Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
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William Atkins
Wednesday, 08 August 2007 22:15
During liftoff and ascent, the ET supplies fuel and oxidizer to the three space shuttle main engines (SSME) on the orbiter. The ET weights about 1.68 million pounds (over 760,000 kilograms) when fully loaded with fuel and oxidizer and has a length of 153.8 feet (46.9 meters), about the length of half a football field.
Liftoff of STS-118 and its seven-member crew is scheduled for 6:36 pm EDT at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the mission, the crewmembers will attach a new short truss segment to the space station’s existing backbone truss (which will permit another set of solar panels to be added during a future shuttle mission), along with replacing a defective gyroscope and delivering about five thousand pounds of cargo.
Three spacewalks are planned, but an additional one may be added if the eleven day mission is extended three additional days.
Over 21 years have gone by since Christa McAuliffe, the first Teacher-In-Space astronaut, died while riding inside the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986. Barbara Morgan, her back-up at that time, has waited that amount of time to continue the educational goals of McAuliffe: to teach students while in space and to motivate and stimulate the minds of students around the world.
During her time onboard Endeavour, Morgan will conduct three or more live video conferences with students around the world. She will also initiate an Engineering Design Challenge. Ten million basil seeds will be used as a space and ground experiment. Students around the United States have designed, built, and tested chambers to see if they can grow plants in space.
After their trip in space, the seeds will be distributed to these groups of students to see if the seeds will grow in the chambers. A control group of basil seeds, which remain on the Earth, will be used to compare with the seeds flown in space.
Later, in September, astronaut Clayton Anderson, who is working onboard the International Space Station as a member of the Expedition 15 crew, will conduct a nearly three-week experiment to grow some of these basil seeds.
The space shuttle Endeavour was built to replace Challenger. It has waited about 4.5 years while it was refurbished for this flight and a few more remaining flights into space. During its down-time almost 200 upgrades were incorporated into the spaceship, along with the installation of thousands of new parts.
The entire space shuttle fleet will be retired in about three years, after about fifteen future space missions, in order to make room for the next generation manned program: Project Constellation. The manned capsule at the center of the new program is Orion, a spacecraft that looks like the 1960s Apollo capsule but with updated technological features and materials developed through the Shuttle programs and other advanced space programs.
The STS-118 crew includes commander Scott Kelly, pilot Charlie Hobaugh, and mission specialists Morgan, Tracy Caldwell, Rick Mastracchio, Daffyd Williams (Canadian Space Agency), and Alvin Drew.
The final closeout and inspection team is making an assessment of the ET at 11:50 am EDT. All is proceeding nominally for the liftoff of STS-118.
For up-to-date information on the STS-118 flight, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/news/index.html.
Live NASA launch commentary begins at 12:00 noon EDT. The astronauts will get into their flight suits at about 2:16 pm, depart to the launch pad at about 2:46 pm, and have technicians close the shuttle hatch at about 4:31 pm. The scheduled liftoff is at 6:36 pm.
For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling, and downlink information, go to: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html.
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