The font of all knowledge, Cecil Adams, recently tackled this question in his Straight Dope column.

Using a number of reliable sources, Cecil discussed many of the fears which kept women out of the space program for many years (See Valentina Tereshkova - See Mercury 13). While some of those fears may have been reasonable, we know that part of the problem was also the attitude of a male dominated industry.

As Cecil also points out, although women face some unique challenges in space flight, in other ways they have an advantage over their male counterparts. Be sure to read the Straight Dope column to learn more and for a full answer to the question. Straight Dope is one of the readings with which I start every day.

Two related questions which many people have deal with How to Go to the Bathroom in Space and Sex in Space. I wrote an article on the first question of How to Go to the Bathroom in Space and reviewed the fantastic book by Laura Woodmansee titled "Sex in Space. Check them out.

Image: Former Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova holds her World Connection Award at the Women's World Award at Congress Center June 9, 2004 in Hamburg, Germany.
Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

With commander Chris Ferguson and pilot Eric Boe at the controls, space shuttle Endeavour descended to a smooth landing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The STS-126 crew members concluded their successful mission to the International Space Station when the shuttle touched down at 4:25 p.m. EST.

Endeavour arrived at the station Nov. 16, delivering equipment that will help allow the station to double its crew size to six. In addition, the STS-126 astronauts delivered Expedition 18 Flight Engineer Sandra Magnus, who replaced Greg Chamitoff, now a mission specialist who returned to Earth aboard Endeavour.

STS-126 is the 124th shuttle mission and 27th shuttle flight to visit the space station.

Do you need to buy a gift for someone who has an interest in astronomy or space exploration? Here's some great information to have on hand before going to the store or retail website to purchase gifts with an astronomy or space twist. We've divided them by type of recipient.

From kids to adults, amateur astronomers to space enthusiasts and many others, we have gifts that will make them happy. So, check out our Astronomy and Space Gift Guide.

Image Credits: Meade

The first STS-126 spacewalk ended at 8:01 PM EST last night. STS-126 mission specialists Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Steve Bowen worked outside the station Tuesday for the first of the mission's four spacewalks. Spending six hours and 52 minutes outside the station, the pair worked on several tasks including removing a depleted nitrogen tank from a stowage platform and moving it into Endeavour's cargo bay then replaving it. They also moved a flex hose rotary coupler from the shuttle to the station stowage platform, as well as removing some insulation blankets from the common berthing mechanism on the Kibo laboratory. Another task included the start of cleaning and lubrication of the starboard solar alpha rotary joint.

According to CBS News, the EVA took a turn for the worse when while starting to clean and lubricate a gummed-up joint on the starboard solar alpha rotary joint, Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper had a grease-gun explode inside her tool bag, getting the substance all over her helmet camera and gloves. As she was trying to wipe grease off her gloves, the tool bag slipped from her grip and floated away into space.

This tool bag is not the only thing floating around in space where it shouldn't be. Just earlier in this spacewalk, the pair had spotted a screw floating by but were too far away to retrieve it. "I have no idea where it came from," Stefanyshyn-Piper told Mission Control. MSNBC has a look at other items that have been lost in space.

Meanwhile, inside the station, STS-126 mission specialist Don Pettit and Expedition 18 flight engineer Sandra Magnus operated the station's robotic arm, and mission specialist Shane Kimbrough served as the intravehicular officer, or spacewalk coordinator.

The spacewalk began at 1:09 PM EST and ended at 8:01.

Image Credits: NASA TV

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) are justifiably proud of their latest achievement. In an historic event, the Indian space program managed to place the Indian tricolour on the Moon’s surface on November 14, 2008, anniversary of the birth of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India'sfirst Prime Minister. The Indian flag was painted on the sides of the Moon Impact Probe (MIP), one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, that successfully hit the lunar surface 8:31 pm IST. This is the first Indian built object to reach the surface of the moon. The point of MIP’s impact was near the Moon’s South Polar Region.

It is a fitting tribute to Nehru since the modern Indian space program was initiated in 1962 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India.

Weighing 34 kg at the time of its launch onboard Chandrayaan-1, the box shaped MIP carried three instruments:

• Video Imaging System
• Radar Altimeter
• Mass Spectrometer

The video imaging system was intended to take the pictures of the moon’s surface as MIP approached it. The radar altimeter was included to measure the rate of descent of the probe to the lunar surface. Such instruments are necessary for future lunar soft landing missions. And, the mass spectrometer was for studying the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.

MIP’s 25 minute journey to the lunar surface began with its separation from Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft at 8:06 pm IST. This was followed by a series of automatic operations that began with the firing of its spin up rockets after achieving a safe distance of separation from Chandrayaan-1. Later, the probe slowed down with the firing of its retro rocket and started its rapid descent towards the moon’s surface. Information from the its instruments was radioed to Chandrayaan-1 by MIP. The spacecraft recorded this in its onboard memory for later readout. Finally, the probe had a hard landing on the lunar surface that terminated its functioning.

