2004 In Spaceflight
This article outlines notable events occurring in 2004 in spaceflight, including major launches and Extravehicular activity, EVAs. First privately funded human spaceflight First Delta IV Heavy Launches , colspan=8, January , - , colspan=8, February , - , colspan=8, March , - , colspan=8, April , - , colspan=8, May , - , colspan=8, June , - , colspan=8, July , - , colspan=8, August , - , colspan=8, September , - , colspan=8, October , - , colspan=8, November , - , colspan=8, December , - Deep Space Rendezvous EVAs Orbital launch statistics By country For the purposes of this section, the yearly tally of orbital launches by country assigns each flight to the country of origin of the rocket, not to the launch services provider or the spaceport. By rocket By family By type By configuration By spaceport By orbit References Footnotes {{Orbital la ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sea Launch
Sea Launch was a multinational—Norway, Russia, Ukraine, United States—spacecraft launch company founded in 1995 that provided orbital launch services from 1999 to 2014. The company used a mobile maritime launch platform for equatorial launches of commercial payloads on specialized Zenit-3SL rockets from a former mobile/floating oil drilling rig renamed ''Odyssey''. By 2014, it had assembled and launched thirty-two rockets, with an additional three failures and one partial failure. All commercial payloads were communications satellites intended for geostationary transfer orbit with such customers as EchoStar, DirecTV, XM Satellite Radio, PanAmSat, and Thuraya. The approach Sea Launch LLC used was to assemble the launcher on a purpose-built ship '' Sea Launch Commander'' in Nimitz Rd., Long Beach, California, USA. The assembled spacecraft was then positioned on top of the self-propelled ''Odyssey'' floating launch platform and moved to the equatorial Pacific Ocean f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spaceport Florida Launch Complex 36
Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) is a launch complex located at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Located south of the Missile Row launch range, the complex originally consisted of two pads—designated LC-36A and LC-36B—to support the flights of Atlas (rocket family), Atlas launch vehicles equipped with a Centaur (rocket stage), Centaur upper stage. From the 1960s to the 1980s, LC-36 was used by NASA and the United States Air Force to launch many payloads from the Atlas-Centaur and its derivatives, including the Pioneer program, Pioneer, Surveyor program, Surveyor, and Mariner program, Mariner probes. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, General Dynamics (and later Lockheed Martin) modified the two pads to support the larger Atlas I, Atlas II, and Atlas III. Following the Atlas program's relocation to Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 41, Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) in 2005, LC-36 stood vacant until Blue Origin acquired the lease in 2015 for use by their heavy ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the station is the primary launch site for the Space Force's Eastern RangeCAST 1999, p. 1-12. with four launch pads currently active (Space Launch Complexes 36, 40, 41 and 46). The facility is south-southeast of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island, with the two linked by bridges and causeways. The Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Skid Strip provides a runway close to the launch complexes for military airlift aircraft delivering heavy and outsized payloads to the Cape. A number of American space exploration pioneers were launched from CCSFS, including the first U.S. Earth satellite (1958), first U.S. astronaut (1961), first U.S. astronaut in orbit (1962), first two-man U.S. spacecraft (1965), first U.S. uncrewed lu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), European Space Agency, ESA (Europe), JAXA (Japan), and Canadian Space Agency, CSA (Canada). As the largest space station ever constructed, it primarily serves as a platform for conducting scientific experiments in microgravity and studying the space environment. The station is divided into two main sections: the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS), developed by Roscosmos, and the US Orbital Segment (USOS), built by NASA, ESA, JAXA, and CSA. A striking feature of the ISS is the Integrated Truss Structure, which connect the station’s vast system of solar panels and Spacecraft thermal control, radiators to its pressurized modules. These modules support diverse functions, including scientific research, crew habitation, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Low Earth Orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, peaking in number at an altitude around , while the farthest in LEO, before medium Earth orbit (MEO), have an altitude of 2,000 km, about one-third of the Earth radius, radius of Earth and near the beginning of the Van Allen radiation belt#Inner belt, inner Van Allen radiation belt. The term ''LEO region'' is used for the area of space below an altitude of (about one-third of Earth's radius). Objects in orbits that pass through this zone, even if they have an apogee further out or are sub-orbital spaceflight, sub-orbital, are carefully tracked since they present a collision risk to the many LEO satellites. No human spaceflights other than the lunar missions of the Apollo program (1968-1972) have gone beyond L ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Progress M1-11
