The Earth Departure Stage (EDS) is the name given to the second stages of two Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, the Ares V and the Block II Space Launch System. The EDS is used to boost the rocket's payload into a parking orbit around the Earth and from there send the payload out of low Earth orbit to its destination in a manner similar to that of the S-IVB rocket stage used on the Saturn V rockets that propelled the three-man Apollo missions to the Moon between 1968 and 1972.
Read more about Earth Departure Stage: Space Launch System, Other Uses
Famous quotes containing the words earth, departure and/or stage:
“It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.”
—Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859)
“An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.”
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
“I must ... warn my readers that my attacks are directed against themselves, not against my stage figures.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)