Recently in Space Category

ESA's new launcher, Vega, made a successful maiden flight today from French Guyana. Aerospace manufacturer Avio coordinated work with 12 different European countries and 45 separate companies to produce 65% of the launcher.

 Credit: ESA/Avio

Chad Graff has shared these pictures showing STS-135, the final Space Shuttle mission, lifting off from Cape Canaveral, as viewed mid-flight on a Southwest service.

Graff says his brother took the photos en route to Miami.

Credit: @ChadGraff/Twitpic

To help develop the Space Shuttle programme, NASA built a fleet of wingless lifting bodies to study aerodynamics for controlling and landing a re-entry vehicle, depicted below.

All week we're showing images of the Space Shuttle in honour of its pending retirement, which we detail in a special report in this week's Flight International magazine.

Here's an aerial view of Space Shuttle Discovery as she waits for launch to the International Space Station.

After a week's worth of aborted attempts to send the Space Shuttle Discovery on its way to the International Space Station, NASA now says the earliest it will launch is 30 November. But rescheduling a Shuttle launch is no mean feat.

The soonest Discovery can be launched is 4:05 EST on 30 November, NASA says, and the next window will last until 5 December. Read more...

All week we're showing images of the Space Shuttle in honour of its pending retirement, which we detail in a special report in this week's Flight International magazine.

This week Flightglobal publication Flight International looks back at the Space Shuttle in a special report as the craft nears retirement.

Even before the Apollo space programme of the 1960s put a man on the Moon, a fledgling NASA was conceptualising a reusable spacecraft for manned flight. Work on the Space Shuttle began in earnest in the 1970s, with the first of four test flights in 1981, followed by operational missions beginning in 1982. Now, more than 30 years later, the Space Shuttle is tentatively scheduled to be retired from service in 2011 after 135 launches - and countless changes to the way the world sees space, aerospace and the Earth itself. As the programme prepares to close, we look back across its lifespan - at how the spacecraft itself conceived, its contributions to aerospace and what might come next for manned space exploration. We even fly along on the de-orbit and final approach path the orbiter will take on its last trip home.

Contents

• Armchair astronaut: We "fly" in the Space Shuttle simulator
• History: How it was conceived
• Schedule: Waiting for Discovery
• The future: After the Shuttle

The cover photo is a NASA photograph of Space Shuttle Atlantis lifting off from Florida on 14 May on its final mission, STS-132.

Also featured this week are:

This week's Image of the Week (featured on page 5 of Flight International), is taken by AirSpace user apgphoto (Paul Dopson). Paul's photo depicts the Aeromagic Space Shuttle-shaped balloon, which Paul photographed in July 2009 at the Lorraine Mondial Air Balloons held at Chambley in France. Paul says, "This was the morning when 329 balloons took off!"

This week Flightglobal publication Flight International looks at Virgin Galactic's suborbital space tourism programme now that the enterprise has gone where no commerical craft has gone before: VSS Enterprise was dropped from 45,000 feet and successfully glided back to Mojave Air and Space port. That flight is featured on our cover, photographed by Virgin Galactic.

Space Shuttle Discovery has safely reached the launch pad at Cape Canaveral in anticipation of its final launch before retirement. A Terminal Countdown Demonstration dress rehearsal is scheduled for 12-15 October, before mission STS-133 lifts off on 1 November. Continue reading...

Three years after Sea Launch spiralled towards bankruptcy following the explosion of its Zenit 3SL rocket, the satellite launch provider is preparing to restart operations.

Both of its land and sea launches use the Zenit rocket. But the more expensive sea-based missions allow a much greater payload - up to 6,100kg (13,440lb) against about 3,600kg - because the sea platform can be positioned exactly on the equator, at a point about 2,250km (1,215nm) south of Hawaii.

At that point the force of the Earth's rotation gives maximum assistance to a rocket, which can lift more payload in exchange for the fuel load it must carry when launched from more northerly or southerly points.

Here's a diagram of how Sea Launch's launch works, as well as an explanation below.

 credit: Rex Features/NASA/Jim Grossmann

NASA's space shuttle Atlantis returned to the Kennedy Space Center for the final time yesterday (26 May).

Watch it touch down and the parachute being deployed from news channel Russia Today: