On March 7, final commands were sent to the spacecraft to ready it for orbit insertion. Just before 1:25 p.m. PT on March 10, those commands fired the six main engines for a 27 minute burn that slowed the spacecraft, allowed it to be captured by Mars' gravity, and placed it into an elliptical polar orbit around Mars that is initial 35.5 hours long.

International Space Station (ISS)

Filled with trash and items no longer needed, the Progress 19 vehicle undocked from the Zvezda living quarters module at 5:06 a.m. EST. Three hours later, Russian flight controllers commanded its engines to fire to put it on course to plunge into the atmosphere and burn up over the Pacific Ocean. The cargo ship was docked to the station since September 2005.

Hot Pic: Cathay Pacific Airways Airline Commercial Video Footage (soundtrack in Chinese)

Disclaimer: This is clearly a tv commercial for Cathay Pacific Airways. AeroSpaceNews.com has not been compensated to publish this video in any way. We are running it as part of an experiment with the new Google video service. There is not much beautiful aviation, space, or airline-related content available. Please contact us if you have stunning footage you'd like to share with our audience.

While we are in no way trying to discourage interested customers from flying Cathay Pacific Airways, we just wish to make it clear that this is not objective news content produced in-house at AeroSpaceNews.com

The model of plane in the video sequence appears to be a Boeing 747-400.

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The model of plane in the crash sequence appears to be a Grumman G-73 Mallard, similar to the Turbo Mallard involved in the Chalks plane crash, but not identical.

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Marion C. Blakey, Administrator of the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), delivered a keynote address on February 28, 2006, the opening day of the FAA's 31st Annual Federal Aviation Forecast Conference. The theme of the two-day conference is "Survival and Growth in Today's World." U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta also delivered a keynote address along with luncheon speaker Herb Kelleher, chairman of Southwest Airlines.

FAA Administrator Blakey's speech was entitled "The Unexpected" and alerts against the risks she perceives of doing the same old thing. We've published the entire text of her speech below. While clearly addressing an audience of airline industry insiders, this speech is notable for the lack of significant reference to general aviation and the role it plays in the nation's air transportation system.

A flight deck crewman uses flashlight wands to direct the crew of a helicopter to drop a cargo net of supplies aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) during a vertical replenishment in the Atlantic Ocean on Jan. 10, 2006.

International Space Station (ISS)

Managers decided to postpone the planned station "campout" this week until next month. It will test procedures to shorten the preparation required for spacewalks. It was delayed after a device called the Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) could not be activated following maintenance work by the crew. The device measures the composition of the station's air.