Recently in Space Category

SpaceX's Falcon 9 launcher lifts off on its recent CRS-1 mission to resupply the ISS.

SpaceX hopes to benefit from the next rolling five-year USAF launch contract, with the latest round of announcements imminent.

Check out the full story here

Pictured is the 15 July launch of the Soyuz rocket and Expedition 32 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, carrying a three-nation crew to the International Space Station.

Credit: Rex Features

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...