stage rocket from a missile base near the west coast city of Sinuiju today, claiming that it was carrying a weather satellite of purely civilian use.

Its projected trajectory was almost due south on a course 150 miles east of Shanghai. The second stage of the rock was to splash down east of the Philippines, which prompted Manila to cancel northbound flights as a precaution.

Initial network news reports said the rocket failed during flight.

The rocket, named Unha-3 and emblazoned with a North Korean flag, was based on the same technology as the long-range Taepodong missile that the country is developing, which has triggered accusations that North Korea is actually conducting a weapons test.

Since 1998, Pyongyang has conducted three previous long-range launches but has not succeeded in sending a satellite into orbit, although it has claimed otherwise.

Today’s launch will be closely analyzed to determine how far North Korea has advanced its technological prowess.

"If they actually are successful, they can in theory deliver a weapon with a range sufficient to reach the United States," said Scott Snyder, an analyst from the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

The launch occurred despite warnings from the United States, as well as China and Russia.

“We don't really care about the opinions from the outside. This is critical in order to develop our national economy,” Paek Chang Ho, head of the satellite control center at the Korean Committee for Space Technology, had told reporters who were invited to North Korea for the occasion.

UK mystery boom a "typhoon" says MoD

A loud bang which sparked a deluge of calls to emergency services across a large part of England was a sonic boom from a Typhoon aircraft, the MoD said.

Mystified residents across the West Midlands, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset and Wiltshire reported hearing a loud boom at about 18:10 BST.

The MoD revealed it was from a Typhoon responding to an emergency call.

A Coventry resident said: "I thought somebody had thrown a brick through the window."

A sonic boom is created as an aircraft breaks the sound barrier, causing a high-energy shockwave.

The Ministry of Defence initially said it was investigating what was behind the loud noise, but a spokesman later confirmed it was from one of two RAF Typhoons that had been launched following an emergency call from a helicopter.

The MoD said the Typhoons, from the Quick Reaction Alert (QRA), based at RAF Conningsby in Lincolnshire, were scrambled and authorised to go supersonic after the small civilian helicopter had emitted an emergency signal.

It said the aircraft were already on their way to the helicopter by the time the helicopter pilot realised he was transmitting on the wrong frequency and switched to the correct one.

"There was no actual threat to the civilian aircraft and they soon rectified their mistake," a spokesman added.

It was doing really tight, slow circles and it suddenly put on full power and the noise was unbelievable”

Before the MoD explained the cause, a number of organisations said they were investigating the origin of the sound.

Among them were Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service, which received a flood of calls, and the British Geological Survey.

There were reports of the noise being heard in Bath, Swindon, Coventry, Rugby and Oxford.

Some of those who heard it said the sound lasted a few seconds.

Tom Sykes, from Highworth, Wiltshire, said: "I was sat at my desk doing some work and it felt like someone had put up a massive base speaker at my feet.

"I'm sure that they didn't move up in the air but they felt like they were with the vibration. I thought the window had come in."

Terry Organ, from Oldfield Park, Bath, said he saw the Typhoon.

"I thought (the sound) was a commercial airliner and then I thought 'no way'," he said.

"We watched for a while and then we saw this aircraft appear and it was a Typhoon but it was flying amazingly slow and we thought it was going to come down.

'Shook the building'
"It was doing really tight, slow circles and it suddenly put on full power and the noise was unbelievable, it was really blasting it out, and then it moved a bit further on and it did another slow turn.

"My impression was that it was struggling to stay up but then he put on full power again and you just couldn't hear anything.

"The noise was terrific, I imagine you could hear it for miles."

Another person who reported hearing the boom, who gave his name as Dave, from Warwick, described the sound as "like sitting on a hard shoulder and a big lorry going past."

"It shook the building and the windows popped," he added.

It is the second time this year that a sonic boom has been created by a Typhoon aircraft.