But people had been dreaming about space stations long before.
Check the article below to see a few designs that didn't make it to space (yet).
1929 Hermann Noordung depiction of a space station habitat wheel. Hermann Potocnik (1892-1929), also known as Herman Noordung, created the first detailed technical drawings of a space station. Power was generated by collecting sunlight through the concave mirror in the center. This was one of three components of Noordung's space station. The other two were the observatory and the machine room, each connected to the habitat by an umbilical.
This 1929 Hermann Noordung image depicts a three-unit space station as seen from a space ship. Hermann Potocnik (1892-1929), also known as Herman Noordung, created the first detailed technical drawings of a space station. The three units were the habitat, the machine room, and the observatory, each connected by an umbilical. The Earth is in the background, approximately 26,000 miles away. The station in this image is roughly above Cameroon's southern tip, in a geosynchronous orbit on the median of Berlin.
An empty Atlas forward propellant tank would be reclaimed as living habitat:
This three-radial-module space station concept was intended to utilize Apollo hardware to deploy the station and to transfer crews to and from orbit.
Transfer crews to and from orbit with the Apollo spacecraft
Space station concept form the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
A 1969 station concept. The station was to rotate on its central axis to produce artificial gravity. The majority of early space station concepts created artificial gravity one way or another in order to simulate a more natural or familiar environment for the health of the astronauts. After returning from a micro-gravity environment, astronauts find their muscles weak because they have not been using them. Long-term exposure to micro-gravity could generate long-term health problems for astronauts who do not utilize their muscles. This is why there are exercise machines on space shuttles and on the International Space Station. It was to be assembled on-orbit from spent Apollo program stages.
Rotates on its central axis to produce artificial gravity. To be assembled during the Apollo missions
A 1977 concept drawing for a space station. Known as the "spider" concept, this station was designed to use Space Shuttle hardware. A solar array was to be unwound from the exhausted main fuel tank. The structure could then be formed and assembled in one operation. The main engine tank would then be used as a space operations control center, a Shuttle astronaut crew habitat, and a space operations focal point for missions to the Moon and Mars.
The base for mission to the Moon and Mars using Space Shuttle hardware
This is the Johnson Space Center's 1984 "roof" concept for a space station. The "roof" was covered with solar array cells, that were to generate about 120 kilowatts of electricity. Within the V-shaped beams there would be five modules for living, laboratory space, and external areas for instruments and other facilities.
This is an artist's conception of the proposed "Power Tower" space station configuration, shown with the Japanese Experiment Module attached. This model and several others were examined before deciding on the Space Station Freedom structure that was later abandoned in favor of the International Space Station.
]]>On 24 April 1990 the Hubble Space Telescope was launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery.
And in the 28 years since that launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has helped us see further, discover new things, led us to scientific breakthroughs and bring back amazing images from space.
The telescope was named after Edwin Hubble, who discovered that the universe is expanding.
Hubble Space Telescope was built by NASA with contributions from ESA.
The whole project was budgeted at US$400 million. But at the time of the launch, that amount had reached US$4.7 billion. Twenty years after its launch, its cumulative costs were estimated to be around US$10 billion.
Today the spacecraft is operated by the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute takes care of the operations what to look and and processes the data afterwards.
The Hubble Space Telescope in orbit - Image credit: NASA/ESA
Hubble has a 2.4 meter (7.9 ft) mirror and is able to observer in near ultraviolet, visible and near infrared spectra.
Being outside of the distortion of Earth's atmosphere, allows Hubble to take high resolution images with very little background light. That allows it to see a lot more than Earth based telescopes.
Hubble Space Telescope Primary Mirror being ground at Perkin-Elmer
The almost 8 foot diameter primary mirror was made by Perkin-Elmer. After grinding and polishing, the glass surface was coated with a reflective layer of aluminium and a protective layer of magnesium fluoride. This helps Hubble withstand the extreme conditions that space throws at it.
