Solarch writes "NASA is holding a contest to name ISS Node 3. Being a Browncoat myself, I should hope that the choice of names would be obvious. As of the 7:30 PM EST on 2/25, the name Serenity has over 80% of the vote. From the site: 'Node 3 will connect to the port side of the Unity Node and will provide room for many of the station's life support systems, in the form of eight refrigerator-sized racks. After Node 3 is installed, the station's crew will transfer over many of the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) currently stored in various places around the station.'"

switchfeet writes "For any of you Half-Life fans out there, this new short film based on the game by The Purchase Brothers is really garnering some attention on pretty much every gaming site out there. 'It's a mixture of live action and game footage, and makes smart use of in-game sound effects, and some really fantastic location hunting. ... The Purchase Bros describe the production as 'guerilla style with no money, no time, no crew, no script, the first two episodes were made from beginning to end on a budget of $500.'"

An anonymous reader writes "The launch of Space Shuttle Discovery was originally slated for February 12th, has now been postponed to February 19th — at the earliest. The change of launch dates were decided by NASA managers during a review of the shuttle's flow control valve in the main engine. The new date is pending further analysis of the flow control valve and everything checking out okay for pre-flight tests. Discovery's STS-119 14-day mission will deliver the station's fourth and final set of solar arrays, completing the orbiting laboratory's truss, or backbone. The arrays will provide the electricity to fully power science experiments and support the station's expanded crew of six in May."

csn writes "On Wednesday, January 28th at 6:00 PM PST and 9:00 PM EST, the stars of the cult television hit 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' will reunite to do what they do best — heckle bad movies. Join Mike Nelson, Kevin 'Tom Servo' Murphy and Bill 'Crow T. Robot' Corbett as they make fun of the 1950 short film, 'Overcoming Fear,' live over the internet.

mknewman writes with disappointing news for anyone with the money that it would have cost to fly as a space tourist, excerpting a story that says "Russia's space chief says there won't be any more tourists headed to the international space station after this year. Anatoly Perminov told the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta that there will be no room for paying tourists because the space station's crew is expanding from three members to six."

dj writes in with a reminder that forty years ago, on January 16, 1969, the two Russian spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 carried out the first docking between two manned spacecraft and transfer of crew between the craft. Wired's piece gives a gripping account of "one of the roughest re-entries in the history of space flight": "Soyuz 5's service module failed to detach at retrofire, causing the vehicle to assume an aerodynamic position that left the heat shield pointed the wrong way as it re-entered the atmosphere. The only thing standing between Volynov and a fiery death was the command module's thin hatch cover. The interior of Volynov's capsule filled with noxious fumes as the gaskets sealing the hatch started to burn, and it got very hot in there (which, a short time later was something he probably missed). ... But wait. There's more."

Slatterz writes "I own a basic 70mm telescope, which I'm sure Galileo would have given his right arm for in 1609. In fact, this year marks exactly 400 years since Galileo first pointed a telescope at the skies — discovering the moons of Jupiter and helping to prove that the universe doesn't revolve around us. As a mark of respect, the United Nations has declared 2009 the International Year of Astronomy. Official festivities kick off this week in Paris and, to help start the celebrations, 17 radio telescopes in Australia, Asia, Europe and the Americas will track three quasars using something called "real-time Very Long Baseline Interferometry" — basically creating hi-res images by combining their data to simulate a telescope as large as the Earth. Sounds cool."

oldwindways writes "An Ohio teen was found guilty of murdering his mother and shooting his father in the head after they took away his copy of Halo 3. One has to wonder if this is going to have any effect on the games industry. Clearly, the AP thought they could stir up something controversial by asking the IP owner for a statement: 'Microsoft, which owns the intellectual property for the game, declined to comment beyond a statement saying: "We are aware of the situation and it is a tragic case."' I suppose the good news is they did not accept his insanity plea, so no one can claim that Halo 3 drove him insane. Even so, I don't think anything good can come out of this for gamers." Unfortunately, it seems somebody can claim that the game was a contributing factor; the judge who presided over this case said he believes that the 17-year-old defendant "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever." GamePolitics has further details from the judge's statement. It doesn't help that the boy's lawyers used video game addiction as a defense.

An anonymous reader writes "Verizon Wireless will forge a deal with Microsoft to include the software giant's Live Search on its mobile phones, giving Microsoft a victory over rival Google and ending a months-long dance toward the partnership. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will announce the deal in his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas." InfoWorld notes that Microsoft is rumored to be changing the name of its Live Search service to Kumo, which is Japanese for "cloud."

Gamasutra reports that Ziff Davis Media has sold a number of gaming websites, including 1Up.com, and will be shutting down their popular magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly. Some of 1Up's staff was laid off as well, though the new owners want to keep the rest of it intact. The sale was motivated by an unprofitable business model made worse by the recent downturn in the economy. 1Up's James Mielke has made a post about the final hours of EGM, and a glimpse at the final issue, saying, "...the final, secret, unpublished issue of EGM will show up here on 1UP shortly in the near future. You will be able to read every hi-res page, ads and all (last time I checked at least) on 1UP, to see the beautiful job that crew did, even with the guillotine hanging over our heads every minute of the day."