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

[Cosimo]

That's good. Though what part did the lander play in it's overall mission?

I'm assuming it wasn't just a test for the new landing method

It is a demonstrator for the technologies required for landing with sensors monitoring the various technologies at play. The results will be used for planning future missions. It did have some limited scientific capability to be used on the surface but that was an "added extra" as its batteries were only designed to last for a few days.

More:

http://exploration.esa.int/mars/47852-entry-descent-and-landing-demonstrator-module/

You can read about the whole mission from those pages.

 

[Cosimo]

From last night at the Royal Albert Hall:



Tim Peake and Tim Kopra talked about living and working on the International Space Station. The complete cycle from Baikonur and back was covered. There was a Q&A session at the end and the event was hosted by Dallas Campbell. It was a marvellous evening!

 

[Cosimo]

Expedition 49-50 Crew docks to the station:

 

[Cosimo]

Expedition 49/50 Soyuz Commander Sergey Ryzhikov, Flight Engineer Andrey Borisenko of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Shane Kimbrough of NASA, opened the hatch of their Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft and were greeted by station Commander Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos, Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency:

 

[Cosimo]

This week:

 

[Cosimo]

Was this televised?

No it wasn't but it would be good if ESA released a video of it.

 

[Cosimo]

Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo craft arrives at the station:

 

[Cosimo]

Expedition 50-51 Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos, Flight Engineers Peggy Whitson of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency along with their backups, Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos, Jack Fischer of NASA and Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency conducted final qualification training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City:

 

[Cosimo]

first episode of national geographys mars series is online, you'll need a US VPN/DNS to watch it
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/mars/videos/novo-mundo/

first half of episode 1 is a kind of history, existing footage of launches and interviews with people like Elon and Robert zubren amongst others. with a bit of the story interwoved

then the second half is the start of the proper series itself and is normal series like.

The TV premiere of it in the UK is on Sunday 13th at 9pm:

http://mars.natgeotv.com/uk/

 

[Cosimo]

Come for a fly-through of the International Space Station. Shot in UHD (4K) using a fisheye lens for extreme focus and depth of field:

 

[Cosimo]

Great view out of the window:

 

[Cosimo]

This week:

 

[Cosimo]

Expedition 49 Commander Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos, Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency leave for home:

 

[Cosimo]

Now back home:

 

[Cosimo]

Delta IV Heavy NROL-37 launch in 360:

 

[Cosimo]

A brief look at the move of Orion’s service module from the vibration table to the assembly high bay area in Plum Brook’s Space Power Facility:

 

[Cosimo]

Time for a look back in time (July 20, 1969) with some scary moments during Apollo 11's first manned moon landing:

 

[Cosimo]

ISS research update:

 

[Cosimo]

NASA has published 16 years of the ISS story in GIFs:

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/16-years-of-station-told-in-16-gifs

 

[Cosimo]

Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough answers questions on life in space: