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

All four of Dragon’s thruster pods are now up and running. Tests will continue and the earliest opportunity to rendezvous with the station will now be Sunday.
 

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On Thursday, March 7, 2013, SpaceX’s Grasshopper doubled its highest leap to date to rise 24 stories or 80.1 meters (262.8 feet), hovering for approximately 34 seconds and landing safely using closed loop thrust vector and throttle control. Grasshopper touched down with its most accurate precision thus far on the centermost part of the launch pad. At touchdown, the thrust to weight ratio of the vehicle was greater than one, proving a key landing algorithm for Falcon 9. The test was completed at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas.

Grasshopper, SpaceX’s vertical and takeoff and landing (VTVL) vehicle, continues SpaceX’s work toward one of its key goals – developing fully and rapidly reusable rockets, a feat that will transform space exploration by radically reducing its cost. With Grasshopper, SpaceX engineers are testing the technology that would enable a launched rocket to land intact, rather than burning up upon reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere.

This is Grasshopper’s fourth in a series of test flights, with each test demonstrating exponential increases in altitude. Last September, Grasshopper flew to 2.5 meters (8.2 feet), in November, it flew to 5.4 meters (17.7 feet) and in December, it flew to 40 meters (131 feet).

Grasshopper stands 10 stories tall and consists of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage tank, Merlin 1D engine, four steel and aluminum landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure.
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After spending 143 days in space Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford, Russian Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy and Russian Flight Engineer Evgeny Tarelkin will begin their journey home from the space station just after midnight UK time:

Undocking at 00:40 GMT (20:40 EDT)
Deorbit burn at 03:04 GMT (23:04 EDT) and landing in Kazakhstan at 03:57 GMT (23:57 EDT).

There will be live coverage on NASA TV.
 
Cosimo said:
After spending 143 days in space Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford, Russian Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy and Russian Flight Engineer Evgeny Tarelkin will begin their journey home from the space station just after midnight UK time:

Undocking at 00:40 GMT (20:40 EDT)
Deorbit burn at 03:04 GMT (23:04 EDT) and landing in Kazakhstan at 03:57 GMT (23:57 EDT).

There will be live coverage on NASA TV.
Click to expand...

Bad weather postponement until today:

Undocking at 23:43 GMT
Deorbit burn at 02:12 GMT
Landing at 03:06 GMT
 
Tonight on TV:

The Challenger @ 21:00 BBC HD/TWO


Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes

When the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, it was the most shocking event in the history of American spaceflight. The deaths of seven astronauts, including the first teacher in space Christa McAuliffe, were watched live on television by millions of viewers. But what was more shocking was that the cause of the disaster might never be uncovered. The Challenger is the story of how Richard Feynman, one of America's most famous scientists, helped to discover the cause of a tragedy that stunned America. 
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00zstkn
 
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