Hubble Space Telescope was the first telescope designed to be serviced in space.
And in the years since launch, there have been 5 missions to repair, service or upgrade the telescope.
All missions were carried out by Space Shuttles between 1993 and 2009.
These servicing missions were pretty tricky. The Space Shuttle had to interecept the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit and retrieve it with the Shuttle's mechanical arm. Then the work begon with thethered spacewalks in the days after.
After servicing, the telescope was put back into an orbit a little higher than before, to compensate for the orbital decay.
NASA astronauts Hoffman and Musgrave during the first servicing mission - Image credit: NASA
To be able to effectively perform maintenance and upgrades on the HST, astronauts trained in a tank before:
Work on the Hubble Space Telescope from the Discovery's payload bay during servicing mission 2 in 1997 - Image credit: NASA
Servicing mission 3A of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1999 - Image credit: NASA
Interesting little fact: when the Hubble Space Telescope launched, all of its data were stored on tape recorders. During servicing mission 2 and 3A, these were replaced by solid state drive.
Astronaut Michael Good working on the HST during STS-125, the final servicing mission to the telescope in 2009 - Image credit: NASA
With these final repairs and upgrades, the telescope could last till 2030-2040. Its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled to be launched in 2020.
The Hubble Space Telescope has led to many scientific breakthroughs, including a Noble prize.
Most importantly, it helped to get a more exact understanding of the actual rate at which the universe is expanding, which is also related to its age.
Before the HST, scientists estimated the Universe's age to be between 10 and 10 billions years. The Hubble put that number at 13.7 billion years.
The Hubble Space Telescope also helped to observe the prevalence of black holes in other star clusters, indicating that they are much more common than originally was assumed.
It also played a star role in observing the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994.
Because of its and frequent servicing, the Hubble Space Telescope also helped aerospace engineers study the effects from objects in low Earth orbit, like for example the impact of radiation on electronics.
And besides all these leaps, the super high resolution camera on the Hubble has brought back some pretty breathtaking images:
A new look at the Lagoon Nebula released for Hubble's 28th year in space anniversary in 2018 - Image credit
Pillars of Creation by Hubble in 2014 - Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
The Bubble Nebula - Image credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team
Horsehead Nebula - Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team
]]>SpaceX first successful droneship landing - Image credit: SpaceX
On 8 April 2016, SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 first-stage on it's autonomous droneship Of Course I Still Love You.
Here is what that looked like:
After performing the the first successful Falcon 9 landing on solid ground in December 2015, four earlier droneship attempts had been made that were unsuccesful.
The landing occured about 300 kilometers (190 miles) off the Florida coastline.
Apollo 6 was launched on 4 April 1968.
It was the final unmanned Apollo mission, so a lot of things had to go right to be clear to make the next mission a success.
Expectations were very high for the mission:
Shortly after launch it was already clear that things weren't going to go as planned.
A phenomenon called pogo oscillation ruptured the internal fuel lines to the some of the Rocketdyne J-2 engines of the Saturn V rocket. That caused the second and thrid stages to shut down early.
This led to a different parking orbit than what was planned. The third stage engine also failed to restart for the trans-lunar injection.
The interstage falling - Image credit: NASA
The second objective was to perform a high speed re-entry of the Command and Service module, in case a mission had to be aborted.
This re-entry was successful and the CSM landed 80 kilometers from the planned touchdown, in the North Pacific Ocean, north of Hawaii.
The Apollo 6 Command Module is hoisted aboard the U.S.S. Okinawa - Image credit: NASA
Despite a failure of one of the objectives, officials felt confident enough to go ahead and perform a manned mission, using the Saturn IB rocket for the Apollo 7.
]]>It was the first low-Earth orbital weather satellite
TIROS-1
TIROS-1 was launched from Cape Canaveral and was a joint mission from NASA, US Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory, RCA, US Weather Bureau, and the US Naval Photographic Interpretation Center.
