Da SkeeT Blog

A SpaceX spacecraft stands at Space launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., during a wet dress rehearsal ahead of the launch of a demonstration mission to the International Space Station.

A private spacecraft stands ready to launch on a historic first visit to the International Space Station early Saturday morning.

The unmanned Dragon space capsule, built by commercial firm SpaceX, is slated to lift off atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket early Saturday from here at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft has an instantaneous launch window at 4:55 a.m. EDT (0855 GMT), with a 70 percent chance of good weather predicted (the main risk of a delay is posed by the possibility of cumulus clouds).

If all goes well, Dragon will fly by the space station on Monday (May 21) and rendezvous and berth at the outpost the day after, becoming the first non-governmental vehicle to do so. The mission is the final test flight planned for Dragon, which has been developed under NASA’s COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) program aimed at nurturing private spacecraft to supply the International Space Station.

The mission is a critical test for NASA’s plan to outsource transportation to low-Earth orbit to the commercial sector, allowing the agency to begin work on a new heavy-lift rocket for deep space. Some in Congress and elsewhere have been critical of the scheme, arguing that private vehicles are untested and less reliable than NASA’s in-house built spacecraft. [Photos: SpaceX Poised for Historic Launch]

If Saturday’s launch is successful, it could help sway the naysayers, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said.

The Dragon spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket, both made by SpaceX, are rolled to the launch pad ahead of the static firing test for the rocket.

“I think it will make a tremendous difference,” Bolden told SPACE.com in April. “Everybody wants to see performance. You can promise things all you want, but nothing works like actual performance, and so it’s a very important mission for SpaceX but an incredibly important mission for us at NASA.”

SpaceX (officially Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of Hawthorne, Calif.) has designed Dragon to fly robotically at first, though the company has designs to man-rate the capsule. Eventually, Dragon is planned to be able to carry up to seven crewmembers to orbit, and could be used to transport astronauts as well as cargo to the space station.

For this test flight, Dragon is loaded with 1,014 pounds (460 kilograms) of cargo for the orbiting laboratory, including 674 pounds (306 kg) of food, clothing and supplies for the station’s six-man crew. It will also deliver scientific equipment and electronic hardware, including a laptop.

If the capsule’s on-orbit checkouts go smoothly, then on Tuesday (May 22), NASA astronaut Don Pettit and European Space Agency flyer Andre Kuipers use the space station’s 57.7-foot (17.6-meter) robotic arm to reach out and grab Dragon and berth it to the station’s Harmony node.

The vehicle is scheduled to stay at the outpost for about two weeks. Then, it will be unberthed and will head back to Earth where it is planned to re-enter the atmosphere and land in the Pacific Ocean.

In contrast to the other unmanned vehicles that ferry cargo to the space station, Dragon is equipped with a heat shield to survive re-entry and be recovered after landing. Thus, before it departs the station, astronauts plan to load it full of science experiments ready for analysis on the ground, as well as used hardware to be returned to NASA.

This week we’re getting deeper than ever into the start of the next big shooter game series with Halo 4, tipped here as having multiplayer action like none that have come before it. For those of you new to the Halo series, you should know that the number “4″ at the end of this title does not mean that it’s the fourth in the series – even though it technically is. You’ll certainly be moving forward in game mechanics as well as graphics prowess, but the timeline is all different – but Master Chief is back!

Halo 4 will be bringing no less than an infusion of the best bits of both multiplayer and single-player into the multiplayer gameplay portion of the whole game environment. What you’ll be working with here is “Infinity Multiplayer”, or at least that’s what its called for now. This new mode of play will have Halo lovers working with cooperative “Spartan Ops” as well as “War Games”, two different ways to play, both of them kill-heavy. Spartan Ops has been tipped to lift a lot from the game Call of Duty’s Spec Ops missions. War Games on the other hand will have Deathmatch and Capture the Flag mode like all good multiplayer shooters should.

The Limited Edition of this game will have the same options for gameplay that the standard edition does, but will be including several more single-player maps for you to interact with. At $99.99 upon its release, we’re certainly hoping it’s more than just maps that we’ll be getting – that and some physical items such as a USNC Briefing Packet, some armor schematics, and a bluetooth of the Infinity. UPDATE: Also included in the Limited Edition pack will be such lovely bits and pieces like armor and weapon skins, Avatar unlockables, and a 90-minute video feature Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. This feature will have you gaining an understanding of the storyline like only a hardcore character would want!

Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) is in talks to sell about 20 percent of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. for about $7 billion, a deal that would cut by half its stake in China’s largest e- commerce provider, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

Alibaba Group, which has been trying to buy back the stake in itself for more than a year, may announce a deal as soon as next week, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Yahoo has come close to selling the stake in the past and failed, and it may not reach an agreement this time either, the person said.

Alibaba would gain more control over its future, including a possible initial public offering, by owning more of itself. It stepped up efforts to repurchase stock held by Yahoo in September, when the U.S. company fired former chief executive officer Carol Bartz. Reducing the Alibaba stake lessens Yahoo’s toehold in the world’s largest Internet market, while also making a takeover of the U.S. company more likely, said Jordan Rohan, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co.

“For Yahoo shareholders, the sale and subsequent march towards an IPO is a clear positive, as many questioned whether Yahoo would be able to monetize its China assets at all,” Rohan said in a research report today. “In addition, the capital required to take Yahoo private is reduced with each Alibaba monetization event.”

Yahoo has a board meeting today to review the transaction and will consider a dividend payment, AllThingsD reported earlier. AllThingsD said the deal is likely to value the portion of Yahoo’s holdings at about $7 billion, or 20 percent of Alibaba’s $35 billion enterprise valuation. After a potential IPO, Yahoo could sell more of its stake, AllThingsD reported.

Active Discussions

Dana Lengkeek, a spokeswoman for Yahoo, and John Spelich, a spokesman for Alibaba declined to comment.

Yahoo, which failed to keep pace with growth at Google Inc. (GOOG) and Facebook Inc., is pursuing active discussions with the Chinese company, Scott Thompson, who succeeded Bartz before stepping down this month, said in April.

Yahoo had also been in discussions about selling its stake in Yahoo! Japan to Tokyo-based Softbank Corp., another person said. Those talks have gone cold over price and have not resumed, said the person.

Yahoo considered a deal with Alibaba and Softbank that would cut its stake in Alibaba to about 15 percent from about 40 percent, a person familiar with the matter said in December.

The shares of Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo rose 5 percent to $15.62 at 12:37 p.m. in New York. The shares had fallen 7.8 percent this year before today.

Yahoo, which spurned a $47.5 billion offer by Microsoft Corp. in 2008, has a market value of about $18.9 billion. By comparison, Google is valued at about $202.1 billion.