Thus, India’s very first attempt to send a probe to the moon’s surface from its spacecraft orbiting the moon has been successfully concluded.

With the switching ON of two of Chandrayaan-1’s payloads – Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM) – on its journey to moon and with MIP’s successful impact on the lunar surface today, it is planned to switch on and test the remaining eight payloads of the spacecraft in the coming few days.

The Chandrayaan-1 craft was successfully launched on October 22, 2008 from India’s spaceport at Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota into its intended initial elliptical orbit around the Earth. Following this, the spacecraft’s orbit was raised in steps and it was made to pass near the moon by repeatedly firing its 440 Newton liquid engine. After Chandrayaan-1’s entry into its planned lunar orbit on November 8, 2008, the orbital height was reduced in steps to its intended operational altitude of 100 km from the lunar surface.

Since its launch, the health and orbit of Chandrayaan-1 is being continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO’s Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Bangalore with critical support from antennas of Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu. IDSN antennas have also received the images and scientific information gathered by TMC, RADOM, and more recently, by MIP.

Image Credits: ISRO

Space shuttle Endeavour and the STS-126 crew arrived at the International Space Station at 5:01 PM EST Sunday, delivering equipment and supplies and a new crew member to the orbital outpost. The hatches between the station and shuttle opened at 7:16 PM. Expedition 18 welcomed the STS-126 crew members inside the Harmony Node.

Post-docking activities included a crew member exchange. Sandra Magnus, who arrived aboard Endeavour, swapped Soyuz seatliners with station astronaut Greg Chamitoff at 9:50 PM replacing him as Expedition 18 Flight Engineer. Chamitoff is now an STS-126 mission specialist and will return home on Endeavour in two weeks.

The shuttle and station crews will prepare today for the first STS-126 spacewalk by Mission Specialists Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Stephen Bowen. The spacewalk is set to take place tomorrow.

Image Credits: NASA TV

Endeavour's STS-126 mission will carry to space about 32,000 pounds, which includes supplies and equipment necessary to double the crew size from three to six members in spring 2009. The new station cargo includes additional sleeping quarters, a second toilet, a water reclamation system and a resistance exercise device.

The mission's four planned spacewalks primarily will focus on servicing the station's two Solar Alpha Rotary Joints, which allow the outpost's solar arrays to track the sun. The starboard SARJ has had limited use since September 2007.

Shortly before launch, Commander Chris Ferguson thanked the teams that helped make the launch possible.

"It's our turn to take home improvement to a new level after 10 years of International Space Station construction," he said. "Endeavour is good to go."

Joining Ferguson on Endeavour's 15-day flight are Pilot Eric Boe and Mission Specialists Donald Pettit, Steve Bowen, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Shane Kimbrough and Sandra Magnus. Magnus will replace current station crew member Greg Chamitoff, who has lived on the outpost since June. She will return to Earth on Discovery's STS-119 mission, targeted for February 2009.

Image Credits: NASA/JSC

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the "Southern Fish."

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA's Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS.

In 2004, the coronagraph in the High Resolution Camera on Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the first-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. It clearly showed a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.

This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt, which encircles the solar system and contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto.

Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley, and team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring's inner edge.

Circumstantial evidence came from Hubble's confirmation that the ring is offset from the center of the star. The sharp inner edge of the ring is also consistent with the presence of a planet that gravitationally "shepherds" ring particles. Independent researchers have subsequently reached similar conclusions.

Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring's inner edge. The results are being reported in the November 14 issue of Science magazine.

"Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off," Kalas says.

"Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving. Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an exoplanet at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring's shape. The lesson for exoplanet hunters is 'follow the dust,'" said team member Mark Clampin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Observations taken 21 months apart by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys' coronagraph show that the object is moving along a path around the star, and is therefore gravitationally bound to it. The planet is 10.7 billion miles from the star, or about 10 times the distance of the planet Saturn from our sun.

The planet is brighter than expected for an object of three Jupiter masses. One possibility is that it has a Saturn-like ring of ice and dust reflecting starlight. The ring might eventually coalesce to form moons. The ring's estimated size is comparable to the region around Jupiter and its four largest orbiting satellites.

Kalas and his team first used Hubble to photograph Fomalhaut in 2004, and made the unexpected discovery of its debris disk, which scatters Fomalhaut's starlight. At the time they noted a few bright sources in the image as planet candidates. A follow-up image in 2006 showed that one of the objects is moving through space with Fomalhaut but changed position relative to the ring since the 2004 exposure. The amount of displacement between the two exposures corresponds to an 872-year-long orbit as calculated from Kepler's laws of planetary motion.

