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

Dragon recoverd:

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The Dragon capsule will be taken by boat to a port near Los Angeles, where it will be prepared for a return journey to SpaceX's test facility in McGregor, Texas, for processing. Returning with the Dragon capsule was 1,673 pounds of cargo, including 866 pounds of scientific research. Not since the space shuttle have NASA and its international partners been able to return considerable amounts of research and samples for analysis.

Image Credit: SpaceX
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Glaucus said:
Another successful mission then.

When are they going to be allowed to dock itself?
And when is astronauts first flights in it?
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I don't know when self docking will occur and you can go looking for that yourself. ;) The first crew flight is planned for 2015.
 
Progress M-17M heads for the station:

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Launched at 07:41 GMT this morning from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It should dock at 13:40 GMT. Docking will be live on NASA TV.
 
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High-Resolution Self-Portrait by Curiosity Rover Arm Camera

On Sol 84 (Oct. 31, 2012), NASA's Curiosity rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture this set of 55 high-resolution images, which were stitched together to create this full-color self-portrait.

The mosaic shows the rover at "Rocknest," the spot in Gale Crater where the mission's first scoop sampling took place. Four scoop scars can be seen in the regolith in front of the rover.

The base of Gale Crater's 3-mile-high (5-kilometer) sedimentary mountain, Mount Sharp, rises on the right side of the frame. Mountains in the background to the left are the northern wall of Gale Crater. The Martian landscape appears inverted within the round, reflective ChemCam instrument at the top of the rover's mast.

Self-portraits like this one document the state of the rover and allow mission engineers to track changes over time, such as dust accumulation and wheel wear. Due to its location on the end of the robotic arm, only MAHLI (among the rover's 17 cameras) is able to image some parts of the craft, including the port-side wheels.

This high-resolution mosaic is a more detailed version of the low-resolution version created with thumbnail images, at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16238.html .
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Another of those special images from Mars:

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Five Bites Into Mars

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used a mechanism on its robotic arm to dig up five scoopfuls of material from a patch of dusty sand called "Rocknest," producing the five bite-mark pits visible in this image from the rover's left Navigation Camera (Navcam). Each of the pits is about 2 inches (5 centimeters) wide.

The fifth scoopful at Rocknest -- leaving the upper middle bite mark -- was collected during the mission's 93rd Martian day, or sol (Nov. 9, 2012). This image was taken later that same sol. A sample from that fifth scoop was analyzed over the next two sols by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments inside the rover. A second sample from the same scoopful of material was delivered to SAM for analysis on Sol 96 (Nov. 12). No further scooping of soil samples is planned at Rocknest.

The first Rocknest scoop was collected during Sol 61 (Oct. 7). Fine sand and dust from that scoopful and two subsequent ones were used for scrubbing the inside surfaces of chambers in the sample-handling mechanism on the arm. Samples from scoops three, four and five were analyzed by the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument inside the rover.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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