Progress M1-11, identified by NASA as Progress 13P, was a Progress spacecraft used to resupply the International Space Station. It was a Progress-M1 11F615A55 spacecraft, with the serial number 260. Launch Progress M1-11 was launched by a Soyuz-U carrier rocket from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Launch occurred at 11:58:08 UTC on 29 January 2004. Docking The spacecraft docked with the aft port of the '' Zvezda'' module at 13:13:11 UTC on 31 January 2004. It remained docked for 114 days before undocking at 09:19:29 UTC on 24 May 2004 to make way for Progress M-49. Following undocking, it remained in orbit for ten days, conducting tests of its attitude control system. It was deorbited at 09:50 UTC on 3 June 2004. The spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, with any remaining debris landing in the ocean at around 10:36:25 UTC. Progress M1-11 carried supplies to the International Space Station, including food, water and oxygen for the crew and equip ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Russian Federal Space Agency
The State Corporation for Space Activities "Roscosmos", commonly known simply as Roscosmos (), is a state corporation of the Russian Federation responsible for space flights, cosmonautics programs, and aerospace research. Originating from the Soviet space program founded in the 1950s, Roscosmos emerged following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It initially began as the Russian Space Agency,, ''Rossiyskoye kosmicheskoye agentstvo'', or RKA (). which was established on 25 February 1992 and restructured in 1999 and 2004 as the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, ''Rossiyskoye aviatsionno-kosmicheskoye agentstvo'', commonly known as (), established on 25 May 1999. and the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), (Роскосмос), ''Federalnoye kosmicheskoye agentstvo (Roskosmos)''. respectively. In 2015, the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) was merged with the United Rocket and Space Corporation, a government corporation, to re-nationalize the space industr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gagarin's Start
Gagarin's Start (, ''Gagarinskiy start''), also known as Baikonur Site 1 or Site 1/5 was a launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan that was used by the Soviet space program and Roscosmos. History 20th century The launchpad for the world's first human spaceflight made by Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1 in 1961, the site was referred to as Site No.1 (, ''Ploshchadka No. 1'') as the first one of its kind. It is also sometimes referred to as NIIP-5 LC1, Baikonur LC1, LC-1/5, LC-1, Pad 1/5 or GIK-5 LC1. At Baikonur, site numbers refer to facilities. Site 0 was the construction headquarters and residential area and, as the first major project, this launch pad was named Site 1. Its processing facilities were called Site 2 and its oxygen/nitrogen plant was Site 3. The facility was later designated as Pad No. 5 for the R-7 programme. The numbering of the sites reflected Baikonur's role as a secondary ICBM base, with the primary being the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, which featured ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Baikonur Cosmodrome
The Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport operated by Russia within Kazakhstan. Located in the Kazakh city of Baikonur, it is the largest operational space launch facility in terms of area. All Russian Human spaceflight, crewed spaceflights are launched from Baikonur. Situated in the Kazakh Steppe, some above sea level, it is to the east of the Aral Sea and north of the Syr Darya. It is close to Töretam, a station on the Trans-Aral Railway. Russia, as the official successor state to the Soviet Union, has retained control over the facility since 1991; it originally assumed this role through the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), but ratified an agreement with Kazakhstan in 2005 that allowed it to lease the spaceport until 2050. It is jointly managed by Roscosmos and the Russian Aerospace Forces. In 1955, the Ministry of Defense (Soviet Union), Soviet Ministry of Defense issued a decree and founded the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was originally built as the chief ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Soyuz-U
Soyuz-U ( GRAU index: 11A511U) was a Soviet and later Russian expendable medium-lift launch vehicle designed by the TsSKB design bureau and constructed at the Progress factory in Samara, Russia. The ''U'' designation stands for ''unified'', as the launch vehicle was the replacement for both the Voskhod rocket and the original Soyuz rocket. The Soyuz-U is part of the R-7 rocket family, which evolved from the R-7 Semyorka, an intercontinental ballistic missile. The first Soyuz-U flight took place on 18 May 1973, carrying as its payload Kosmos 559, a Zenit military surveillance satellite. The final flight of a Soyuz-U rocket took place on 22 February 2017, carrying Progress MS-05 to the International Space Station. Soyuz-U was in use continuously for almost 44 years. Production of R-7 derived launch vehicles peaked in the late 1970s-early 1980s at 55–60 a year. Soyuz-U held the world record of highest launch rate in a year in 1979 with 47 flights until this was bea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Communications Satellite
A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a Transponder (satellite communications), transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a Radio receiver, receiver at different locations on Earth. Communications satellites are used for television, telephone, radio, internet, and military applications. Many communications satellites are in geostationary orbit above the equator, so that the satellite appears stationary at the same point in the sky; therefore the satellite dish antennas of ground stations can be aimed permanently at that spot and do not have to move to track the satellite. Others form satellite constellations in low Earth orbit, where antennas on the ground have to follow the position of the satellites and switch between satellites frequently. The radio waves used for telecommunications links travel by Line-of-sight propagation, line of sight and so are obstructe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |