A great deal has been happening in addition to the marquee event in space exploration, the delayed and somewhat controversial launch of the shuttle Discovery on the STS-121 mission. Discovery should launch today at 1438 EST.
See title link above for the latest.
Meanwhile, acoustic-environment testing of ESA's next major contribution to the International Space Station, and no doubt to programs beyond that, was completed successfully in the Netherlands. The 20-ton Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle appears able to handle the sound and vibration it will get as a payload on the Ariane 5 heavy launcher.
See: http://www.esa.int/esaMI/ATV/index.html
Finally, on the small end of things, the three 25-kg satellites of NASA's Space Technology 5 (ST5) program have completed their 90-day mission and have been shut down. As NASA puts it, "The mission demonstrated the benefits of using a constellation of spacecraft to perform scientific studies of the beautiful auroral displays that occur near Earth's polar regions. The spacecraft simultaneously traversed electric current sheets and measured the magnetic field using miniature magnetometers."
"Taking measurements at the same time in different locations allowed scientists to better estimate the thickness of current sheets and how they vary over time," said Guan Le, mission project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. "This could not have been done with a single spacecraft, no matter how capable."
It's another step toward utilizing the full capability of microspacecraft.
COMMENT: It's too bad NASA could not, instead of shutting these spacecraft down, have handed them over to a university or other lab, some of which do have their own satellite control centers. Unfortunately, nothing in NASA releases indicates this was considered.
See:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/st-5/main/
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