The goal of the mission was to see if satellites were useful to study Earth.
More specifically, they wanted to get answers such as "should we evacuate the coast because of the hurricane?"
The satellite was powered by solar cells and had two cameras on board, a wide angle and a narrow camera.
It could only take pictures in daylight.
The 78 day mission was a huge success. It proved that satellites could provide the necessary data for accurate weather forecasts such as cloud patterns forming and moving across the face of the planet.
It was also a stepping stone for later launches of more sophisticated weather satellites in the TIROS program.
In this first picture taken by TIROS-1 the coast of Maine and Canada's Maritime Provinces are visible.
Mariner 10 was a spacecraft launched by NASA in 1973 and was the first to complete planetary flybys of Venus and Mercury.
Built by Boing in Seattle, Mariner 10 was shipped to JPL in Calinfornia where the spacecraft was tested.
The Mariner 10 mission launched on 3 November 1973 on an Atlas-Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
During the first week, the on-board camera was tested by taking shots of Earth and the Moon.
Recombined image from the Mariner 10 on-board camera that shows the relative sizes of Earth and Moon.
Mariner 10 was the first spacecraft to use an interplanetary slingshot manoeuvre on its way to Mercury.
The three month journey to Venus was filled with setbacks and frustration. These required a lot of patches and course corrections to hit the mission objectives.
On 5 February 1974, it flew past Venus at a distance of 5,768 kilometers (or 3,584 miles).
It was already the twelfth spacecraft to reach Venus, but the first one to send through images. here is a real color photograph:
Observations from Earth or with visbile light didn't reveal much about the planet's atmospheric mack-up.
An ultraviolet shot of Venus was a lot more revealing: a surprising patterns of clouds surrounding the planet.
During the encounter, the probe sent back 4,165 of Venus. Other findings were related to the composition of the atmosphere, temperatures and pressure.
After changing its course, the Mariner 10 flew by Mercury for the first time on 29 March 1974 at a distance of 703 kilometer.
Here is what that looked like coming in:
And going out:
After looping once around the Sun while Mercury completed two orbits, Mariner 10 flew by Mercury a second time on 21 September 21 1974.
This time it passed the plant at 8,069 km (or 29,869 miles) below the southern hemisphere.
A mosaic of images taken during this flyby looked like this:
The third and final flyby on 16 March 1975 at a range of 327 km (or 203 miles) looked like this:
Mariner 10 took 2 800 photos of mercury's surface. This helped with the mapping of 40-45% of its surface.
The flybys also helped to find out that it's atmosphere mostly consisted of helium and that the planet has a large iron-rich core.
Other measurement suggested that Mercury has a night time temperature of −183 °C (−297 °F) and maximum daytime temperatures of 187 °C (369 °F).
After this last flyby Mariner 10's manoeuvring gas was depleted, putting it in an eternal orbit around the Sun.
Interesting fact
Often these spacecrafts had a double that would be launched in case something went wrong. But for budgetary reasons, a spare was developed but never launched. The Mariner 10 back-up was sent to the Smithsonian museum.
]]>On 18 March 1965 Alexey Leonov became the first human to perform a extravehicular activity (or EVA) during the Voskhod 2 mission.
That first spacewalk lasted 12 minutes, taking him from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Caspian Sea.
The Voskhod 3KD spacecraft was equipped an inflatable airlock to make this feat possible.
Design of the Voskhod 2 Spacecraft
Leonov was wearing a modified space suit that provided hum with 45 minutes of oxygen.
The Soviets reported that the mission went smoothly and that "outside the ship and after returning, Leonov feels well".
The reality was a little bit different. When he entered space, his space suit ballooned, making bending difficult. He was also unable to reach his chest-mounted camera to capture the historic event.
Luckily for us, the Volga airlock was equipped three 16 mm cameras.
He also nearly suffered a heatstroke. Leonov said he was up to his knees in sweat, which sloshed in the suit. He also revealed that he had a suicide pill at hand in the case he was unable to reenter the spacecraft after his EVA.
]]>
On 16 March 1926, Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket.
A liquid rocket used liquid propellants. This allows the volume of the tanks low. The pressure of the tank can also be low because the liquids are pumped into the combustion chamber. This also means that the propellant tanks can be lighter.
Both reasons combined result in lighter and more powerful rockets.
Goddard was both a theorist and engineer. His inventions and experimentations paved the way for rockets technology that made spaceflight possible.
The rocket that was launched from Auburn, Massachusetts was dubbed Nell. It rose 41 feet and flew for 2.5 seconds before crashing into a cabbage field.
This seemingly insignificant flight proved the theories that Goddard came up with 15 years earlier about the possibility of liquid-fueled rockets.
In total, Goddard and his team launched a total of 34 rockets. The highest reached 2.6 km in altitude and achieved a speed of 885 km/h.
Goddard was a very productive researcher and held a total of 214 patents to his name. Two of those proved instrumental: that for a multi-stage rocket (1914) and a liquid-fuel rocket (1914).
He single mindly dedicated his life to the pursuit of the spaceflight. Here is how he stumbled onto that mission when he was 17:
On 5 March 1979, Voyager 1 made its closest approach of Jupiter. It passed the planet at a distance of 349,000 kilometers (217,000 miles).
Voyager 1 began photographing Jupiter long before that approach.
The photograph above was taken in December 1978 from a distance of 83 million km (or 52 million miles).
The biggest surprise was the discovery of volcanism on Io, one of Jupiter's moons. It was the first time that and active volcano was discovered in the Solar System outside Earth.
Here is a picture of volcano Loki erupting:
Activity on Io affects the whole Jovian system. Eruptions from Io's volcanos spread sulfur, oxygen and sodium into Jupiters magnetosphere.
Close up of a volcano and lava flows on Io.
Voyager 1 also photographed by another of Jupiter's moons: Europa. Taken from 3 million kilometers, show the surface unimpacted.
Compare that to the cratered surface of Ganymede, Jupiter largest moon. The above photograph was taken from 253,000 km
Voyager one stopped photographing Jupiter in April 1979.
]]>On 1 March 1982, the Soviet Venera 13 lander plunged down into Venus' atmosphere.
With parachutes and aitbraking, it reaches the planet's surface and continues to send data for 127 minutes.
It was the first recording of sound son another planet
The Venera 13 mission consisted of a cruise stage and lander. The cruise stage mainly acted as a data relay for the signals of the lander.
The on-board experiments were very similar to those on the Venera 9-12 landers.
When the Venera 13 lander descended, it had cameras to take pictures of the ground and spring-loaded arms to measure the compressibility of the soil.
After landing it took more picture of its surroundings. It also drilled a sample and analysed it in a hermetically sealed chamber with the help of a X-ray fluorescence spectrometer.
To measure the wind speeds, the Venera 13 also had a microphone onboard. So with that feat, the Venera 13 produced the first sound recording on another planet.
Russian scientist Dr. Ksanfomality claimed that the Venera 13 showed footage of extratererestrial life.
Analysing several of the images retrieved by the space craft showed foreign objects like a disk or scorpion;
These claims were later refuted.
It's sister spacecraft, launched and landed 5 days later on 5 March 1982.
]]>Falcon Heavy liftoff - Grab this as a poster
On 6 February 2018, SpaceX completed the first successful launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket.
With a total thrust of over 5 million pounds, it's the most powerful rocket in use today by a factor of two.
Compared to other big rockets in history, it ranks third after the Space shuttle and the Saturn-V (both about 7.8 million pounds of thrust).
Relive the most epic moments with this video:
Here is what was initially planned:
SpaceX executed this plan almost perfectly: liftoff, payload deployment and side cores recovery.
