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Atlas-Centaur
The Atlas-Centaur was a United States expendable launch vehicle derived from the SM-65 Atlas D missile. The vehicle featured a Centaur (rocket stage), Centaur upper stage, the first such stage to use high-performance liquid hydrogen as fuel. Launches were conducted from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36, Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida. After a strenuous flight test program, Atlas-Centaur went on to launch several crucial spaceflight missions for the United States, including Surveyor 1, and Pioneer Pioneer 10, 10/Pioneer 11, 11. The vehicle would be continuously developed and improved into the 1990s, with the last direct descendant being the highly successful Atlas II. Early development Convair, the manufacturer of the Atlas, developed the Centaur (rocket stage), Centaur upper stage specifically for that booster, sharing its pressure-stabilized tank structure. Technical Centaur was the first r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlas-Centaur Launch
The Atlas-Centaur was a United States expendable launch vehicle derived from the SM-65 Atlas D missile. The vehicle featured a Centaur upper stage, the first such stage to use high-performance liquid hydrogen as fuel. Launches were conducted from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida. After a strenuous flight test program, Atlas-Centaur went on to launch several crucial spaceflight missions for the United States, including Surveyor 1, and Pioneer 10/ 11. The vehicle would be continuously developed and improved into the 1990s, with the last direct descendant being the highly successful Atlas II. Early development Convair, the manufacturer of the Atlas, developed the Centaur upper stage specifically for that booster, sharing its pressure-stabilized tank structure. Technical Centaur was the first rocket stage to utilize liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) as propellants. Despite boasting high performance, LH2 had to be chill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Canaveral 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] |
Centaur (rocket Stage)
The Centaur is a family of rocket propelled upper stages that has been in use since 1962. It is currently produced by U.S. launch service provider United Launch Alliance, with one main active version and one version under development. The diameter Common Centaur/Centaur III flies as the upper stage of the Atlas V launch vehicle, and the diameter Centaur V has been developed as the upper stage of ULA's new Vulcan rocket. Centaur was the first rocket stage to use liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants, a high-energy combination that is ideal for upper stages but has significant handling difficulties. Characteristics Common Centaur is built around stainless steel pressure stabilized balloon propellant tanks with thick walls. It can lift payloads of up to . The thin walls minimize the mass of the tanks, maximizing the stage's overall performance. A common bulkhead separates the LOX and LH2 tanks, further reducing the tank mass. It is made of two stainless ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mariner Program
The Mariner program was conducted by the American space agency NASA to explore other planets. Between 1962 and late 1973, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) designed and built 10 robotic interplanetary probes named Mariner to explore the inner Solar System – visiting the planets Venus, Mars and Mercury for the first time, and returning to Venus and Mars for additional close observations. The program included a number of interplanetary firsts, including the first successful planetary flyby, the planetary orbiter, and the first gravity assist maneuver. Of the 10 vehicles in the Mariner series, seven were successful, forming the starting point for many subsequent NASA/JPL space probe programs. The planned Mariner Jupiter-Saturn vehicles were adapted into the Voyager program, while the Viking program orbiters were enlarged versions of the Mariner 9 spacecraft. Later Mariner-based spacecraft include Galileo and Magellan, while the second-generation Mariner Mark II series ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surveyor Program
The Surveyor program was a NASA program that, from June 1966 through January 1968, sent seven robotic spacecraft to the surface of the Moon. Its primary goal was to demonstrate the feasibility of Soft landing (rocketry), soft landings on the Moon. The Surveyor craft were the first American spacecraft to achieve soft landing on an Astronomical object, extraterrestrial body. The missions called for the craft to travel directly to the Moon on an impact trajectory, a journey that lasted 63 to 65 hours, and ended with a deceleration of just over three minutes to a soft landing. The program was implemented by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to prepare for the Apollo program, and started in 1960. JPL selected Hughes Aircraft in 1961 to develop the spacecraft system. The total cost of the Surveyor program was officially $469 million. Five of the Surveyor craft successfully soft-landed on the Moon, including the first one. The other two failed: Surveyor 2 crashed at high velocit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convair
