** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

GRAIL went up rather quickly. Here is a great picture capturing lift-off:

graillaunch.jpg

Don’t forget to visit the GRAIL mission site.
 
First weld on new Orion capsule. That's some ****** awesome kit they have there. Seems hard to think it's not due to fly till 2013, you can already see it's shape.

 

"Don't leave me Ron!" :(

You've gotta love Ron Garan though, he's released more, and more high quality stuff than anybody else i've followed. Almost a shame to see him come home, but he's assured his twitter followers that he's got plenty of pictures he hasn't published yet (hopefully from film *hint hint nudge nudge sim.* ;)).
 
Life goes on aboard the ISS and three members of Expedition 28 will be returning home after five and a half months in space. Their Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft will undock from the station on Friday at 01:38 BST (Thursday 20:38 EDT) and is scheduled to land in Kazakhstan on Friday at 05:00 BST (10:00 local time).
 
Now this is hot news:

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NASA Announces Design for New Deep Space Exploration System 09.14.11

NASA is ready to move forward with the development of the Space Launch System -- an advanced heavy-lift launch vehicle that will provide an entirely new national capability for human exploration beyond Earth's orbit. The Space Launch System will give the nation a safe, affordable and sustainable means of reaching beyond our current limits and opening up new discoveries from the unique vantage point of space.

The Space Launch System, or SLS, will be designed to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as important cargo, equipment and science experiments to Earth's orbit and destinations beyond. Additionally, the SLS will serve as a back up for commercial and international partner transportation services to the International Space Station.
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http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/sls1.html

The first launch of the SLS is targeted to be in 2017.
 
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PermaBanned said:
Just looks out of proportion to me. Not like the Saturn 1B or V. They were gorgeous in their own right :p

If it does launch by 2017 i'm not complaining though* ;)


*although i do have my doubts
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Yeah we have been here a few times before, remember the Bush era announcements which looked brilliant and we were headed back to the moon?

Obama gets kicked out then this will probably get kicked into touch.
 
Nope, was just the Ares launch vehicle that was cancelled - the Orion capsule is still in development.

As somebody on another forum pointed out though, the longer the development time for a system like this, the MORE likely that the schedule will slip and ultimately the higher the likelyhood of it being cancelled altogether. So i'll believe it when i see it.

Thankfully that's just an artists concept, which just looks like a Saturn V first and second stage with some Shuttle SRBs strapped to it and a tiny payload compartment. Disproportional - don't like :p
 
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