Sunday, September 20, 2009

The International Space Station, as of September 8, 2009.
NASA

PHOTOS OF THE DAY... With the scheduled retirement of the space shuttle taking place less than a year from now, just thought I’d share pics of the vehicles that will be taking up the slack of transporting crews and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) once the shuttle is gone. Now in operation are Russia’s Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (or ATV) and Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle (or HTV). The images of the spacecraft are in the order that they are listed above:

A manned Russian Soyuz spacecraft, as seen by a crewmember onboard the International Space Station.
NASA

An unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft, as seen by a crewmember onboard the International Space Station.
NASA

A European ATV spacecraft, as seen by a crewmember onboard the International Space Station.
NASA

A Japanese HTV spacecraft (lower left), as seen by a crewmember onboard the International Space Station.
NASA

Future spacecraft that will ferry crews and cargo to the ISS are SpaceX’s Dragon vehicle, Orbital Sciences Corporation's Cygnus cargo ship and NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Dragon and Cygnus are set to make their maiden flights sometime next year, while Orion won’t be operational till at least 2017. Better late than never.

An artist's concept of the Dragon spacecraft in Earth orbit.
SpaceX

An artist's concept of the Cygnus spacecraft approaching the International Space Station.
Orbital Sciences Corporation

An artist's concept of the Orion spacecraft approaching the International Space Station.
NASA
Posted by Richard Par at 11:03 PM
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