Astronauts Celebrate Thanksgiving in Space on Two Spaceships

A dozen astronauts in orbit took a break from their orbital work Thursday to celebrate a weightless Thanksgiving, despite the fact that they're flying on two different spaceships.


The shuttle Atlantis, with seven crewmembers onboard, left the International Space Station early Wednesday, capping off a week-long visit to stock the outpost with spare equipment. The orbiter is slated to land Friday morning at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

In honor of the American Thanksgiving holiday, NASA replaced the shuttle's icon with a traditional turkey image on its Mission Control map tracking the spacecraft around Earth. The shuttle astronauts can choose from their normal space menus, or select from NASA's traditional meal of irradiated turkey with cornbread dressing, green beans and candied yams. The five people on the station also took the day off for the U.S. holiday.


Source: http://www.space.com/

Is Doomsday Coming In 2012?

There has been a lot of interest lately in the theory that the world is going to end in the year 2012. The hollywood version of events is scheduled to be in theaters in November 2009 and has a lot of people talking. So, is this something that we need to be taking seriously? Is Earth in danger of being annihilated? Is the government hiding the facts from us?

Nibiru
Though there are many variations of the doomsday theory, the threat most often quoted is a collision with a planet (or possibly a brown dwarf) known as Nibiru in 2012. The result would be the virtual destruction of Earth and mankind.

Why 2012?
The ancient Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. Many have taken this to mean that the Mayans believed that this date would bring the end of existence. However, this is not so. Like modern calendars, the Mayan calender is a way of keeping track of time. The Mayan calendar was never meant to be a predictor of the future any more than the calendar in my office is meant to. The ending date of the Mayan calendar is not meant to represent the end of time, but rather the end of their calendar cycle. Just as our calender begins again on January 1, their calendar will begin a new cycle on December 22, 2012. Their calendar cycle is just much longer than our 365 day cycle.

Source: http://space.about.com/

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