Portal:Spaceflight/Selected article/Archive

This is an archive of Selected Articles used in this portal.

Old articles
Featured article: From Wednesday 11th January 2006 until Tuesday 17th January 2006: The Space Shuttle Orbiter Pathfinder (unofficial Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-098) is a 75-ton Space Shuttle mock-up made of steel. It was initially built and used by NASA to practice handling and moving of actual Space Shuttles (as made possible by the mock-up's similarity in size, weight and shape). This allowed facilities to be tested without requiring the use of Enterprise.

Featured article: From Tuesday 17th January 2006 until Friday 10th March 2006:

New Horizons is a NASA unmanned spacecraft designed to fly by Pluto and its moons (including Charon) and transmit images and data back to Earth. Mission planners hope that NASA will approve plans to continue the mission with a fly-by of a Kuiper Belt Object and return further data. A consortium of organizations, led by Southwest Research Institute and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, has built the craft. The mission's principal investigator is S. Alan Stern of Southwest Research.

Featured article: From Friday 10th March 2006 until Friday 24th March 2006:

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a multipurpose spacecraft, launched August 12, 2005 to advance human understanding of Mars through detailed observation, to examine potential landing sites for future surface missions, and to provide a high-data-rate communications relay for those missions. It is intended to orbit for four years, and to become Mars' fourth active artificial satellite.

Featured article: From Friday 10th March 2006 until Saturday 8th April 2006:

The Falcon 1 is a semi-reusable launch vehicle, designed and manufactured by SpaceX to provide commercial launch services. The two stage to orbit rocket uses Lox/RP-1 for both stages, the first powered by a single  Merlin engine and the second powered by a single  Kestrel engine.

It is the world's first privately funded and developed liquid fueled space launch vehicle, and is currently priced at US$6.7 million. Falcon 1's maiden flight is scheduled for a five-day window that opens March 20, 2006. The launch was planned for 21.00 March 24, 2006 UTC. The launch is proceeding nominally on revised schedule to launch at 22.30 UTC.

Featured article: From Saturday 8th April until Friday 30th June:

Vostok 1 was the first manned space mission. Launched on April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 took Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space, the first time anyone had ever journeyed beyond the Earth's atmosphere and the first time anyone went into orbit. Gagarin orbited the Earth once, in 108 minutes, and returned unharmed, ejecting from the Vostok capsule 7 km above the ground and parachuting separately to the ground (the capsule's parachute landing was too rough for cosmonauts to risk).

The spacecraft altitude control was run by an automated system. Medical staff and spacecraft engineers were unsure how a human being might react to weightlessness. For this reason, the pilot's flight controls were locked out to prevent Gagarin from taking manual control. Retrofire took place off the west coast of Africa, near Angola, about 8000 km from the desired landing place. The liquid fueled retros fired for about 42 seconds.

After retrofire, the equipment module unexpectedly remained attached to the reentry module by a bundle of wires. The two halves of the craft were supposed to separate ten seconds after retrofire, but this did not happen until 10 minutes had passed. The spacecraft went through wild gyrations before the wires burned through and the descent module settled into the proper reentry attitude.

Featured article: From Friday 30th June to Sunday 15th October:

Space Shuttle Discovery (NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-103) is a NASA Space Shuttle.

First flown in 1984, Discovery is the third operational space shuttle, and the oldest remaining in service. Discovery has performed both research and International Space Station (ISS) assembly missions.

The spacecraft takes her name from previous ships of exploration named Discovery, primarily HMS Discovery, the sailing ship that accompanied famous explorer James Cook on his third and final major voyage. Others include Henry Hudson's ship Discovery which he used in 1610–1611 to search for a Northwest Passage, and RRS Discovery, a vessel used for expeditions to Antarctica in 1901-1904 by Scott and Shackleton (and still preserved as a museum). The shuttle shares a name with Discovery One, the spaceship from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Discovery was the shuttle that launched the Hubble Space Telescope. The second and third Hubble Space Telescope service missions were also conducted by Discovery. She has also launched the Ulysses probe and three TDRS satellites. Discovery has been chosen twice as the return to flight orbiter, first as the return to flight orbiter after the 1986 Challenger disaster in 1988, and as the orbiter for the return to flight mission in July 2005, after the 2003 Columbia disaster. Discovery also carried Project Mercury astronaut John Glenn, who was 77 at the time, back into space during STS-95 on October 29, 1998, making him the oldest human being to venture into space.

