Portal:Spaceflight

The Spaceflight Portal

Introduction

Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly objects, usually spacecraft, into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in orbit around Earth, but also includes space probes for flights beyond Earth orbit. Such spaceflights operate either by telerobotic or autonomous control. The first spaceflights began in the 1950s with the launches of the Soviet Sputnik satellites and American Explorer and Vanguard missions. Human spaceflight programs include the Soyuz, Shenzhou, the past Apollo Moon landing and the Space Shuttle programs. Other current spaceflight are conducted to the International Space Station and to China's Tiangong Space Station. (Full article...)

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Mir seen from Space Shuttle Endeavour during STS-89 (28 January 1998)

Mir (Russian: Мир, IPA: [ˈmʲir]; lit. 'peace' or 'world') was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russian Federation. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. At the time it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit, succeeded by the International Space Station (ISS) after Mir's deorbiting. The station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and spacecraft systems with a goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space.

Mir was the first continuously inhabited long-term research station in orbit and held the record for the longest continuous human presence in space at 3,644 days, until it was surpassed by the ISS on 23 October 2010. It holds the record for the longest single human spaceflight, with Valeri Polyakov spending 437 days and 18 hours on the station between 1994 and 1995. Mir was occupied for a total of twelve and a half years out of its fifteen-year lifespan, having the capacity to support a resident crew of three, or larger crews for short visits.

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Next scheduled launch

For a full schedule of launches and deep-space rendezvous, see 2025 in spaceflight.

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Robbert Hutchings Goddard (1882–1945) is considered to be one of the fathers of modern rocket propulsion. A physicist of great insight, Goddard also had a unique genius for invention. By 1926, Goddard had constructed and tested successfully the first rocket using liquid fuel. Indeed, the flight of Goddard's rocket on March 16, 1926, at Auburn, Massachusetts, was a feat as epochal in history as that of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. Yet, it was one of Goddard's "firsts" in the now booming significance of rocket propulsion in the fields of military missilery and the scientific exploration of space. Goddard's work largely anticipated in technical detail the later German V-2 missiles, including gyroscopic control, steering by means of vanes in the jet stream of the rocket motor, gimbal steering, power-driven fuel pumps and other devices. His rocket flight in 1929 carried the first scientific payload, a barometer, and a camera. Goddard developed and demonstrated the basic idea of the "bazooka" two days before the Armistice in 1918 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Goddard was the first scientist who not only realized the potentialities of missiles and spaceflight but also contributed directly in bringing them to practical realization. This rare talent in both creative science and practical engineering places Goddard well above the opposite numbers among the European rocket pioneers.

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Credit: NASA - image source

A close-up view of the unpiloted Japanese HTV-1, the first H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV), in the grasp of the International Space Station's robotic Canadarm2. The crew of Expedition 20 used the station's robotic arm to grab the cargo craft and attach it to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony node.

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On This Day

7 October

1968 - A Voskhod launches the Kosmos 246 satellite.
1971 - A Voskhod launches the Kosmos 443 satellite.
1978 - An Atlas E/F launches the GPS- 3 satellite.
1999 - A Delta II launches the GPS IIR-3 satellite.
2002 - Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on mission STS-112, to deliver the S1 Truss to the International Space Station.
2010 - A Soyuz-FG launches Soyuz TMA-01M, carrying three of the Expedition 25 crew to the ISS.
2011 - A Long March 3B launches the Eutelsat W3C satellite.

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Did you know...

... that astrophysicist Suzanna Randall continued her research at the European Southern Observatory while training for the spaceflight programme Die Astronautin?
... that Blue Origin NS-31 recently became the first all-female spaceflight in 62 years?
... that Iran's first three-stage satellite carrier, Qaem 100, successfully passed its suborbital test?
Neil Armstrong on the Moon

…that the original videos of the Apollo 11 astronauts walking on the Moon (pictured) were lost after the mission, and were reported to have been found in June 2009?

...that in 1971 the USSR launched Salyut 1, the first space station?
…the record for the longest crewed spaceflight stands at 437.7 days, which was set by Valeriy Polyakov aboard Mir?

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