Only the center core didn't make it's way back to the droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" that was waiting about 300 miles off the Florida coast.
After separating from the center core, the side boosters starting making their way back to Earth.
They set course for Landing Zone 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral, where they landed simultaneous. Giving us this amazing shot:
Landing of the side cores at Cape Canaveral - Grab this photo on a poster
With new launches, the engineering team often send to study the physics for future (customer) launches.
Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2017From idea to execution:
Starman in his Roadstar overlooking Earth - Get this on a poster
For this test flight, a red Tesla was picked, with Starman behind the wheel.
Starman sports the Crew Dragon which offers an another opportunity for testing how it behaves in space.
The vehicle is equipped with a number of cameras, which you can follow via this YouTube stream.
Falcon Heavy on launch pad39A on the morning of the launch - Get this photo on a poster
In it's essence, the Falcon Heavy are three Falcon 9 packed together, giving it a total of 27 engines.
In practice, controlling three rockets firing simultaneously, and making sure the structural integrity remains solid added a lot of complexity to it.
This was a big part of the continued delays. The Falcon Heavy maiden flight was first planned for 2013. But a number of technological setbacks lead the launch to be pushed back about 5 years.
After this demonstration flight, SpaceX will start using it to deploy satellites for its clients in the coming months.
Because the Falcon Heavy is so powerful, it will also be using for coming missions to the Moon and Mars. One Apollo 8 style roundtrip around the Moon using the Falcon Heavy has been planned for late 2018.
A manned tourist mission is even slated for 2019. So let's see what the future holds!
Discover the following posters:
]]>On 28 January 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger launched from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39.
It was the tenth flight for the Challenger (OV-99) and had as mission to carry out several experiments from space and observe Halley's Comet.
But that never happened.
73 seconds after launch, the shuttle exploded, killing all seven crew members.
The O-ring seals on one of the Solid Rocket Boosters failed. This caused the booster to pivot and hit the external tank, which is the structure that holds everything together.
This caused the boosters to fly off on their own, as can be seen in the above photo.
The Challenger orbiter rapidly disintegrated due to overwhelming aerodynamic forces.
At least some of the crew survived the explosion, evidence for that is that at least some crew members manually activated their emergency air supplies. But when the cabin crashed into the sea, everyone was killed.
The STS-51-L crew consisted of five NASA astronauts and two payload specialists. From left to right: Ellison Onizuka, Michael J. Smith, Christa McAuliffe, Dick Scobee, Gregory Jarvis, Ronald McNair, Judith Resnik.
The Challenger launch was widely watched in schools all across the United States. Approximately 17% of the US population saw it.
The reason for that was Christa McAuliffe, who would be the first teacher in space. This was part of the Teachers In Space Program.
Christa McAuliffe floating in zero G during a preparation flight.
After the explosion, the Rogers commission, which was tasked with the investigation of the disaster, concluded that the O-rings seals were the cause for failure.
These seals failed because of the unusually cold weather in the night before the launch, temperatures dipped below −3°C (or 27°F). This was well below the minimum temperatures of major components like the Solid Rocket Booster, which was approved up to 4 °C (39 °F)
Icicles on the launch platform indicate the cold
Space shuttle launches were suspended for 32 months following the accident.
During that time the Rogers Commission further dug to the root causes of the accident.
They found that NASA's organisational culture and decision making processes had been contributing factors to the accident.
NASA managers had known about the potentials flaw in the design of the O-ring seals as early as 1977 but had failed to act on the information.
Further they ignored warnings from engineers about the danger of launching the morning after such a cold morning.
Only in September of 1988, Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off again for mission STS-26. The boosters had been redesigned and the focus on safety was increased.
]]>US President Richard Nixon and James C. Fletcher, NASA Administrator on the day of the Space Shuttle program announcement
The Space Shuttle design was based on research that started in the 50s and 60s.
The Space Shuttle Enterprise was the first semi-reusable spacecraft built-for NASA.