Convair, previously Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, was an American aircraft-manufacturing company that later expanded into rockets and spacecraft. The company was formed in 1943 by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft. In 1953, it was purchased by General Dynamics, and operated as their Convair Division for most of its corporate history. Convair is best known for its military aircraft; it produced aircraft such as the Convair B-36 Peacemaker and Convair B-58 Hustler strategic bombers, and the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger and Convair F-106 Delta Dart interceptors. It also manufactured the first Atlas rockets, including the rockets that were used for the crewed orbital flights of Project Mercury. The company's subsequent Atlas-Centaur design continued this success and derivatives of the design remain in use as of 2025. The company also entered the jet airliner business with its Convair 880 and Convair 990 designs. These were smaller than conte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pioneer 10
''Pioneer 10'' (originally designated Pioneer F) is a NASA space probe launched in 1972 that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. ''Pioneer 10'' became the first of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System. This space exploration project was conducted by the NASA Ames Research Center in California. The space probe was manufactured by TRW Inc. ''Pioneer 10'' was assembled around a hexagonal bus with a diameter parabolic dish high-gain antenna, and the spacecraft was spin stabilized around the axis of the antenna. Its electric power was supplied by four radioisotope thermoelectric generators that provided a combined 155 watts at launch. It was launched on March 3, 1972, at 01:49:00 UTC (March 2 local time), by an Atlas-Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Between July 15, 1972, and February 15, 1973, it became the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt. Photography of Jupiter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pioneer 11
''Pioneer 11'' (also known as ''Pioneer G'') is a NASA robotic space probe launched on April 5, 1973, to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter and Saturn, the solar wind, and cosmic rays. It was the first probe to Exploration of Saturn, encounter Saturn, the second to fly through the Asteroid belt#Exploration, asteroid belt, and the second to fly by Jupiter. Later, ''Pioneer 11'' became the List of artificial objects leaving the Solar System, second of five artificial objects to achieve an escape velocity allowing it to Solar System#Farthest regions, leave the Solar System. Due to power constraints and the vast distance to the probe, the last routine contact with the spacecraft was on September 30, 1995, and the last good engineering data was received on November 24, 1995. Mission background History Approved in February 1969, ''Pioneer 11'' and its twin probe, ''Pioneer 10'', were the first to be designed for exploring the outer Solar System. Yielding to multip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surveyor 1
Surveyor 1 was the first lunar soft-lander in the uncrewed Surveyor program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, United States). This lunar soft-lander gathered data about the lunar surface that would be needed for the crewed Apollo Moon landings that began in 1969. The successful soft landing of Surveyor 1 on the '' Ocean of Storms'' was the first by an American space probe on any extraterrestrial body, occurring on the first attempt and just four months after the first soft Moon landing by the Soviet Union's Luna 9 probe. Surveyor 1 was launched May 30, 1966, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and it landed on the Moon on June 2, 1966. Surveyor 1 transmitted 11,237 still photos of the lunar surface to the Earth by using a television camera and a sophisticated radio-telemetry system. The Surveyor program was managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Los Angeles County, California, and the Surveyor space probe was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aurora 7
Mercury-Atlas 7, launched May 24, 1962, was the fourth crewed flight of Project Mercury. The spacecraft, named ''Aurora 7'', was piloted by astronaut Scott Carpenter. He was the sixth human to fly in space. The mission used Mercury spacecraft No. 18 and Atlas launch vehicle No. 107-D. The flight was for three Earth orbits, essentially a repeat of John Glenn's Mercury-Atlas 6. However, a targeting error during reentry took the spacecraft off-course, delaying recovery of Carpenter and the spacecraft for an hour. Carpenter was held responsible, at least in part, for the landing error. Carpenter left NASA for the Navy SEALAB program in 1964. Pilot The original pilot selected for Mercury Atlas-7 was to have been Deke Slayton, with Schirra as his back-up. However Slayton was removed from flight status after the discovery of cardiac dysrhythmia during a training run in the ''g''-loading centrifuge. Slayton had chosen the name ''Delta 7'' for the spacecraft, as this would have been ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Canaveral Space 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] |
General Dynamics
General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales and fifth largest in the United States by total sales. The company is a ''Fortune'' 100 company and was ranked in 2022. Formed in 1952 with the merger of submarine manufacturer Electric Boat and aircraft manufacturer Canadair, the corporation today consists of ten subsidiary companies with operations in 45 countries. The company's products include Gulfstream business jets, and nuclear-powered submarines, guided-missile destroyers, M1 Abrams tanks, and Stryker armored fighting vehicles. In 2024, General Dynamics had worldwide sales of $47.7 billion and a workforce of approximately 117,000 full-time employees. The current chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) is Phebe Novakovic. History Electric Boat General Dynamics traces its ancestry to John Philip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
