EU-DIGEST

Two more pieces of Europe, and of Italy in particular, are getting ready to join the ISS (International Space Station). Twelve years of design, development and hard work came to fruition with the formal handover of Node 3 from ESA to NASA on 20 November. The ceremony took place in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA. The handover completed the final major element of the barter agreement between ESA and NASA signed in Turin (Italy) on 8 October 1997 under which ESA provided Nodes 2 and 3 plus additional equipment and knowhow in return for transportation of the European Columbus Laboratory to the ISS by Space Shuttle.

Labels: ESA, EU, Space Exploration, Space Station

Simonyi, 58, billionaire founding father of Microsoft to blast off in Russian Spacecraft to International Space Station

U.S. lifestyle queen Martha Stewart flew to the Soviet-era Baikonur Cosmodrome on Friday to wish good luck to her friend, space tourist Charles Simonyi who is due to blast off to orbit on Saturday.

Simonyi, 58, a billionaire founding father of Microsoft, was undergoing last-minute checks ahead of the flight at the cosmodrome in Kazakhstan along with Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov.

The three are due to lift off on Saturday at 11:31 p.m. aboard the Soyuz TMA-10 spaceship to the International Space Station.

Labels: Russia, Space Station