When space shuttle Atlantis launches on August 27, it will carry a crew that has been training for it for the past four and a half years. The six astronauts were supposed to fly to the International Space Station in 2003 but plans were grounded as a result of the Columbia disaster.

"After Columbia, I wondered if the shuttle was going to fly...I was concerned that we might not get to do this," said first-timer Atlantis pilot Chris Ferguson. The crew of the grounded mission, however, continued their training and setting the record for the longest ever in the process.

The Atlantis crew includes:

• U.S. Navy Capt. Brent Jett, commander. This will be his fourth space trip and will perform tasks that include delivering an addition to the space station and deploying solar wings for the space lab.

• U.S. Navy Capt. Chris Ferguson, pilot. Along with mission specialist Dan Burbank, Ferguson will operate the shuttle's robotic arm to lift the 35,000-pound addition to the space station. He is also set to be at the controls on Atlantis return trip.

• Mission specialist Joe Tanner. With his upcoming spacewalk, Tanner will have completed seven spacewalks all in all. He joined NASA as an aerospace engineer and research pilot in 1984 and was selected to be an astronaut in 1992.

• U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Dan Burbank. He was a mission specialist aboard Atlantis in 2000 for a flight that prepared the ISS for its first full-time inhabitants. He will perform his first spacewalk during the upcoming mission.

• U.S. Navy Cmdr. Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper. When Piper makes her scheduled two spacewalks she will join six other American and one Russian women who have made spacewalks.

• Mission specialist Steve MacLean of the Canadian Space Agency. MacLean was picked as one of the first six Canadian astronauts in 1983 and flew on his first shuttle mission aboard Columbia in 1992. He will operate the space station's Canadian-built robotic arm and will be the second Canadian to go on a spacewalk.

Sadly we're not talking about your CD player taking intergalactic photos ala Hubble just yet. What we do have, though, will be the almost-twin probes that have recently been dubbed by NASA as the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, aka STEREO.

The said probes are set to embark on a two-year mission on August 31, when they will be launched on board Delta Rocket II. The main goal of these satellites as they traverse different orbits of the Sun will be to provide depth perception and create a multidimensional view of the Sun. Craft A will be in orbit moving ahead of Earth, while Craft B will lag behind as the planet orbits the Sun. Each probe will have imaging telescopes and equipment to measure solar wind particles and radio waves.

The data that these satellites will gather will then be used to aid scientists in determining how the Sun affects space weather, which in turn may affect astronauts during their missions. The satellites will also provide additional information regarding the origin and evolution of CMEs, or coronal mass ejections.

CMEs are giant explosions on the sun that are caused by conflicting magnetic fields. These explosions release tremendous amounts of energy and if properly directed, can actually reach Earth. When that happens, all sorts of electrical disturbances occur, such as the outage of the entire Quebec power grid in Canada in the 1980's which was caused by a solar storm.

Scientists are hoping to gather enough data that may prove beneficial for people and countries that would most likely be affected by irregularities of the Sun's behavior.

From 1973 to 1974, three crews of three astronauts were sent to space to spend the better part of that year in a scientific workshop that floated around the Earth, called the Skylab.

Before these people were carted off to space, however, NASA had full-scale mock-ups constructed in order to prepare the astronauts for the experience ahead of them. It was finely-built and it contained equipment that was then worth thousands of dollars, the most modern of their time.

After the success of the Skylab, these mock-ups were then placed on display at the US Space and Rocket Center (USRC) located in Huntsville Alabama, until several years ago, it was decided to move the display outside. Now, this remnant of the Skylab is rotting away as its problems not only include birds nesting in the compartments or raccoons living in the floor, but it now also faces the dangers that are brought about by being exposed to the sun, rain, wind, as well as other forces of nature as this artifact is nearing the point of no return.

Because of this, an engineering group has stepped up to the challenge of bringing the Skylab model back to its former glory, and has begun a restoration project led by Tom Hancock, a board member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

However, because of the sheer scale of the project, a call for volunteers and donations is being issued to help save this American relic.

The restoration is expected to take up to a year. Afterwards, there are plans to move the Skylab replica into a building that is being constructed to accommodate a full-scale Saturn V moon rocket that has also been restored.

I was after some mysticism and drama with the title, but let's just get to the point. The topic at hand is interesting enough.

