The year in space was great in 08! God willing 09 goes at least as well.

Thankfully the shuttle fleet achieved another year of impeccable service. Atlantis flew a little late due to faulty fuel cutoff sensors (decidedly not from excessive celebrating the night before) at long last delivering the European Columbus module. Her subsequent trip to repair the Hubble Space Telescope was delayed by finicky replacement parts. Endeavour and Discovery hauled together to bring the Japanese Kibo modules installing a truly international flavor to the expanding outpost, as did the arrival and detachment of the Jules Verne ATV highlighting different responsibilities of the station's partners.

This past year also recorded the outstanding efforts of Expeditions 16 and 17 and their safe return to Earth. Expedition 18 is now hard at their work, including monitoring repairs on the (previously) balky solar array rotary joint. According to preliminary tests it now functions again, ready to track the sun providing power for the increased needs of an expanded crew. Assisting in that regard as well is the installed waste processing unit reclaiming usable water, i.e. "turning yesterday's coffee into today's." Space not being a place for all work and no play however, the first extraterrestrial chess tournament started this year with astronaut Greg Chamitoff taking on ground controllers then later young chess enthusiasts.

The American direction in space currently rolls on uneven ground with the Ares portion of the ESAS plan under fire from several directions. (Hopefully this remains a question only of direction and not momentum under the new administration.) This contrasts other historic strides made around the world such as the Chinese spacewalks and Indian and Japanese satellites magnificently mapping the moon. At year's end NASA assigned unprecedented private contracts for cargo transfer to ISS after the shuttle fleet retires. Clearly private industry is taking off in space, as SpaceX enjoyed Falcon success and promised more coming soon. Virgin Galactic encouragingly flew its WhiteKnightTwo alongside the steady development of its home Mojave Spaceport.

Elsewhere in the solar system, fresh images arrived from Venus and Mercury while on Mars the rovers chugged along even as Phoenix froze into fizzle. And the big news for Star Trek is obviously the new movie, energizing fans into life in a plurality of approval (with however, distinctly informed critics). So far it hasn't done much to break new ground towards breaking into the general public's attention, still I'm sure it will provide enough words for this New Year so there's enough about that for now.