Mars, Earth, Mercury, Jupiter, the Sun and the Galactic Centre are aligned, there's a Full Moon (conjunct Mars), and a Venus-square -Neptune arrangement. Also, the Pluto/Sun conjunction appears exactly on the Winter Solstice. A very interesting galactic alignment event. And there's an interesting biblical/astrological similarity to go with it.
You'd think that a human-built spaceship capable of blasting into orbit, staying into orbit, docking with a space station then coming home and landing in one piece (well, sometimes) would also be capable of telling the time properly. But no, apparently not. NASA wants to make sure they're not late launching Discovery next December because it can't handle flying over New Year.
Marred this month by exteme bad luck on counts of badly designed antenna bolts the weekend before the planned August launch, a tropical storm, a lightning strike, a partial rollback to hangar and now electrical failures just hours from T minus zero, one wonders how NASA could ever have claimed to be ready for this mission.