Dig this: the spacesuits that will be used by NASA astronauts in the future will have "self-healing capabilities." ILC Dover LP, the company that has been making the spacesuits for NASA since the Apollo missions in the 60s will have these suits with amazing abilities ready as early as 2018 - just in time for NASA's return to the Moon.

These "abilities" will enable the spacesuits to self-repair holes, generate electricity and kill germs. Materials used in making the layers of the suit will enable it to heal itself - the rubber-like polymer gel sandwiched between layers of polyurethane will ooze out from surrounding areas to patch the holes in the suit. Vacuum chamber tests have been conducted to prove that up to 2mm wide holes can be patched up by the gel. The suit will also be able to alert the astronaut if there are any large holes in the spacesuit via the current-carrying wires incorporated to the material.

As for generating power, the suit will have flexible solar cells sewn into its outer layer. At the moment, the company building the spacesuits are still testing what kind of cells will be most suitable for this - either polymer or silicon-based cells.

Hopefully, these smart spacesuits will be ready for NASA's (and other nations') journey to the Moon and into the other parts of the cosmos.

The last time the International Space Station (ISS) had a major repair/construction was in late 2002, and since then, only scheduled spacewalks by astronauts have been the only way to make repairs to the ISS.

The two truss segments - P3 and P4 - have been prepared for the scheduled August launch of Atlantis. These will add another set of solar panel wings to the ISS. The batteries too have been replaced by NASA in fear that they won't be able to store and provide enough energy as they have been in the ground for too long.

A part of these segments to be sent to the ISS is the 10-foot wide Solar Alpha Rotary Joint which will keep these solar panels aimed at the sun. Other cargo that are waiting to be boarded onto the space shuttle Atlantis are Europe's Experiment Module, the Japanese Experiment Module, and a starboard truss.

Hopefully, everything goes as planned for the Atlantis so that the construction plans for the ISS and other experiments to be conducted there will finally be carried out.

If they have $20 million to burn for a trip to the International Space Station (ISS), then maybe they'd want to spend $15 million more to take a walk outside of the ISS.

This $15M spacewalk will now be an option for tourists to the ISS. It will be a 90-minute spacewalk outside of the Russian modules which will be accompanied by a Russian cosmonaut.

Three civilians have already paid their way to the ISS via a Russian Soyuz rocket. These trips have been organized by Space Adventures of US, Virginia and Vienna, and in cooperation with Rocket Space Corporation Energia and the Russian Federal Space Agency.

Space tourists who are going to avail of this new option are not expected to do any work on the ISS unlike those trained astronauts on previous spacewalks conducted. They will be outside of the ISS just to experience what it's like to really be in space, and they will even be allowed to bring with them a video or still camera.

But even with all the news about this $15M spacewalk circulating, NASA doesn't have a comment about it yet as they still haven't had confirmation about selling spacewalks. This new option for space tourists will also be causing delay on the return of some astronauts aboard the Soyuz because the spacewalk would lengthen the stay of the tourists on the ISS.

Those who have signed up for the $20M commercial space flight are Daisuke Enomoto, an internet entrepreneur, and Charles Simonyi, former developer at Microsoft in Washington. No news so far if these two people will be taking the $15M spacewalk option.

With Discovery's almost flawless performance, NASA is confident the shuttle will be ready for the December 2006 launch of the  STS-116 mission. Shuttle officials expect to use at least 110 days, plus extra five days if necessary, preparing Discovery for its next launch window on December 14.

"That’s a very challenging flow for us," Stephanie Stilson, NASA’s flow manager for Discovery. "We are going to do the best we can to get everything done in the time allotted…it’s very important that we launch in December if we can and we’re going to do everything we can to get there."

But even before that, the Discovery must also be launch-ready as a rescue ship for NASA’s planned shuttle mission STS-115 aboard Atlantis on August 28. NASA’s window for the STS-115, which will deliver a new solar array to the station, was reduced by a week due to a schedule clash with the planned Russian Soyuz launch of the station’s Expedition 14 crew.

Russia’s Federal Space Agency is hoping it will be able to send Expedition 14 commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin and Japanese space tourist Daisuke Enomoto toward the ISS aboard via a Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft on September 14. But this is doable only if NASA launches Atlantis on or before September 3, NASA officials said.

"We don’t want to have dual operations at the station with both the Soyuz crew and the shuttle crew at the same time," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator of space operations. "We just can’t have that many folks on the space station doing the diverse tasks that are there."