Endeavor and Phoenix Launch

The Mars phoenix lander had it's successful launch Saturday August 4th. The Mars phoenix lander is just that, it is a lander and won't be roving around like the rovers do. It will land in the Mars polar ice region to look for, you guessed it, water. The lander has a built in sturdy arm which will dig through the soil, and then, this is the cool thing, it will do experiments and chemical analysis with it's built in lab and then send it's results back to us here on Earth. They hope to have an actual Mar's sample return mission by 2020. The lander would do tests and then gather and store a sample of the Martian surface, a sample return vehicle would launch off the lander and rendezvous with an orbiting ship and then head for home.

Wednesday August 8th. at 6:36 pm EDT, Space Shuttle Endeavor had it's successful launch, I never get tired of watching launches, especially space shuttle ones, they have some crazy cool camera placements that show some neat stuff. STS (space transportation system) 118 will carry parts to be installed on the International Space Station. NASA is continuing it's "Teachers in Space" program 21 years after the Challenger disaster, taking the lives of 7 crew members including Christa McAuliffe the first and last school teacher to be launched into space. Barbara Morgan will be the school teacher on STS 118. Interestingly enough, Barbara was Christa's backup on the Challenger mission back in 1986.