Shuttle Flight to Save Hubble Telescope to Launch May 11

The space shuttle Atlantis and a crew of seven astronauts are officially set for a planned May 11 launch to give the Hubble Space Telescope one last upgrade, NASA announced Thursday.

After more than half a year of delays, top shuttle mission managers found that Atlantis and its crew are ready to

overhaul the 19-year-old Hubble for the final time. Liftoff is set for 2:01 p.m. EDT (1801 GMT) on launch day.

NASA announced the official launch date after a day-long meeting at the agency's Kennedy Space Center launch site in Florida to review the shuttle's readiness for flight. In a NASA first, the space agency announced the shuttle launch decision via the micro-blogging Web site Twitter.

"The poll is unanimous. We are GO for a May 11 launch for space shuttle Atlantis' STS-125 mission to service Hubble," NASA spokesperson John Yembrick wrote in the Twitter announcement. NASA will discuss the upcoming launch during a press conference on NASA TV at 5:00 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT).

Last flight to Hubble

Commanded by veteran spaceflyer Scott Altman, Atlantis and its crew are slated to launch on an 11-day mission to Hubble. Five back-to-back spacewalks are scheduled to add new instruments, replace broken gyroscopes and old batteries, as well as attach a docking mechanism for a future robotic vehicle. The astronauts will also attempt unprecedented repairs on equipment never designed to be fixed in space.

If all goes well, the mission will extend Hubble's mission life through at least 2014, mission managers said.

Initially slated to launch in October 2008, the Hubble servicing mission has been delayed for months after a data handling unit aboard the space telescope failed unexpectedly last year. The added chore of fixing that broken part was added to the flight.

Mission managers initially targeted a May 12 launch for Atlantis, but decided last week to target an earlier liftoff in order to get at least three chances to lift off before standing down due to launch range traffic.

NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope in April 1990 and has sent astronauts to repair or upgrade the observatory four times. With the space shuttle fleet set to retire in 2010, Atlantis' mission will be the fifth and last service call, NASA has said.

Rescue shuttle on standby

NASA is also prepared if the mission goes substantially awry. While Atlantis is in space, a second space shuttle - the Endeavour orbiter - will be on standby to launch a rescue mission in case of an emergency.

Unlike recent shuttle missions to the International Space Station, where astronauts can seek refuge if their orbiter suffers critical damage, Atlantis astronauts have no such safe haven. They cannot reach the station from Hubble because the space telescope flies in higher orbit than the orbiting lab and in a different orbital inclination, or tilt relative to Earth's equator.

The mission also has a higher risk of damage from space debris, about a 1-in-221 chance of a critical strike. Missions to the space station have about a 1-in-300 chance of being struck, NASA officials have said. The space agency's benchmark for space debris risk is a 1-in-200 chance of a serious hit, they added.

Since Atlantis cannot reach the space station from Hubble's position, Endeavour is primed to launch within a week of a declared emergency with a sparse crew of four astronauts.

According to the plan, Endeavour would rendezvous with Atlantis, where the stricken shuttle's astronauts would perform three spacewalks to abandon ship and return home. Atlantis would then be disposed of during re-entry over the Pacific Ocean, NASA officials have said.

NASA believes the likelihood of actually needing the rescue mission to be extremely remote.

Atlantis is currently scheduled to land on Friday, May 22 at the end of the Hubble mission. Once the shuttle returns, NASA would begin preparing Endeavour for a planned June mission to continue construction of the International Space Station.

SPACE.com -- Shuttle Flight to Save Hubble Telescope to Launch May 11

Windows 7 RC now available on MSDN, TechNet & Connect

Microsoft has just announced the availability of the Windows 7 Release Candidate for MSDN and TechNet customers. In addition, we have confirmed that it is also available on Microsoft Connect for those enrolled in the Windows 7 test program.

"Listening to our partners and customers has been fundamental to the development of Windows 7," said Bill Veghte, senior vice president for the Windows business at Microsoft. "We heard them and worked hard to deliver the highest quality Release Candidate in the history of Windows. We have more partner support than we've ever had for an RC and are pleased to say that the Windows 7 RC has hit the quality and compatibility bar for enterprises to start putting it through its paces and testing in earnest."

Microsoft will be releasing the RC to the public on May 5th and it's expected the RC will be available to millions more customers than the beta.

For more information on what has changed from the beta, please see our Beta to Release Candidate guide.

Windows 7 RC now available on MSDN, TechNet & Connect

Wiimotes get wireless induction charging

Induction charging is a pretty awesome new technology that we're going to start seeing all over the place. What it does is allow you to charge gadgets with no wires; simply place the gadget on the charging surface and it'll juice up like magic. And now you can do this with your Wiimotes without taking the rubber sleeves off.

The Energizer Wiimote Induction Charging System lets you just toss your Wiimotes on it and it'll charge them up automatically. No plugs, no wires and no having remove the sleeves to get to the batteries. Get excited, because this is how you're going to charge up basically everything in the not-too-distant future.

Wiimotes get wireless induction charging | DVICE

Intel Cuts SSD Prices, Makes More 1.8-Inch SSDs for Netbooks and Small Laptops

Pricing cuts will spur greater SSD adoption

Intel is lowering prices on several of its SSDs in a response to increased competition in the burgeoning SSD market. The world's largest semiconductor company makes SSDs using NAND flash produced by IM Flash Technologies, an Intel joint venture with Micron Technologies.

