A gaggle of NASA stories

There's been a lot of interesting NASA stories of late.

One, poor Spirit finally gave up the ghost. The rover was put into hibernation last March but alas, it doesn't seem to want to wake up. The little card table sized explorer sure gave NASA more than its money's worth though.

With the shuttle retirement in progress, NPR did a great story about the Crawler, the giant vehicle used to tow the shuttle to the launch site. It's one of those things most people never think about but it's a huge bit of engineering. It's top speed is 2 miles an hour. Only 6 people are authorized to drive it. The drive down the 3.5 mile specially built service road takes hours as even the top speed can't be approached with the multi-ton shuttle and its rockets in tow.

Finally, the James Webb telescope is going to be the successor to Hubble. Unlike the Hubble, it is not intended to be serviced by the Shuttle so it's going to be out in L2. It's pretty cool, it has to fold up to fit inside of a rocket. They referred to it as the "origami telescope." Alas, it's overbudget and now apparently will take years longer to complete. Currently, they launch date has been pushed to 2018.