Astronaut Steve Nagel has died after a battle with cancer. We'll never forget his 1991 space shuttle landing. It was bad but could have been worse.

Though not as visible as work on the flight elements, upgrades to NASA’s Mission Control at Johnson Space Center here have been underway since the shuttle program’s retirement in 2011. The Mission Control Center for the 21st Century project is intended to set the stage for a U.S. human spaceflight comeback.

U. S. orchestrated spacewalks, previously set for Aug. 21 and 29, will be rescheduled for later this year.

California company sees 5% workforce reduction

U.S. commercial imagery provider DigitalGlobe posts electro-optical images of eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region.

"Once we have completed the orbit raise, we look forward to procesing and analyzing the scientific data collected onthe atmosphere," says Patrick Martin, ESA's Venus Express mission manager.

"This is sort of new territory we were in," said NASA Low Density Supersonic Decelerator engineer Dan Coatta. "Our test goals were to inflate the balloon, launch, get up to altitude successfully, drop off the balloon, have the rocket motor fire and get up to speed."

But will they webcast it?