The astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour were spending their first full day in space Tuesday, en route to the International Space Station. NASA said Pilot Terry Virts assisted Commander George Zamka with a firing of the shuttle's jets to refine its approach to the ISS for the planned Tuesday night docking. Astronauts Kay Hire and Nick Patrick used the shuttle's robotic arm to unberth the Orbiter Boom Sensor System to perform the standard post-launch inspection of the shuttle's thermal protection system tiles and reinforced carbon panels on the spacecraft's nose cap and wing leading edges.

The U.S. space agency says it will extend the Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its planets to at least 2017. "This is a mission that never stops providing us surprising scientific results and showing us eye popping new vistas," said Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science division. "The historic traveler's stunning discoveries and images have revolutionized our knowledge of Saturn and its moons."

On Thursday, about 500 eighth-grade students from Sunnyside School District began building their own Galileoscopes during the 2010 MathMovesU Day, sponsored in part by Raytheon Missile Systems. The annual event provides local students with hands-on interactive workshops and displays, as part of a Raytheon effort to stimulate interest in math, science and technology. The effort began in 2009 during the International Year of Astronomy, led by Stephen Pompea, education director at National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson.

Jan. 27--Lowell Observatory has laid off three of its 60 employees and reduced the hours of five others. Officials at the nonprofit Flagstaff institution cited a struggling economy and the need to shift operating resources to the $44 million Discovery Channel Telescope, which will begin preliminary operation in February 2011. "We are committed to build the finest telescope of its kind, and we will," said Eileen Friel, the observatory's director, in a press release.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is essentially grounding efforts to return astronauts to the moon and instead is sending NASA in new directions with roughly $6 billion more, according to officials familiar with the plans. It also would be used to entice companies to build private spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the space station after the space shuttle retires, said the official who was not authorized to speak by name. The money in the president's budget is not enough to follow through with NASA's Constellation moon landing plan initiated by President George W. Bush.

The European Space Agency says its Proba-2 satellite has started observing the sun, while also demonstrating technologies for future space missions. The ESA team directing the mission announced Tuesday it is extremely happy with the satellite's first three months in orbit. Constructed for ESA by Belgian firm Verhaert Space, the spacecraft is less than 35 cubic feet in size and carries 17 new technologies that are being demonstrated before being adopted by full-sized spacecraft, the ESA said.

REDONDO BEACH, Calif., Jan. 18, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The first primary mirror segment of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has met flight specifications at ambient temperatures, the result of a process that has been six years in the making. Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) is leading the design and development effort for the space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center. The polishing and ambient testing took place at Tinsley Laboratories, Inc. in Richmond, Calif.

LOS ANGELES--Will Phoenix rise from the dead? Despite the odds, NASA on Monday will begin a three-day effort to listen for signs of life from the Phoenix lander, presumed frozen to death near Mars' north pole after spending five months digging into soil and ice. "We have no expectations that Phoenix has survived the winter, but we certainly want to have a look," said Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld, who participated in three spaceflights to service the Hubble Space Telescope, is leaving the agency to become the deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. The institute is the science operations center for Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope, which is planned for launch in 2014. "During the past 18 years, John has been a true asset to the agency," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut who flew on the STS-31 mission that deployed the Hubble.

EDWARDS, Calif., Dec. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A NASA jumbo jet that will help scientists unlock the origins of the universe with infrared observations reached a milestone Friday when doors covering the plane's telescope were fully opened in flight. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, a modified 747 jet known as SOFIA, flew for one hour and 19 minutes, which included two minutes with the telescope's doors fully opened. It was the first time outside air has interacted with the part of the plane that carries the 98-inch infrared telescope.