The X25-M series of mainstream 2.5-inch SSDs, which use Multi-Level Cell flash, is the target of the price cuts. The 160GB model will receive a $100 price cut off the MSRP, while the 80GB model will drop $50 in price. However, the street prices are much lower, as retailers react to demand for the popular Vertex series of SSDs produced by OCZ Technology.

Increased production and competition has forced a dramatic drop in prices. Intel launched its 160GB X25-M drive for $945 just four short months ago. Today, it is available for two-thirds of its original price, a savings of over $300. The price for the 80GB model has been cut almost in half since its launch.

Intel will also be making available more 80GB and 160GB SSDs in the 1.8-inch form factor. The retail supply of the X18-M series has been limited since its launch. These drives are used mostly in netbooks and smaller laptops which are space constrained.

Meanwhile, the X25-E series targeted at the enterprise server market will also soon face pricing and capacity pressure from OCZ and Super Talent.

Super Talent will soon be shipping SLC-based SSDs with up to 256GB of storage, which OCZ will counter with their Vertex EX series targeting the enterprise server and tiered storage markets.

Intel will fight back in this lucrative market, with designs for a 128GB SLC drive and a 320GB SSD using 34nm MLC NAND chips. They are expected to be released later in 2009.

Model	December 2008	February 2009	April 2009
X25-M 80GB	$595	$390	$320
X25-M 160GB	$945	$765	$630
X18-M 80GB	NA	NA	$340
X25-E 32GB	$575	$415	$390
X25-E 64GB	NA	$795	$795

DailyTech - Intel Cuts SSD Prices, Makes More 1.8-Inch SSDs for Netbooks and Small Laptops

Office 2007 SP2 Released

Microsoft releases the second service pack for Office 2007

Earlier this month, DailyTech reported that Microsoft had plans to release Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 sometime this month. Just as promised, Microsoft today delivered Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007 to the masses.

Service Pack 2 brings a number of bugfixes while at the same time boosting reliability and performance of core applications. Service Pack 2 also includes the ability to natively save documents in PDF and ODF file formats.

Jane Liles, Microsoft’s group program manager for Office Sustained Engineering, had this to say regarding the specific improvements to the Outlook mail application, “Outlook is where a large percentage of our users spend the majority of their work time. It’s critical that the application provide the experience that they expect and need to get their work done.”

“Outlook 2007 SP2 is 26 percent faster than its predecessor on a set of common e-mail tasks and is even faster, 35 percent, with larger mailboxes,” Liles continued. “Users will experience considerable responsiveness and speed improvements on common, day-to-day operations like launching, synchronizing and searching. We were excited to be able to act on as much of the customer feedback as we did.”

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is available as a direct download from Microsoft’s website – it weighs in a hefty 290 MB.

DailyTech - Office 2007 SP2 Released

Cablevision Offers 101 Mbps Internet Access Plan

Cablevision also doubles bandwidth of free Wi-Fi offering

Power internet users almost always seem to crave higher download speeds. The faster things can be downloaded from the internet, the faster the content can be enjoyed by consumers. Internet speeds in the U.S. are commonly much slower than speeds offered in other countries, but some service providers are working to significantly increase the speeds available to consumers in America.

Cablevision has announced that it will be debuting a new super-fast internet access plan for its customers in some areas. The service will offer enough bandwidth to download a full-length HD movie in less than 10 minutes. The service will offer peak download speeds of up to 101 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 15Mbps.

Cablevision told Reuters that the goal of new service was to allow it to better compete with the fast offerings from Verizon's FiOS service. The downside to such a fast internet connection is that the plan is expensive. Reuters reports that the 101 Mbps offering will cost nearly $100 per month. However, that price makes it cheaper than Comcast's 50 Mbps offering that costs $139 per month and fast offerings from other providers.

Reuters reports that Cablevision plans to roll the service out to its customers starting May 11. The new plan will replace the company's current top offering featuring downloads speeds of 15 Mbps for about $50 per month.

Todd Mitchell, an analyst from Kaufman Brothers, told Reuters, "Right now the real demand for 50 to 100 megabits is pretty limited. But over the next two to three years, the number of video applications we all use will grow exponentially so it will become a necessary level of service."

A bigger question in many minds is will consumers be willing or able to pay $100 per month for internet access during one of the worst economic periods in many years. Other analysts say that cable operators are walking a fine line with super-fast internet offerings. Cable companies risk damaging their core video offerings by providing customers with too much bandwidth according to some analysts.

Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said, "The cable operators are trying to walk a fine line. They don't want to provide so much bandwidth that they foster the means to bypass their core service."

Cablevision also announced that it would be doubling the speed of its wireless Internet connection to 3Mbps using Wi-Fi. The company offers this service for free to consumers in certain locations.

DailyTech - Cablevision Offers 101 Mbps Internet Access Plan

Firefox 3.0.10, 3.5 Beta released

Mozilla has released two significant browser updates in the last 24 hours. First up, Firefox 3.0.10 is a minor update to the stable version of Firefox, fixing some security and stability issues.

The more exciting update is the release of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4. This is the first version of Firefox to use the new 3.5 version number. Up until now the betas were labeled 3.1, but Mozilla decided that the next version of Firefox represented a big enough change from Firefox 3 to warrant a bigger name change.

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 includes a number of new features, including support for the Gecko 1.91 rendering engine, a new private browsing mode (which deletes all cookies, history, and other data when you're done with your browsing session), and support for location aware browsing using geolocation web standards. There's also better support for JavaScript, which makes many web applications appear to fly by at lightning speed.

Firefox 3.0.10 should be available as an automatic update. You can download Firefox 3.5 beta 4 from the Firefox beta page.

Firefox 3.0.10, 3.5 Beta released