Star Dates

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A lot, as it turns out:

• An American and a Russian astronaut made their third spacewalk in just over a month Tuesday, installing antennas, switching out science experiments, and getting the international space station ready for cargo ships. Though spacewalks might be considered "ho-hum," they're still not easy - it took the two rocket men two previous walks just to fix a broken circuit breaker, a rather mundane repair job here on the ground.

• The spacecraft "Messenger" was launched from a rocket pad at Cape Canaveral Tuesday - the first probe in 30 years destined for Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. That trip is no summer cross-country tour in a mobile home - it'll take 6-1/2 years to go the 5 billion miles from here to there.

But the technology's better this time around, and scientists did something for Messenger that people can appreciate in these dog days of August: They figured out a way to have its instruments operate at room temperature - using a ceramic fabric just a quarter of an inch thick as a sun shade. And that's in spite of the outside temperature hovering at a blazing 700 degrees F. when Messenger finally gets to Mercury's orbit.

• And look up when the sky becomes especially dark on Aug. 11 and 12, thanks to just a silver slip of a moon shining on those nights. That will make the annual Perseid meteor shower even more delightful, a time when stargazers can ponder the wonders of the universe, and man's place in it - even as those chunks of rock, ice, and sand zoom past, high above.