NASA moved shuttle Atlantis to its seaside launch pad, but officials have their fingers crossed that three growing storms in the Atlantic Ocean avoid the Kennedy Space Center.  Tropical storms Fay and Hanna helped cause problems for NASA space officials, and another storm, Hurricane Ike, looks ready to strike Florida in the coming days. 

NASA is prepared to move Atlantis off the launch pad, but still believes its Hubble mission will be able to launch next month.

NASA hopes to launch shuttle Atlantis in October and has delayed the launch an additional two days, with an Oct. 10 expected launch date.  The shuttle mission after Atlantis has also been pushed back two days, to Nov. 12.

China plans to launch its third manned space mission sometime later this month, a Chinese newspaper reported over the weekend.  After the Shenzhou VII launches into orbit, China hopes to carry out its first space walk during the mission that will make use of space suits from both China and Russia.  In 2003, China joined only the United States and Russia as nations that have sent astronauts into orbit aboard their own rocket and shuttle.

The Chinese-made Shenzhour spacecraft is very similar to the Russian Soyuz space capsule, which will end up likely being the main transport for U.S. astronauts after the shuttle is retired.  The rocket responsible for launching the spacecraft into space, the Long-March II-F rocket, has undergone at least 30 improvement tests over the first generation rocket, and the Chinese space agency is looking forward to seeing what it can do.

The shuttle has a launch window ranging from Sept. 25 to Sept. 30.

The NASA Cassini spacecraft recently discovered that two of Saturn's moons have faint, partial rings behind the moons of Methone and Anthe.  Cassini first took five, 15-second images of the ring arc of Anthe in October 2007.  The images revealed the partial rings, known as ring arcs, are formed of material that were taken off small moons due to small meteoroid impacts.

Both moons are in range of the gravitational spell of Mimas, a larger moon of Saturn, and the gravitational force causes Methone and Anthe to wobble as they orbit around the ringed planet.