This first Space Shuttle was built with engines or heatshield, so its testing was limited to atmospheric test flights.
In 1977 the Enterprise had its first free flight after being launched from a modified Boeing 747:
Space Shuttle Enterprise first free slight being launched from a Boeing 747
Initially, the Enterprise was supposed to be retrofitted with engines and heatshield. But while developing the Columbia, the design was changed to make it simpler and less costly to build.
In 1979, Space Shuttle orbiter 101 Enterprise was rolled out attached to a supportive containers and boosters cluster.
Rollout of the Space Shuttle Enterprise, May 1979
The Enterprise went through a set of tests in preparation for the first real Space Shuttle launch, STS-1 with the Space Shuttle Columbia.
Arrival of STS-1 Space Shuttle Columbia a launch complex 39A in December 1980.
The first launch and orbital test flight took place on 12 April 1981.
Launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia
In total five orbiter vehicles or OVs were built as part of the Space Shuttle program:
The total Space Shuttle program cost $210 billion, with each launch totalling $450 million.
The Space Shuttle program also saw its share of failures.
The Space Shuttle Challenger blew up 73 seconds after launch on 28 January 1973, killing all seven crew members.
On 1 February 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry. All seven crew members died.
STS-135 was the final flight. Space Shuttle Atlantis launched for the last time from Kennedy Space Center on 8 July 2011.
The 8 day mission was a re-supply run to the International Space Station.
On 21 July 2011 Space Shuttle Atlantis made its final re-entry on the way to the Kennedy Space Center In Florida.
The picture below shows the plasma trail of the Atlantis entering Earth atmosphere. The picture was taken from the International Space Station
Space Shuttle Atlantis re-entry as seen from the ISS
Touchdown of Space Shuttle Atlantis on Airforce Base, marking the end of the Space Shuttle program. Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls
]]>Of all Mars spacecraft, only a third has succeeded in completing their mission.
Turns out that sending things to Mars is pretty hard, go figure.
As part of the Mars Exploration program, NASA had sent the following landers to Mars: Viking 1, Viking 2 and the Mars Pathfinder.
The next Mars-bound launch in that series were two rovers of the Mars Exploration Rovers mission (MER).
The Spirit and Opportunity rover were launched in 2003. The Spirit rover (MER-A) arrived on Mars on January 3rd 2004 and the Opportunity rover (MER-B) 22 days later, on 25 January 2004.
Launch of MER-A (left), and MER-B (right)
As early as the Mariner 9 mission, NASA had been exploring the Red Planet.
The objective of the Mars Exploration Rover mission was to explore Martian surface and geology.
More specifically investigate rock and soil that might give more information about water on Mars.
The mission was supposed to last 90 solar days, or sols (about 92 Earth day).
But both rovers have far outlived that initial plan.
The Spirit rover landed in the Gusev crater.
The Sun setting at Mars on 19 May 2005 as captured by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.
The Spirit rover got stuck in soft soil in May of 2009 during its 5th mission extension. After it assumed the task of being a stationary science platform. In 2010 all communication was lost.
The Opportunity rover landed at the Sinus Meridiani region, about half the planet away from its twin.
The rover is still active today (4974 sols into the mission) and holds the record of largest distance by a vehicle on a planet other than Earth: 42 km (26.2 miles) in 2015.
NASA Opportunity rover in the clean room before launch.
Sometimes a dust storm covers its solar panels, causing the rover to go into hibernation. But the next storm might clears the dust, allowing the Opportunity rover to restart its mission.
The most significant findings have been evidence that liquid water has existed in the past at both landing sites.
Explore our collection of Mars posters.
]]>
Luna 1 launched on 2 January 1959 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kzachstan on a SS-6 Sapwood rocket.
As part of the Soviet Luna program, its goal was to crash land on the Moon.
The US had attempted this before with the Pioneer 0, 1 and 2 missions. But they all failed.