2006

 * Week 41 2006 - Space Shuttle Discovery
 * Week 42 2006 - Shenzhou spacecraft
 * Week 43 2006 - Cassini-Huygens
 * Week 44 2006 - Delta II
 * Week 45 2006 - Radioisotope thermoelectric generator
 * Week 46 2006 - Atmospheric reentry
 * Week 50 2006 - Apollo 8
 * Week 51 2006 - Hubble Space Telescope

2007

 * Week 5 2007 – Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
 * Week 6 2007 – Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
 * Week 7 2007 – Explorer 1
 * Week 8 2007 – Black Arrow
 * Week 9 2007 – STS-1
 * Week 10 2007 – Proton rocket
 * Week 11 2007 – International Space Station
 * Week 12 2007 – Apollo 11
 * Week 13 2007 – Orion (Constellation program)
 * Week 14 2007 – Canadarm2
 * Week 15 2007 – Tsien Hsue-shen
 * Week 16 2007 – Sounding rocket
 * Week 17 2007 – Vladimir Komarov
 * Week 18 2007 – Long March rocket
 * Week 19 2007 – Space elevator
 * Week 20 2007 – Shuttle-Mir Program
 * Week 21 2007 – Space Interferometry Mission
 * Week 22 2007 – Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne
 * Week 23 2007 – Soyuz 11
 * Week 24 2007 – Space Shuttle Atlantis
 * Week 25 2007 – SpaceShipOne flight 15P
 * Week 26 2007 – Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 36


 * Week 27 2007 – Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
 * Week 28 2007 – Joseph A. Walker
 * Week 29 2007 – Soyuz T-10-1
 * Week 30 2007 – New Horizons
 * Week 31 2007 – none
 * Week 32 2007 – Space adaptation syndrome
 * Week 33 2007 – STS-118
 * Week 34 2007 – Merlin
 * Week 35 2007 – Timeline of Space Shuttle missions
 * Week 36 2007 – Luna 2
 * Week 37 2007 – Soyuz T-10-1
 * Week 38 2007 – Apollo 8
 * Week 39 2007 – Apollo program
 * Week 40 2007 – Sputnik 1
 * Week 41 2007 – Guiana Space Centre
 * Week 42 2007 – Richard H. Truly
 * Week 43 2007 – Prospero X-3
 * Week 44 2007 – Atmospheric re-entry
 * Week 45 2007 – Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
 * Week 46 2007 – Dryden Flight Research Center
 * Week 47 2007 – Astrophilately
 * Week 48 2007 – Project Highwater
 * Week 49 2007 – Ares V
 * Week 50 2007 – Vehicle Assembly Building
 * Week 51 2007 – SpaceX Dragon
 * Week 52 2007 – Altair (spacecraft)

2008

 * Week 1 2008 - Skylon
 * Week 2 2008 - Energia
 * Week 3 2008 - Vanguard TV3
 * Week 4 2008 - Apollo 1
 * Week 5 2008 - Explorer I
 * Week 6 2008 - Luna programme
 * Week 7 2008 - NEAR Shoemaker
 * Week 8 2008 - Mir
 * Week 9 2008 - USA 193
 * Week 10 2008 - Lunar Precursor Robotic Program
 * Week 11 2008 - Ariane 4
 * Week 12 2008 - STS-120
 * Week 13 2008 - Shuttle-C
 * Week 14 2008 - Soyuz-TMA
 * Week 15 2008 - Scout (rocket)
 * Week 16 2008 - Space Shuttle Columbia
 * Week 17 2008 - Soyuz 1
 * Week 18 2008 - Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle
 * Week 19 2008 - Mercury-Redstone 3
 * Week 20 2008 - SELENE
 * Week 21 2008 - Zvezda (ISS)
 * Week 22 2008 - Phoenix (spacecraft)
 * Week 23 2008 - Space station
 * Week 24 2008 - Hubble Space Telescope
 * Week 25 2008 - Atmospheric reentry
 * Week 26 2008 - Kármán line


