Like a scene from a bad B-horror movie, swarms of crazed ants have infiltrated the state of Texas and is now wreaking havoc throughout its electrical infrastructures. Known as the crazy rasberry ants - crazy, cos they do not follow those ant lines we usually see and are erratically wandering off, and rasberry, named after Tom Rasberry who battled it out with them previously - they have found Texan electrical wirings to be delicious for some odd, crazy reason.

NASA has given word that the  Space Shuttle Endeavor will not be undergoing repairs for the damage it sustained during its launch. Currently, there is a three and a half by two inch wide cut on the exterior of the ship caused by a piece of foam insulation and ice that fragmented from the fuel tank.

Surprisingly, the Astronauts aboard the ship were relieved at not having to get out of the Endeavor for repairs. The man who would have been tasked with repairing the hole, Rick Mastracchio, said that "we were not looking forward to doing it only because there was a lot of risk involved."

The commander of the ship, Scott Kelly, supported the decision by NASA saying he was more worried about the potential additional damage they might have caused while repairing the ship, adding that "there will be no extra concern in my mind due to this damage."

This decision was contested by a few people in the organization including a few engineers from the  Johnson Space Center in Houston, home to Mission Control. Hopefully, their worries would prove to be unfounded and the space shuttle will get back to earth safe and sound.

"There was never any doubt that I wanted to be an astronomer, and that's what I set myself up for," NASA astronomer Steven Hawley says, looking back on a fruitful career that included five space shuttle missions. "UC Santa Cruz was fairly young when I was looking at graduate schools, but it already had a world-class astronomy department. By incorporating the Lick Observatory astronomers, it immediately became one of the top schools in the country for astronomy, and I was lucky enough to get in."

Steven Hawley hadn't planned on going into space himself, but the chance was too good to pass up. "You don't know what opportunities will be out there, so you need to prepare yourself as best you can, be alert, and then jump on them when they become available and hope for the best," he comments.

NASA had just started recruiting scientists and engineers into the astronaut program when Hawley was finishing his graduate degree at UC Santa Cruz in the late 1970s. He applied for the program but never really expected to be selected. "The elation of being picked to be an astronaut at NASA quickly changed to apprehension. I had no certainty that it was something I could do, and I knew it would be very challenging," Hawley says.

Hawley wound up serving on several important space shuttle missions - including the one that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope 16 years ago. He returned to Hubble on a maintenance mission in 1997 and performed several major upgrades and repairs. His last space flight was seven years ago, when he helped deploy the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

"For me, as an astronomer, to be able to participate in those kinds of missions was something really special," Hawley said. "To be associated with Hubble and Chandra--you couldn't have written a script that was any better than that."

Currently, Hawley is director of scientific research in planetary and space science at the Johnson Space Center. He helps maintain group of collections featuring extra-terrestrial specimens. However, he still keeps track of important findings from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory and is proud that he was able to contribute to both projects.

So, does he have any advice for budding astro-traveler wannabes? Should they get an astronomy degree? Not necessarily, Hawley says. "A lot of people ask me what they need to do to become an astronaut and if they should take astronomy. And I ask them, 'Well, do you like astronomy?' Because if you don't like it you won't be very good at it...I've been lucky enough to do something I really enjoy."

Nasty budget cut would spell doom for NASA's space plans, so said the Space Frontier Foundation a few days ago. In another round of money saving attempts, NASA managers are considering suspending US science research aboard the International Space Station (ISS) next year. Dropping the  science research is one of the several options to make up for the $100 million funding shortfall plaguing NASA.

NASA is currently preparing to launch shuttle Atlantis toward the ISS to complete the construction of the half-built space station by September 2010. The future of the space station science remains bleak after NASA was forced to divert funds from its science and exploration coffers to complete the ISS and retire the shuttle program.

Kirk Shireman, deputy director of NASA’s ISS program at Johnson Space Center (JSC) said, “The ISS has severe budgetary limitations next year. We’re working very hard not only within the program, but with headquarters as well to balance it out...I’m confident that we’ll come out with options and a plan to go forward that will be satisfactory for the ISS program and for NASA and the taxpayers as a whole."

NASA TV will broadcast real live Space Cowboys as they perform techical chores outside the International Space Station on June 1. The five and a half hour spacewalk starts at 6:40 p.m (EDT) although the live coverage starts earlier at 5:30 p.m. (EDT).  It will be the first of two spacewalks for Expedition 13 Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Jeff Williams during their six mission that will last for six months.

Vinogradov and Williams will step into the cold nothingness of space from the Pirs airlock wearing what most of us wish we had in our wardrobe - Russian Orlan space suits. The floating mechanics will install a new valve on the Zvezda Service Module for the station's Russian oxygen-generation system. They will also collect experiments and install a new TV camera on the station's rail car system. Before the actual spacewalk, NASA will also air a preview via a news conference on May 30th at 2 p.m. (EDT). That briefing will be held at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.