Echoes

Astronauts aboard the international space station are packing up their spacecraft Wednesday as the shuttle Discovery prepares to head home after delivering new solar wings to the outpost.

Discovery astronauts will bid adieu to the space station’s three-man crew and undock later today after a landmark eight days of construction to complete the orbiting lab’s power grid and backbone.

“We leave with a sense of accomplishment,” Discovery skipper Lee Archambault radioed Mission Control late Tuesday. “It’s been a great docked timeframe and we look forward to what’s next.”

Seven astronauts raced to the international space station aboard space shuttle Discovery on Monday, while NASA debated whether the orbiting outpost will need to move aside to dodge part of an old Soviet satellite.

Space station astronauts had a close call last week with a small piece of orbiting junk, and NASA said Monday that debris from a satellite that broke apart in 1981 could come within about half a mile of the station early Tuesday.

NASA will decide later Monday whether to fire the space station’s engines to nudge the complex out of the path of the debris.

The three space station residents had to move into their emergency getaway capsule last week for about 10 minutes because another piece of space junk came too close for comfort.

NASA has moved the space station out of the way of debris eight times in the past, most recently in August, according to NASA records.

A NASA spokesman said if the space station has to move, the shuttle will have to adjust its course slightly to be in position for docking on Tuesday.

The debris is from a satellite called Kosmos 1275, said NASA spokesman Bill Jeffs, who did not know the size of the piece.

Kosmos 1275 broke up somewhat mysteriously, said NASA orbital debris scientist Mark Matney. It may have crashed with another object that wasn’t tracked and it made a cloud of 310 pieces of debris that are slowly falling into a lower orbit, he said.

The shuttle launch Sunday followed five delays that caused Discovery’s mission to be shortened by a day and canceled a planned spacewalk.

After a “first, quick look,” Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said no apparent debris came off the external fuel tank during the launch. Debris has been a concern for NASA since a piece flew off the fuel tank and caused a breach in the wing of Columbia in 2003, dooming the shuttle and its seven crew members.

As insurance, Discovery’s crew planned to spend a good part of Monday examining the shuttle’s thermal protection system with cameras and sensors attached to a boom which is hooked to the shuttle’s robotic arm.

Mission managers said Sunday that despite shortening Discovery’s stay by a day, they would still be able to complete most of the tasks planned. The canceled spacewalk chores will be tackled by the space station crew after Discovery leaves.

What’s time?? Is it relative or static?? The answers to these questions aren’t clear yet. Newton assumes the time to be a static one. Whereas Einstein considered as relative quantity. Who is wrong and who is correct?? These mysteries are still being worked by researchers. Whatever be it. Now lets think about time travel and lets discuss its possibility.
Many writers have produced some great ideas for time machines over the years, a real-life time machine is yet to arrive. Many theories of time travel don’t rely on machines at all. Instead, time travel will likely be done by way of natural phenomena that will transport us instantly from one point in time to another. These space phenomena, which we are not even sure exist, includes Worm Holes, Rotating black holes and cosmic strings. These concepts are bit complicated and this space is too small to explain all these concepts. Anyway if there is going to be a time machine then it will be fun time for the billionaires!!