So it was the Soviets chance to shine.
Unfortunately due to a incorrectly timed upper stage burn, the Luna 1 missed its target by 5,900 km.
It was the first attempt to reach the Moon, and although it didn't impact there, the Luna 1 mission set a lot firsts:
One day after launch, on 3 January 1959, when the Luna 1 was 119,500 kilometres (or 74,300 miles) from Earth, it released 1 kilogram of sodium gas.
That formed an lowing orange trail of gas behind the probe and allowed astronomers to study the behaviour of gas in space.
The Luna 2 had a similar experiment on board, here is what that looked like:
Luna 1 was designed to be a lunar impactor but due to an error it didn't reach its goal. Nine months later the goal achieved when Luna 2 crash landed on the Moon.
]]>In the summer of 1968, the stakes were as high as they get.
In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy had promised in a speech that they would put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
But it was already 1968 and it had been two years since a NASA astronaut had flown in space.
The necessary technologies like the Saturn V rocket or the Lunar module were still under development, but things were not looking good.
The Soviets were also coming closer to the Moon. In September 1968, their Zond 5 probe was the first spacecraft to complete an unmanned Moon orbit.
So if NASA was going to deliver on Kennedy's promise, a leap forward was necessary.
That meant, taking bolder risks.
But a year after the disaster with the Apollo 1, a cabin fire which killed 3 astronauts in a rehearsal test, few people were willing to take those risks.
But despite the odds, NASA proceeded.
A story about Susan Borman, the Apollo 8 commander shows the true risk of the operation.
When it was confirmed that her husband, Frank Borman, had been selected as part of the mission, she asked NASA flight director Chris Kraft if her husband was getting back.
Craft told her he had a 50/50 chance of making it home safely.
To get ready for a possible Moon landing, a change was made to the mission profile to make it more ambitious.
Originally the goal of the Apollo 8 mission was to do a Lunar module / Command module test in Earth orbit. But the lunar module wasn't ready yet for its first flight.
So the mission was changed to orbit the Moon and test the Service/Command module. With this change, the launch was pushed forward by two or three months, putting more pressure on the whole mission.
But the engineers on the project thrived on the challenge and made it happen.
A successful launch of the first manned Apollo mission, the Apollo 7 in October 1968 took some pressure off.
The goal of that mission was to do a low orbit test for the Service/Command module.
The Apollo 7 still launched with a Saturn IB rocket. But Apollo 8 would be the first manned flight to use Saturn V rocket developed by Wernher von Braun.
Apollo 8 on top of the Saturn V SA- 503 making its way to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida
The Apollo 8 crew from left to right: James A. Lovell Jr., William A. Anders, and Frank Borman.
The backup crew consisted of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
Fun fact about the mission insignia, the initial design was done by Jim Lovell.
Then in the morning of 21 December 1968 the Apollo 8 successfully launched. In the photo above you can see the Saturn V building thrust.
After clearing Earth atmosphere Apollo 8 went into Earth parking orbit.
That was followed by a Translunar injection, with the third stage of the Saturn V kicking in and after a couple of course corrections, putting the Apollo 8 in Moon orbit.
The reached Moon orbit three days after launch and went around 10 times before returning to Earth.
Here is an overview of the Apollo 8 journey:
The first photo taken by humans that captures the whole Earth:
During one of those orbits on Christmas Day 1968, William Anders, one of the crew members to a picture that would become one of the most iconic photographs ever taken: Earthrise.
Earthrise - Image: NASA
The Apollo 8 crew were also the first people to see the dark side of the Moon. Here is what they saw:
This legendary moment in history made the crew also contemplative. Lovell:
The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.
After completing making their way back to Earth orbit, the Command module separated from the Service module and started making it's way back to Earth.
This image captured the Apollo 8 reentry. It was taken by a camera that was mounted on an aircraft flown at 40,000 ft altitude.
