The final launch of NASA's Space Shuttle program is tomorrow, July 8th at 11:26 am EDT (10:26 am Winnipeg time), providing that weather cooperates and nothing goes wrong during the countdown. This will be the last chance to see a shuttle launch live as the final shuttle Atlantis will be retired when it returns to Earth from the International Space Station. After which in order to see a shuttle you will have either watch classic videos or make a trip to one of the 4 locations that houses one in the US.A few other notes. There is a cool news story on SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) here. SOFIA is pretty awesome as it has a 2.5 meter infrared telescope mounted in the side of a modified Boeing 747SP widebody. As one might imagine it is pretty tricky to put a hole in an aircraft that large and still have it be able to fly well.
Another article came out recently about Saturn and the storm that has been raging there. Apparently its been going for a year now and is larger that the Earth. Also the highest redshift galaxy ever detected has changed hands recently. That distinction now belongs to ULAS J1120+0641 at z=7.1. This means the light left the galaxy almost 13 billion years ago, very far away.
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