Future observations will attempt to see the planet in infrared light and will look for evidence of water vapor clouds in the atmosphere. This would yield clues to the evolution of a comparatively newborn 100-million-year-old planet. Astrometric measurements of the planet's orbit will provide enough precision to yield an accurate mass.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013 will be able to make coronagraphic observations of Fomalhaut in the near- and mid-infrared. Webb will be able to hunt for other planets in the system and probe the region interior to the dust ring for structures such as an inner asteroid belt. Images

• Top Right: Artist's concept of the star Fomalhaut and the Jupiter-type planet that the Hubble Space Telescope observed. A ring of debris appears to surround Fomalhaut as well. The planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the 200-million-year-old star every 872 years. Click for Full Size Image
  Credit: ESA, NASA, and L. Calcada (ESO for STScI)
• Top Left: This visible-light image from the Hubble shows the newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star.
  Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, and E. Kite (UCB), M. Clampin (GSFC), M. Fitzgerald (LLNL), K. Stapelfeldt, J. Krist (JPL)
• Bottom Right: Ground-based image showing Fomalhaut's location.
  Credit: A. Fujii, NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)
• Bottom Left: This animation simulates Fomalhaut b's path around its star. The red dot represents the planet, the white dot represents the star, and the brown ring represents the debris disk. Click for Animation
  Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has ceased communications after operating for more than five months. As anticipated, seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot's arctic landing site is not providing enough sunlight for the solar arrays to collect the power necessary to charge batteries that operate the lander's instruments.

Mission engineers last received a signal from the lander on Nov. 2. Phoenix, in addition to shorter daylight, has encountered a dustier sky, more clouds and colder temperatures as the northern Mars summer approaches autumn. The mission exceeded its planned operational life of three months to conduct and return science data.

The project team will be listening carefully during the next few weeks to hear if Phoenix revives and phones home. However, engineers now believe that is unlikely because of the worsening weather conditions on Mars. While the spacecraft's work has ended, the analysis of data from the instruments is in its earliest stages.

"Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I'm confident we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Launched Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix landed May 25, 2008, farther north than any previous spacecraft to land on the Martian surface. The lander dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Red Planet's soil. Among early results, it verified the presence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface, which NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter first detected remotely in 2002. Phoenix's cameras also returned more than 25,000 pictures from sweeping vistas to near the atomic level using the first atomic force microscope ever used outside Earth.

"Phoenix not only met the tremendous challenge of landing safely, it accomplished scientific investigations on 149 of its 152 Martian days as a result of dedicated work by a talented team," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Phoenix's preliminary science accomplishments advance the goal of studying whether the Martian arctic environment has ever been favorable for microbes. Additional findings include documenting a mildly alkaline soil environment unlike any found by earlier Mars missions; finding small concentrations of salts that could be nutrients for life; discovering perchlorate salt, which has implications for ice and soil properties; and finding calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.

Phoenix findings also support the goal of learning the history of water on Mars. These findings include excavating soil above the ice table, revealing at least two distinct types of ice deposits; observing snow descending from clouds; providing a mission-long weather record, with data on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind; observations of haze, clouds, frost and whirlwinds; and coordinating with NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to perform simultaneous ground and orbital observations of Martian weather.

"Phoenix provided an important step to spur the hope that we can show Mars was once habitable and possibly supported life," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Phoenix was supported by orbiting NASA spacecraft providing communications relay while producing their own fascinating science. With the upcoming launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, the Mars Program never sleeps."

The University of Arizona leads the Phoenix mission with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin Corporation in Denver. International contributions came from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; the Finnish Meteorological Institute; and Imperial College of London.

Image Credits:
Top Right - NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University
Bottom Left - NASA

STS-126 has been planned for years with a mission to give the International Space Station the ability to support twice the crew currently living there. This 27th shuttle mission to the International Space Station (and 124th shuttle mission) is currently a "go" for a 7:55 PM EST launch on Nov. 14, 2008.

Meanwhile, Cosmic Log writer, Alan Boyle, asks "How safe is the shuttle?"

President Elect Barack Obama, as well as his former opponent John McCain, has called on NASA to consider flying the space shuttle fleet past its scheduled 2010 retirement date. Boyle says, "Now the space agency is providing some sobering estimates of the costs and the risks that would be involved - leading one seasoned space observer to wonder whether the shuttle program should be throttled back rather than extended."

While both this ISS expansion mission and the currently delayed Hubble servicing mission are important, we do not want a repeat of the Challenger or Columbia disasters. The cost of such tragedies in money and time and so very much more importantly lives is monumental.

Unfortunately, if we end the space shuttle program as planned or even earlier as some have suggested, there will be a long gap before the shuttle's successor is available for use. For at least 5 years we will need to rely on the Russians for transportation to and from the International Space Station.

It is true that most problems can not be solved by throwing money at them, however these difficult questions can not be answered without adequate funding.

I call on our newly elected president to ensure that science, and especially NASA, be provided the funding necessary to continue to function and improve the lives of all citizens of the US and the world.

Image Credits: NASA