Article #12 Russian manned spaceship heads back home

A Russian Soyuz spaceship carrying two astronauts and the fifth civilian space traveler unlocked from the International Space Station (ISS) and started trip home on Saturday, ending a 13-day mission.
The Soyuz capsule, which separated with the ISS at 13:10 Moscow time (0710 GMT), will carry back to the Earth the 14th ISS crew, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who had worked there for 215 days.
The Soyuz spaceship blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 7. Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov on board will stay in the station as the 15th crew.
The U.S. software tycoon Charles Simonyi will also conclude his paid visit to the station, one day more than the slated 12 days in orbit due to a landing delay caused by weather conditions at the planned landing site in Kazakhstan.
The spacecraft is scheduled to land at a planned site in Kazakhstan at 16:30 Moscow time (1230 GMT), the Itar-Tass news agency said, citing Mission Control Center's spokesman Valery Lyndin.
The spacecraft engine will start working to brake 50 minutes before landing. The parachute will be deployed at the altitude of some 10 kilometers, Lyndin said.
Russian search and rescue teams, including helicopters, planes, search and communication vehicles as well as more than 150 civilian and military specialists have been ready for the landing, he said.
The main crews and cargoes to the ISS will be delivered by Russian spaceships till 2011, including the manned Soyuz spaceships and cargo spacecraft of the Progress type, according to a Russian-U.S. space agencies contract inked earlier this month.
NASA was forced to pay for places aboard Soyuz crafts and Russian ferries after the Columbia disaster in 2003 and subsequent suspension of shuttle flights.

Article #11 Countdown in India for first commercial satellite launch

Indian space scientists were counting down the final hours Monday before a home-built rocket launches an Italian satellite into space in the country's first commercial space mission.
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is scheduled to blast off at 3:30 pm (1000 GMT) from Sriharikota spaceport, 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Chennai in southern India, space agency officials said.
"The countdown, which involves a series of precisely timed operations, is going on," a spokesman for the Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organisation said. "The PSLV has been mated with its payload and the fully integrated vehicle is standing on the launchpad."
The 15-storey-high rocket is being pumped with liquid propellant and undergoing pre-launch tests, said the spokesman.
It will launch the 352-kilogram (774-pound) Italian astronomical satellite Agile that will be used to gather information about the origins of the universe.
"The payload will be separated from the vehicle in its orbit 23 minutes after the takeoff," the spokesman said.
The 48-hour countdown began on Saturday, setting the stage for a launch that India hopes will win it membership of an exclusive club of nations to successfully put their space programmes to commercial use.

India wants to compete with the United States, Russia, China, the Ukraine and the European Space Agency in offering commercial satellite launch services, a market worth up to 2.5 billion dollars a year.

The PSLV that will carry the Italian payload into space has carried out nine successful launches since 1994 -- including eight remote-sensing and one amateur radio satellite -- and is known as the workhorse of the Indian space programme.
Capable of placing 1,500-kilogramme satellites into orbit, the rocket has been modified to launch the much smaller Agile, together with which it will carry a space module to test avionic systems like mission computers and navigation systems.

Article #10 Man gets 5,000 calls for YouTube posting

Ryan Fitzgerald is unemployed, lives with his father and has a little bit of time on his hands.
So, he decided to offer his ear, to anyone who wants to call. After posting a video with his cell phone number on YouTube on Friday, the 20-year-old told The Boston Globe he has received more than 5,000 calls and text messages.
Fitzgerald said he wanted to "be there," for anyone who needed to talk. "I never met you, but I do care," a spiky-haired Fitzgerald said into the camera on his YouTube posting.
He planned to take and return as many calls he could, but on Monday at 5 a.m., his T-Mobile cell phone payment will begin charging him for his generosity when he is no longer eligible for free weekend minutes.
"I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do about it," he said. "Come Monday, no way I'm going to just hang up on people and say, 'I don't have the minutes.'"
Fitzgerald, who said people consider him "easy to talk to," was inspired by Juan Mann. YouTube video clips of Mann offering "Free Hugs" to strangers became wildly popular on the user-controlled Internet site.
"Some people's own mothers won't take the time to sit down and talk with them and have a conversation," Fitzgerald said. "But some stranger on YouTube will. After six seconds, you're not a stranger anymore, you're a new kid I just met."

Article# 9 NASA astronomers create first 3-D images of Sun

Using the agency’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft, NASA astronomers have created the first three-dimensional images of the Sun.
The new view, they say, will greatly aid scientists' ability to understand solar physics and thereby improve space weather forecasting.
"The improvement with STEREO's 3D view is like going from a regular X-ray to a 3D CAT scan in the medical field," said Dr. Michael Kaiser, STEREO Project Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, US.
The STEREO spacecraft were launched October 25, 2006. On January 21 they completed a series of complex manoeuvres, including flying by the moon, to position the spacecraft in their mission orbits.

The two observatories are now orbiting the Sun, one slightly ahead of Earth and one slightly behind, separating from each other by approximately 45 degrees per year.
Researchers say just as the slight offset between a person’s eyes provides depth perception, the separation of spacecraft allow 3-D images of the Sun.
"In the solar atmosphere, there are no clues to help us judge distance. Everything appears flat in the 2D plane of the sky. Having a stereo perspective just makes it so much easier," said Dr. Russell Howard of the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, the Principal Investigator for the SECCHI (Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation) suite of telescopes on the spacecraft.
"With STEREO's 3D imagery, we'll be able to discern where matter and energy flows in the solar atmosphere much more precisely than with the 2D views available before. This will really help us understand the complex physics going on," he said.
Dr. Howard said STEREO's depth perception would also help improve space weather forecasts.
Of particular concern is a destructive type of solar eruption called a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), which are eruptions of electrically charged gas, called plasma, from the Sun's atmosphere.

