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STS-61-A Crew
STS-61-A (also known as Spacelab D-1) was the 22nd mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program. It was a scientific Spacelab mission, funded and directed by West Germany – hence the non-NASA designation of D-1 (for Deutschland-1). STS-61-A was the ninth and last successful flight of Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' before the disaster. STS-61-A holds the current record for the largest crew—eight people—aboard any single spacecraft for the entire period from launch to landing. The mission carried the NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Spacelab module into orbit with 76 scientific experiments on board, and was declared a success. Payload operations were controlled from the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, West Germany, instead of from the regular NASA control center. This was the first spaceflight to include multiple crewmembers from any single country other than the United States or Soviet Union. The crew also included the first Dutch citizen astronaut, payload s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Transportation System
The Space Transportation System (STS), also known internally to NASA as the Integrated Program Plan (IPP), was a proposed system of reusable crewed spacecraft, space vehicles envisioned in 1969 to support extended operations beyond the Apollo program (NASA appropriated the name for its Space Shuttle Program, the only component of the proposal to survive Congressional funding approval). The purpose of the system was two-fold: to reduce the cost of spaceflight by replacing the existing method of launching space capsule, capsules on expendable rockets with reusable spacecraft; and to support ambitious follow-on programs including permanent orbiting space stations around Earth and the Moon, and a human landing mission to Mars. In February 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed a Space Task Group headed by Vice President Spiro Agnew to recommend human space projects beyond Apollo. The group responded in September with the outline of the STS, and three different program levels of e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A
Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) is the first of Launch Complex 39's three launch pads, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida. The pad, along with Launch Complex 39B, was built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V launch vehicle, and has been used to support NASA crewed space flight missions, including the historic Apollo 11 moon landing and the Space Shuttle. Since 2014 the site has been leased by SpaceX and supports launches of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. History Apollo program In 1961, U.S. President Kennedy proposed to the U.S. Congress the goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. Congressional approval led to the launch of the Apollo program, which required a massive expansion of NASA operations, including an expansion of launch operations from the Cape to adjacent Merritt Island to the north and west. First named Launch Complex 39C, Launch Complex 39A was designed to handle launches of the Saturn V rocket, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oberpfaffenhofen
Oberpfaffenhofen is a village that is part of the municipality of Weßling in the district of Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany. It is located about from the city center of Munich. Village The village is home to the Oberpfaffenhofen Airport and a major site of the German Aerospace Center (''Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt'', DLR). In 1983, the first West-German astronaut, the physicist Ulf Merbold, flew to space on board a Space Shuttle in a Spacelab mission that was partly supervised by the German Space Operations Center located at Oberpfaffenhofen. The research center in Oberpfaffenhofen houses the DLR, including the Columbus Control Center which DLR operates for the European Space Agency and Airbus Defence and Space, and also some Fraunhofer Institutes and other scientific institutes. From 2014, OHB group moved the division which formerly was Kayser-Threde, from Munich to Oberpfaffenhofen. Also situated in Oberpfaffenhofen is the industrial area of (the now ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Space Operations Center
The German Space Operations Center (GSOC; ) is the mission control center of German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich, Germany. Tasks The GSOC performs the following tasks in national and international spaceflight: *Operation of scientific satellites *Operation of commercial satellites *Operation of human spaceflight *Expansion and operation of the communication infrastructure *Research and development of new technologies in the field of space operations History After the Federal Republic of Germany decided in the 1960s to launch a national space program and to participate in international space projects, the idea of having its own space control center became concrete. In 1967, then Federal Minister of Finance Franz Josef Strauss laid the foundation stone for the first building complex, which was opened a little later. Until 1985, the Oberpfaffenhofen site of the then German Aerospace Research and Testing Institute (DFVLR) increasingly concentrated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spaceflight Records
