International Space Updates, December 2006
December 4th, 2006 by 
M0tik
International space updates from around the web
A man from Romania has been indicted by a federal grand jury after being accused of allegedly hacking into more than 150 different government computers and servers including ones that belong to NASA. Victor Faur caused more than $1.5 million in damages over a two-year period which ended last month. He now faces up to 54 years in federal prison if he is convicted on all charges, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Faur was also being prosecuted by Romanian authorities on separate computer charges. The U.S. government has been in the process of taking care of Gary McKinnon, a British hacker who also allegedly breached NASA computers.
The space shuttle Discovery crew has arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where they will soon begin final preparations for a scheduled night launch on Dec. 7. The shuttle’s commander and pilot will spend several days practicing shuttle landings while in a shuttle-training aircraft — the other crew members will finalize mission task objectives and guidelines. The seven-member crew will continue construction on the partially built International Space Station (ISS).
Because the current generation of external shuttle fuel tanks is more “robust” than initially thought, NASA will wait until 2008 before redesigning it. The external fuel tank is the source of the problem in which a piece of foam broke off from the tank and gashed a wing on the shuttle Columbia, which caused it to disintegrate during re-entry. The complete redesign of the fuel tank should be done before 2008.
Post this to:
Posted in News | 