This week's picture is from a series of unique pictures from the Flight International spaceflight archive, which goes back to the very beginning of the space age.

Are you able to tell us the event pictured below? What is the mission? Tell us your thoughts and send us your own amusing caption by emailing Kelley Malcher, Flight's webmaster.  Answers and winning caption will be published next week. Please supply a physical location in your message.

 

  
  Space flight picture of the week

Space flight picture of the week: 22 September 200

  
  LAST WEEK'S IMAGE

Spaceflight picture of the week: 15 September 2006

 
"At last : a secure ascent/descent mode for the shuttle"
By Michel Laliberté in Canada

Thanks to all of the readers who suggested an explanation.

Last week's image shows the Space Shuttle Enterprise being craned into a dynamics test stand at NASA’s George C Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama in 1978. Enterprise was mated with an external propellant tank and two solid rocket boosters, already placed in the stand, to form a complete Shuttle stack.  This was the first time all the Shuttle elements were assembled while the space transportation system was undergoing ground testing at MSFC.

Source: Flight International