Records and firsts in spaceflight are broadly divided into crewed and uncrewed categories. Records involving animal spaceflight have also been noted in earlier experimental flights, typically to establish the feasibility of sending humans to outer space. The notion of "firsts" in spaceflight follows a long tradition of firsts in aviation, but is also closely tied to the Space Race. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet Union and the United States competed to be the first countries to accomplish various feats. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial orbital satellite. In 1961, Soviet Vostok 1 cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to enter space and orbit the Earth, and in 1969 American Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the Moon. No human has traveled beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, when the Apollo program ended. During the 1970s, the Soviet Union directed its energies to human habitation of space ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger, Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. The spacecraft disintegrated above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 16:39:13Coordinated Universal Time, UTC (11:39:13a.m. Eastern Time Zone, EST, local time at the launch site). It was the first fatal accident involving an List of space programs of the United States, American spacecraft while in flight. The mission, designated STS-51-L, was the 10th flight for the Space Shuttle orbiter, orbiter and the 25th flight of the Space Shuttle fleet. The crew was scheduled to deploy a commercial communications satellite and study Halley's Comet while they were in orbit, in addition to taking schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe into space under the Teacher in Space Project. The latter task resulted in a higher-than-usual media interest in and coverage of the mission; the launch and subsequent disaste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Shuttle Challenger
Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' (OV-099) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after HMS Challenger (1858), the commanding ship of a Challenger expedition, nineteenth-century scientific expedition that traveled the world, ''Challenger'' was the second Space Shuttle orbiter to fly into space after ''Space Shuttle Columbia, Columbia'', and launched on STS-6, its maiden flight in April 1983. It was destroyed in January 1986 soon after launch Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, in a disaster that killed all seven crewmembers aboard. Initially manufactured as a Test article (aerospace), test article not intended for spaceflight, it was used for ground testing of the Space Shuttle orbiter's structural design. However, after NASA found that their original plan to upgrade ''Space Shuttle Enterprise, Enterprise'' for spaceflight would be more expensive than upgrading ''Challenger'', the orbiter was pressed into operational service in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
STS-61-B
STS-61-B was the 23rd NASA Space Shuttle mission, and its second using Space Shuttle ''Space Shuttle Atlantis, Atlantis''. The shuttle was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on November 26, 1985. During STS-61-B, the shuttle crew deployed three communications satellites, and tested techniques of constructing space station, structures in orbit. ''Atlantis'' landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, at 16:33:49 Eastern Time Zone, EST on December 3, 1985, after 6 days, 21 hours, 4 minutes, and 49 seconds in orbit. STS-61-B marked the quickest turnaround of a Shuttle orbiter from launch to launch in history – just 54 days elapsed between ''Atlantis'' launch on STS-51-J and launch on STS-61-B. , this is still the record for turn around between two flights of the same orbital space vehicle. The mission was also notable for carrying the first Mexico, Mexican astronaut, Rodolfo Neri Vela. This was also ''Atlantis'' second and final mission before the Space Shuttle C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
STS-51-J
STS-51-J was NASA's 21st Space Shuttle mission and the maiden flight of Space Shuttle ''Atlantis''. It launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on October 3, 1985, carrying a payload for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on October 7, 1985. Crew Backup crew Crew seat assignments Mission summary STS-51-J launched on October 3, 1985, at 15:15:30 UTC (11:15:30 a.m. EDT), from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The launch was delayed by 22 minutes and 30 seconds due to a problem with a main engine liquid hydrogen prevalve close remote power controller; the controller was showing a faulty "on" indication. The mission was the second shuttle flight totally dedicated to deploying a United States Department of Defense payload, after STS-51-C. Its cargo was classified, but it was reported that twoUSA-11anUSA-12 DSCS-III (Defense Satellite Communications System) satellites were launched into geostati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Shuttle Program
The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft where it was the only item funded for development, as a proposed nuclear shuttle in the plan was cancelled in 1972. It flew 135 missions and carried 355 astronauts from 16 countries, many on multiple trips. The Space Shuttle, composed of an Space Shuttle orbiter, orbiter launched with two reusable Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster, solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank, carried up to eight astronauts and up to of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would atmospheric reentry, reenter the Earth's atmosphere and land like a glider (aircraft), glider at either ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Geocentric Orbit
A geocentric orbit, Earth-centered orbit, or Earth orbit involves any object orbiting Earth, such as the Moon or artificial satellites. In 1997, NASA estimated there were approximately 2,465 artificial satellite payloads orbiting Earth and 6,216 pieces of space debris as tracked by the Goddard Space Flight Center. More than 16,291 objects previously launched have undergone orbital decay and entered Earth's atmosphere. A spacecraft enters orbit when its centripetal acceleration due to gravity is less than or equal to the centrifugal acceleration due to the horizontal component of its velocity. For a low Earth orbit, this velocity is about ; by contrast, the fastest crewed airplane speed ever achieved (excluding speeds achieved by deorbiting spacecraft) was in 1967 by the North American X-15. The energy required to reach Earth orbital velocity at an altitude of is about 36 MJ/kg, which is six times the energy needed merely to climb to the corresponding altitude. Spa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
