American Morning
Testing our nation's cyber security
You can call them war games for the 21st century, testing our nation's cyber security like never before. Today, a Washington think-tank is launching a simulated "cyber shockwave" against the United States.
An all-star lineup of the country's top security and policy experts are at the ready. Scenarios could include a large-scale failure of the power grid or an attack on something that we can't imagine living without at this point – the cell phone grid.
One of the masterminds of it all, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, joined us on Tuesday's American Morning along with one of the participants, our very own national security contributor Fran Townsend, who was a homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush.
Program note: CNN has exclusive access to the situation room during today's cyber security drill. You can see all the action as it unfolds in a two-hour special on CNN this Saturday and Sunday from 8 to 10 p.m. ET.
Counting Down Cady: Astronaut's mission for kids
Editor's Note: Cady Coleman, Ph.D. is a NASA astronaut – a veteran of two space missions, who has logged over 500 hours in space. She is assigned to the Expedition 26 crew and is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz 25 in late 2010. This is part of our year-long American Morning original series, "Counting Down Cady."
Don't miss: Read Cady's blog
Counting Down Cady: What an astronaut does over the holidays
Editor's Note: Cady Coleman, Ph.D. is a NASA astronaut – a veteran of two space missions, who has logged over 500 hours in space. She is assigned to the Expedition 26 crew and is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz 25 in late 2010. Below is a blog written by Cady exclusively for CNN via NASA's Astronaut Office.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/01/08/family.apollo.art.jpg caption="Cady and family – Mark Hopkins, Conor, Garrett and Jamey Murray-Coleman, Josh Simpson, Kieran Murray-Coleman, Jamey Simpson, Ann Doty, Cady Coleman."]
By Cady Coleman, Special to CNN
Every couple of weeks, Josh and I go through our calendars to understand who has to be where and when. The Christmas holiday gave us a good chance to do that, but this time it was different: Our Expedition 26 launch (E 26) is less than a year away!
Usually when I make my entries on Josh’s calendar, I write things like “Cady to Houston – Cady to Massachusetts – Cady training in Russia or Japan or Europe, but on Dec 10th 2010 – I wrote in “Launch Day: Cady to Space.”
Then I wrote “Cady in Space” on all the subsequent weeks until June of 2011. Wow! Now THAT is cool. Now that the flight is less than a year away, I find myself thinking of what life might be like this time next year.
Let’s start with the holiday. As the mom, I wonder who will wrap the presents next year, and pack the car with the one million things that I think are necessary to bring to Grandma’s house on Christmas Day. It is not something I worry about though.
I know that Josh has all those things in hand and it isn’t as if the 9-year-old is really going to say: “Hey – how come I don’t have a very wide selection of clothes to wear at Grandma’s house?” I’m sure they will even figure out how to make Grasshopper Pie together – a Coleman family favorite. I’d like to think I’m indispensable, but Jamey and Josh are on their own a lot of the time while I’m training, and they seem to do just fine!
What does an astronaut in training do over Christmas vacation? The good and bad news is that we can’t do any of our formal training during those holiday weeks, so I get to spend time in Massachusetts with Jamey and Josh. I plan, of course, to get a lot of work done in addition to that family time, but, well, I’ll just say that I got some things done, and others not.
Follow Cady on Twitter @Astro_Cady
The 'new Thomas Edison'
Dean Kamen has been called the new Thomas Edison. He's invented more than four-hundred medical devices.
Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently traveled to Kamen's idea factory – his home in New England – to check out his latest innovations and to hear some interesting ideas about health care reform.
Program Note: Watch Sanjay Gupta MD, Saturday & Sunday at 7:30 a.m. ET on CNN.
Counting Down Cady: Cady relives first space launch
Editor's Note: Cady Coleman, Ph.D. is a NASA astronaut – a veteran of two space missions, who has logged over 500 hours in space. She is assigned to the Expedition 26 crew and is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz 25 in late 2010. Below is a blog written by Cady exclusively for CNN via NASA's Astronaut Office.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://am.blogs.cnn.com/files/2009/12/creamer.jpg caption="Astronaut TJ Creamer gives a press conference at the Baikonur cosmodrome on December 19, 2009."]
By Cady Coleman
Special to CNN
Was it everything he hoped for and dreamed about? Col. TJ Creamer left Earth yesterday on Soyuz 21S, bound for a six month stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Was it worth the wait, the time away from his family and the grueling pace of training around the world? Based on my two space shuttle flights, I predict that launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome was everything TJ dreamed about, and then some!
I’m betting that as we speak, TJ is floating inside the БО (pronounced bay-oh) with a huge grin covering most of his face. I don’t mean to leave out Oleg Kotov and Soichi Noguchi, also onboard the Soyuz yesterday when it launched, but TJ’s veteran crewmates have both been to the ISS before. Oleg spent 6 months as part of Exp 15 in 2007 and Soichi made 2 spacewalks to help assemble the ISS during STS-114, the first post-Columbia mission.
As a trio, the Expedition 22 crew was always great to interact with. They all bring, of course, amazing technical competence to the ISS stage, but Soichi’s quick wit, Oleg’s quiet, slow smile and TJ’s ever-present cheery nature made them a pleasure to train with as well. As Nicole Stott’s backup for Expedition 20, I spent the last 2 years training with my fellow astronauts and cosmonauts in Star City Russia, Tsukuba Japan, Cologne Germany and of course, Houston Texas.
TJ and I didn’t always overlap in those places, but he was known for his generosity in sharing the training lessons that he learned with other crew members. Many of my skills with both large and small computers came from TJ-based-advice. He was especially helpful in hooking me up with cool software to make learning Russian as easy and fun as possible.
Because he was on a mission ahead of me, he also provided helpful lists of Russian vocabulary for our Star City training. My favorites: for water survival “No really, I mean it – I can’t swim!!!!” And for winter survival: “Who has the marshmallows?” (Thanks Teej!)
Meet 'Cady' Coleman, astronaut mom
Editor's note: This is the first in a yearlong CNN series, "Counting Down Cady," that follows NASA astronaut and mother Catherine "Cady" Coleman as she prepares for a November 2010 trip to the international space station. Watch the first "Counting Down Cady" TV segment Monday morning on CNN's "American Morning." Follow her story on the amFIX blog.
By Kim Segal and John Zarrella, CNN
Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts (CNN) - At her home in this woodsy town east of the Berkshires, Catherine "Cady" Coleman often steps outside with her husband and son to peer at the night sky.
But they're not just stargazing. They look up to catch a glimpse of the international space station as it passes 250 miles overhead.
"We watch it together," Coleman adds wistfully. " I like to think about that fact that [son] Jamey and [husband] Josh might do that when I'm up there."
That's right. A year from now, if everything goes according to plan, Coleman will blast off on a Russian Soyuz rocket for the station, where she will live for the next six months.
It's a tricky balancing act. One day Coleman is cooking dinner and picking up Jamey's toys; the next, she's a NASA astronaut in Houston, Texas, preparing to orbit the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour.
Taking on this mission to space, Coleman says, was a family decision.
"To decide to go and fly on the space station is basically a five-year commitment for me to stay down in Houston, and not live in the same place as these guys," she tells CNN.
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