 * Week 27 2008 - Vostok spacecraft
 * Week 28 2008 - Mars Pathfinder
 * Week 29 2008 - Skylab
 * Week 30 2008 - Apollo Lunar Module
 * Week 31 2008 - Salyut 6
 * Week 32 2008 - Chang'e 1
 * Week 33 2008 - Suisei probe
 * Week 34 2008 - Exploration of Mars
 * Week 35 2008 - Mars Express
 * Week 36 2008 - Proton rocket
 * Week 37 2008 - Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
 * Week 38 2008 - Shenzhou 5
 * Week 39 2008 - Mars Climate Orbiter
 * Week 40 2008 - Falcon 1
 * Week 41 2008 - Vandenberg AFB Space Launch Complex 6
 * Week 42 2008 - Soyuz programme
 * Week 43 2008 - Voskhod programme
 * Week 44 2008 - Mercury-Atlas 7
 * Week 45 2008 - Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39
 * Week 46 2008 - Dryden Flight Research Center
 * Week 47 2008 - Titan 34D
 * Week 48 2008 - Lacrosse (satellite)
 * Week 49 2008 - CubeSat
 * Week 50 2008 - Atmospheric reentry
 * Week 51 2008 - Hubble Space Telescope
 * Week 52 2008 - Apollo 8

2009

 * Week 1 2009 - Long March 4B
 * Week 2 2009 - Vega (rocket)
 * Week 3 2009 - Project Mercury
 * Week 4 2009 - 2008 in spaceflight
 * Week 5 2009 - NOTS-EV-1 Pilot
 * Week 6 2009 - Delta IV
 * Week 7 2009 - Titan II
 * Week 8 2009 - White Sands Missile Range
 * Week 9 2009 - Skynet (satellites)
 * Week 10 2009 - Giotto mission
 * Week 11 2009 - International Space Station
 * Week 12 2009 - Space rendezvous
 * Week 13 2009 - Orion (Constellation program)
 * Week 14 2009 - Project Orion (nuclear propulsion)
 * Week 15 2009 - Scout (rocket family)
 * Week 16 2009 - Space Shuttle Columbia
 * Week 17 2009 - Soyuz 1
 * Week 18 2009 - Athena (rocket)
 * Week 19 2009 - Mercury-Redstone 3
 * Week 20 2009 - SELENE
 * Week 21 2009 - Space Interferometry Mission
 * Week 22 2009 - Apollo 13
 * Week 23 2009 - Project Daedalus
 * Week 24 2009 - Juno (spacecraft)
 * Week 25 2009 - Space archaeology
 * Week 26 2009 - Moonwalk (dance)


 * Week 27 2009 - List of Salyut Expeditions
 * Week 28 2009 - Ariel 1
 * Week 29 2009 - Saturn V
 * Week 30 2009 - Apollo 11
 * Week 31 2009 - Progress M1-5
 * Week 32 2009 - Project Gemini
 * Week 33 2009 - Huygens probe
 * Week 34 2009 - Exploration of Mars
 * Week 35 2009 - Mars Express
 * Week 36 2009 - Proton (rocket)
 * Week 37 2009 - Proton (rocket)
 * Week 38 2009 - Apollo 8
 * Week 39 2009 - Mars Climate Orbiter
 * Week 40 2009 - None
 * Week 41 2009 - Soyuz 6
 * Week 42 2009 - None
 * Week 43 2009 - None
 * Week 44 2009 - None
 * Week 45 2009 - None
 * Week 46 2009 - None
 * Week 47 2009 - None
 * Week 48 2009 - None
 * Week 49 2009 - None
 * Week 50 2009 - None
 * Week 51 2009 - None
 * Week 52 2009 - Apollo 8
 * Week 53 2009 - Delta IV

2010

 * Week 1 2010 - 2009 in spaceflight
 * Week 2 2010 - International Space Station
 * Week 3 2010 - None
 * Week 4 2010 - None
 * Week 5 2010 - None
 * Week 6 2010 - International Space Station
 * Week 7 2010 - Cupola (ISS module)
 * Week 8 2010 - White Sands Missile Range
 * Week 9 2010 - Skynet (satellites)
 * Week 10 2010 - Giotto mission
 * Week 11 2010 - Ariane 4
 * Week 12 2010 - None
 * Week 13 2010 - None
 * Week 14 2010 - Ames Research Center
 * Week 15 2010 - Scout (rocket family)
 * Week 16 2010 - Space Shuttle Columbia
 * Week 17 2010 - TBD
 * Week 18 2010 - TBD
 * Week 19 2010 - TBD
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 * Week 33 2010 - 1959 in spaceflight
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