“To do this, forecasters need to know the location of the front of the CME cloud. STEREO will allow scientists to accurately locate the CME cloud front. Knowing where the front of the CME cloud is will improve estimates of the arrival time from within a day or so to just a few hours. STEREO also will help forecasters estimate how severe the resulting magnetic storm will be,” said Dr. Howard.
“In addition to the STEREO perspective of solar features, for the first time STEREO will allow imaging of the solar disturbances the entire way from the Sun to the Earth. Presently, scientists are only able to model this region in the dark, from only one picture of solar disturbances leaving the Sun and reaching only a fraction of the Sun-Earth distance,” added Dr. Madhulika Guhathakurta, STEREO Program Scientist, NASA Headquarters. Washington. (ANI)

Article #8 Sunnis complain about new Baghdad barrier

A wall U.S. troops are building around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad came under increasing criticism on Saturday, with residents calling it "collective punishment" and a local leader saying construction began without the neighborhood council's approval.
The U.S. military says the wall in Baghdad is meant to secure the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, which "has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation." The area, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, would be completely gated, with entrances and exits manned by Iraqi soldiers, the U.S. military said earlier this week.
But some residents of the neighborhood, which is surrounded by Shiite areas, complained that they had not been consulted in advance about the barrier.
"This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Azamiyah," said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a 41-year-old engineer who lives in the area. "They are going to punish all of us because of a few terrorists here and there."

The U.S. military says it began building the barrier April 10. AP Television News footage from the site on Saturday showed small concrete blocks, piles of dirt and coils of barbed wire on a main street. Eventually, the military said, the wall will be nearly five kilometres and include sections as tall as 3.5 metres.

Al-Maliki and Nelson met at the prime minister's office in the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone, and al-Maliki "underlined that Iraqi forces are unified in battling terrorists and outlaws, and are now fighting shoulder to shoulder throughout Iraq," especially in hard-hit areas such as Baghdad and the provinces of Anbar, west of the capital, and Diyala, to the northeast, a government statement said.

Article#7 Tamil Rebels Launch Air Attack

Tamil rebel planes bombed government positions Tuesday in northern Sri Lanka in their second-ever airstrike. The military said six soldiers were killed but that the aircraft were turned back before reaching a key base.
The attack came amid rising fears that the government may be preparing a major assault on rebels in the north, and followed a bomb blast Monday aboard a bus that killed five passengers and wounded 35 near the frontier between government- and rebel-controlled areas.

The Tamil Tiger rebels said two airplanes carried out Tuesday's air attack on the government's Palaly military base in Jaffna peninsula, and that main armory and storage facilities were struck.
Lt. Col. Upali Rajapakse, a senior military official, said only one light aircraft was involved in the attack and that troops opened fire on it, forcing it to turn back before it reached the Palay base. But the plane dropped two bombs on nearby bunkers while rebels shelled the area.
Six soldiers were killed by the airstrike and shelling, Rajapakse said.

Also Monday, a bomb ripped through a long-distance bus as it traveled near the town of Vavuniya, killing five passengers and wounding 35, the Defense Ministry said. The ministry blamed the attack on the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Vavuniya, about 130 miles north of the capital, Colombo, is where the government has its last key garrison before the start of rebel-controled territory.
A cease-fire mediated by Norway in 2002 brought hopes of peace for a few years, but violence over the past 18 months has killed 4,000 people, taking the death toll from more than two decades of war past 69,000.

Article #6 Navy Investigates Blue Angels Crash

Investigators looked through wreckage Sunday to determine what caused a Navy Blue Angel jet to crash during a maneuver, while the military identified the fallen pilot as a 32-year-old who was performing in one of his first air shows with the team.
Lt. Cmdr. Kevin J. Davis of Pittsfield, Mass. was in his second year with the Blue Angels, the team known for its high-speed, aerobatic demonstrations, Lt. Cmdr. Garrett Kasper said.
At Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, the site of Saturday's crash, a somber crowd watched Sunday as six jets flew overhead in formation. Smoke streamed behind one of the jets as it peeled away from the others to complete the ``missing man formation,'' the traditional salute for a lost military aviator.

The crash happened as the team was performing its final maneuver Saturday afternoon during the air show. The team's six pilots were joining from behind the crowd of thousands to form a triangle shape known as a delta, but Davis' jet did not join the formation.
Moments later, his jet crashed just outside Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, hitting homes in a neighborhood about 35 miles northwest of Hilton Head Island, S.C. Debris - some of it on fire - rained on homes. Eight people on the ground were injured, and some homes were damaged.
The squadron's six, F/A-18 Hornets routinely streak low over crowds of thousands at supersonic speeds, coming within feet, sometimes inches, of each other. The pilots, among the Navy's most elite, are so thoroughly trained and their routines so practiced that deadly crashes are rare; the last one happened in 1999.
The Navy said it could be at three weeks before it announces what may have caused the crash. The squadron was scheduled to return to its home base of Pensacola Naval Air Station late Sunday.
Ernie Christensen, a retired rear admiral and former Vietnam fighter pilot who flew with the Blue Angels and later commanded the Navy's Top Gun fighter school in California, said he did not want to speculate about what could have caused Saturday's crash. But he said the intense flying leaves no room for human or mechanical error.