* Astronomy

On May 5 (Friday, Eastern daylight time), Minister Kenji Kosaka of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), and NASA Administrator Michael Griffin agreed the Japanese astronaut to be aboard the Space Shuttle flight for the first transportation and assembly of the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) "Kibo" of the International Space Station (ISS) during their meeting in Washington DC, USA.

The Kibo module, which has been developed by Japan as part of the ISS, is scheduled to be delivered to the ISS by three Space Shuttle flights. The first mission is to transport and assemble the Kibo Experiment Logistic Module (ELM) Pressurised Section to the ISS.


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Russian experts will try again this Thursday to lift the International Space Station to a higher orbit to ease future rendezvous manoeuvres and reduce the risk of collisions with orbiting debris.

A Soyuz carrier rocket guided by Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev, has successfully docked with the Zvezda module of the International Space Station (ISS)



He and astronaut William McArthur have successfully re-located the Soyuz spacecraft that will return them to Earth.
The re-location of the Soyuz to the Zvezda service module is required to free the docking port of the Zarya cargo bay for the next Soyuz spaceship (TMA-8), set to arrive on April 1.
The Expedition 12 crew undocked at 06:49 UTC, moving 135 feet away from the station, and moved laterally along the length of the station and then manoeuvred into position to face and re-dock with the Zvezda service module.
Docking to the back end of the station successfully occurred at 07:11 GMT.
The ISS-13 main expedition crew, Commander Pavel Vinogradov, NASA flight engineer Jeff Williams, and Brazilian Space Agency astronaut Marcos Pontes, are on schedule to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on March 30, 02:30 UTC (March 29, 9:30pm Eastern USA time).

NASA Announces International Space Station Update (requires reboot)

Friday at 3 p.m. EST, NASA's International Space Station Program Manager Mike Suffredini updated reporters about the revised station configuration and assembly sequence.
The station configuration and sequence were decided today during a meeting with NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and his counterparts from the Canadian, European, Japanese and Russian space agencies.

The Heads of space agencies partnering in the International Space Station on Thursday announced a sequence of space flights that would result in completion of the orbiting laboratory by 2010.



The sequence, including 16-shuttle-flights, foresees launch of the European Columbus Laboratory module on the seventh shuttle flight of the sequence and launch of the Japanese experiment module and associated equipment on the eighth, ninth and 12th shuttle flights. The assembly sequence provides almost a year's cushion for completion of assembly by 2010.
The station's crew would expand to three persons with the STS-121 mission, now scheduled for launch no earlier than May, and to six in 2009. The European Automated Cargo Vehicle, an unpiloted cargo carrier with more than twice the capacity of the Progress spacecraft, is scheduled to be launched on an Ariane rocket between the fifth and sixth flights in the shuttle sequence, perhaps in the spring of 2007.

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