NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis goes on public display June29th

Beginning Saturday, the public will finally be able to visit Space Shuttle Atlantis at its new permanent home, a 900,000 square-foot facility that's part of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It's been two years since the shuttle last touched down and entered retirement on July 21st, 2011, with Atlantis now set to headline a $100 million exhibit that chronicles NASA's legendary 30-year space shuttle program. In an effort to create a more immersive experience for paying visitors, the shuttle will be propped up in a unique position that simulates the perspective astronauts would take in during space walks and other missions. A "hi-fi" recreation of the Hubble Space Telescope and dozens of interactive experiences round out the big attraction, admission to which is included in the Visitor Complex's $50 ticket fee. .

Many of the astronauts that flew on Atlantis will be on hand for Saturday's grand opening — the latest example of NASA's prized space vehicles making the transition into tourist attractions. We took at look at Space Shuttle Enterprise aboard the USS Intrepid last year. That exhibit is finally set to reopen in two weeks after sustaining damage from Hurricane Sandy.

NASA launches sun-watching satellite:

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – NASA launched a satellite late Thursday on a mission to explore a little-studied region of the sun and to better forecast space weather that can disrupt communications systems on Earth.

Unlike a traditional liftoff, the Iris satellite rode into Earth orbit on a Pegasus rocket dropped from an airplane that took off around sunset from the Vandenberg Air Force Base on California’s central coast. About 100 miles off the coast and at an altitude of 39,000 feet, the airplane released the rocket, which ignited its engine for the 13-minute climb to space.

Mission controllers clapped after receiving word that Iris separated from the rocket as planned, ready to begin its two-year mission.

“We’re thrilled,” NASA launch director Tim Dunn said in a NASA TV interview.

The launch went smoothly, but there were some tense moments when communications signals were temporarily lost. Ground controllers were able to track Iris by relying on other satellites orbiting Earth. It also took longer-than-expected for Iris to unfurl its solar panels.

In a statement, NASA said it received confirmation that the satellite deployed its solar panels and was generating power.

Previous sun-observing spacecraft have yielded a wealth of information about our nearest star and beamed back brilliant pictures of solar flares.

Unlike NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which observes the entire sun, Iris will focus on a little-explored region that lies between the surface and the corona, the glowing white ring that’s visible during eclipses.The 7-foot-long Iris, weighing 400 pounds, carries an ultraviolet telescope that can take high-resolution images every few seconds.

The goal is to learn more about how this mysterious region drives solar wind — a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun — and to better predict space weather that can disrupt communications signals on Earth.

“This is a very difficult region to understand and observe. We haven’t had the technical capabilities before now to really zoom in” and peer at it up close, NASA program scientist Jeffrey Newmark said before the launch.

The mission is cheap by NASA standards, costing $182 million, and is managed by the space agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Engineers will spend a month making sure Iris is in perfect health before powering on the telescope to begin observations.

The launch was delayed by a day so that technicians at the Air Force base could restore power to launch range equipment after a weekend outage cut electricity to a swath of the central coast.

The Pegasus, from Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is a winged rocket designed for launching small satellites. First flown in 1990, Pegasus rockets have also been used to accelerate vehicles in hypersonic flight programs.