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

Lasers have been fired on Mars now, Curiosity lasers:

Mars rover Curiosity fired its laser for the first time on Mars, using the beam from a science instrument to interrogate a fist-size rock called "Coronation."

he mission's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, hit the fist-sized rock with 30 pulses of its laser during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second.
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Back to the space station with a super image:

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Canadarm2 and HTV-3

In the grasp of the International Space Station's robotic Canadarm2, the HTV-3 Exposed Pallet is moved for installation on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-3) currently docked to the space station. Earth's horizon and the blackness of space provide the backdrop for the scene.
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More on the HTV-3 mission.
 
Isn't this like the 7th rover to land on Mars? (the 4th to work properly)

Edit:

Its a real shame that the USSR gave up on Mars rovers when they realised the USA didn't have the capability to compete, imagine how much we could have learned already :(
 
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mollymoo said:
Is the ISS something the UK are involved in? Some sites say we are some say we aren't.
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Nope. There were talks of us designing and building two habitation modules, to provide a much larger and more comfortable living space but honestly, can you imagine the government actually giving away some money?
 
mollymoo said:
Is the ISS something the UK are involved in? Some sites say we are some say we aren't.
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No, we did sign up for the project (as part of the European Space Agency) however the UK has contributed nothing to the project as per our policy against manned space travel (1986) however British astronauts have visited the ISS.
 
ubersonic said:
No, we did sign up for the project (as part of the European Space Agency) however the UK has contributed nothing to the project as per our policy against manned space travel (1986) however British astronauts have visited the ISS.
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Hold on, we have a policy against manned space travel? What the hell for? :eek:
 
ubersonic said:
Isn't this like the 7th rover to land on Mars? (the 4th to work properly)

Edit:

Its a real shame that the USSR gave up on Mars rovers when they realised the USA didn't have the capability to compete, imagine how much we could have learned already :(
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Bit of a shame they didn't go for somewhere else like Io or Europa. I'd love to see some surface pics from there. The Mars stuff we're currently seeing is epic (don't get me wrong) but there is a sense of 'been there done that'. It would be nice to go somewhere else. I know they tried Venus a couple of times but it was hard to stop everything melting in the first 30 seconds. I would also assume surviving the extreme cold of further out is equally hard though.
 
ubersonic said:
Its a real shame that the USSR gave up on Mars rovers when they realised the USA didn't have the capability to compete, imagine how much we could have learned already :(
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:confused:

USSR had an appalling record of success with Mars landings.

Edit: In fact every Russian lander project failed with the exception of one that landed then died after 15 seconds.
 
SlyReaper said:
Hold on, we have a policy against manned space travel? What the hell for? :eek:
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Because you know, why do something yourself when you can just pay for someone else to give it to you? Why would you ever want to make money? "Oh hey, you developed a satellite launcher for a record low cost that also happens to improve relations with another country? Yeah, we've decided that we're just going to pay the Americans for that instead."
 
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