The deceleration peaked at 6 g and after several parachutes to stabilize and slow down were deployed, the spacecraft splashed down into the Pacific Ocean South of Hawaï.
43 minutes after splashdown, the USS Yorktown arrived to get the crew safely on board.
Battered Command Module of the Apollo 8 after reentry
Apollo 8 had a lot of firsts:
But more important than these achievements, it paved the way for the Apollo 11 and the successful landing on the Moon only 7 months after.
]]>Successful first stage landing - grab the poster
On 21 December 2015, Falcon 9 made its 20th flight.
Most of these previous flights had a clear goal for SpaceX's customer, launch a satelite.
But SpaceX ha da secondary goal, one that would prove vital for the company's future: to retrieve the first stage after landing.
Starting in 2013, SpaceX had started out by doing controlled ocean touchdowns to perfect the first couple of pieces.
Here was the whole puzzle they were trying to put together:
In January of 2015, SpaceX made the first attempt to land the first stage on a solid surface, a droneship:
The sixth first stage landing attempt (after 4 ocean landings and one filed droneship) was also not successful.
The seventh first stage landing test, Falcon 9 Flight 20, would occur on a landing pad. Take a look how that went:
After perfecting this launch, the next target was to perfect the landing on a droneship.
This photograph was taken seconds before the first successful first-stage landing of the Falcon 9
Today, SpaceX performs first stage landings on a routine basis. it's batting total is 20 out of 25. And all of those failures were part of the early attempts.
]]>On December 1970, the Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 became the first human object to land on another planet.
After the Mariner 2 was the first to fly by Venus, the Soviets became the first to put a lander on the surface, 8 years later.
The Venera 7 started it's descent to the surface. During the initial stages of the atmospheric entry, it remained to the interplanetary bus.
The main purpose of that was to keep the probe cool.
After the lander was ejected and it deployed it's parachute at about 60 kilometer altitude.
It immediately began its experiments, and one of the first readings revealed the atmosphere to be 97% carbon dioxide.
While descending, the parachutes appeared to malfucntion, causing the probe to impact harder than expected. The speed on impact was about 16.5 m/s or 37 mph.
First it was thought that the Venera 7 had stopped sending data, btu the recording tapes back on Earth kept rolling.
A few weeks after the mission, the tapes were studies again and it was revealed that the Venera 7 had sent a very weak signal for about 23 minutes.
In that timeframe it was able to communicate that the surface temperature was 475 °C (887 °F) and the pressure was 90 atmospheres, which corresponds with about 900 m below sea level.
The Venera 7 was part of the Venera (Russian for Venus) series, a series of 16 probes sent to Venus between 1961 and 1984.
]]>On 14 December 1962, the Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to perform a successful planetary flyby of Venus.
It passed the planet at about 34,773 kilometers.
Mariner 2 was the second spacecraft in the NASA Mariner program, sometimes also called the Mariner R missions. The first launch of the program, Mariner 1, malfunctioned shortly after launch and wasn't able to clear Earth's atmosphere.
The Mariner 2 was launched on 27 August 1961.
Launch of the Mariner 1 - Image: NASA
It was planned to launch with a Atlas-Centaur stage, but because of delays with the launch vehicle, the less powerful Atlas-Agena B rocket was used.
That meant less equipment aka experiments could be hauled up into space.
The Mariner 2 probe weighted about 202 kilograms and measured 3.35 meters in width with it's solar panels deployed.
The fact that the Mariner 2 was the first the first probe to ever reach another planet makes it a true milestone.
But luckily the Mariner 2 mission also had other goals!
Mission objectives were to study the surface and atmosphere of Venus and while it was making it's way over to the planet, also measure the solar wind, the high-energy particles flowing out from the Sun.
The experiments reveelaed the atmosphere to be very hot, 500 degrees Celsius (900 degrees Fahrenheit).
It also confirmed some of the findings about the solar wind that were first done by the Soviet Luna 1 mission in 1959.
After the Venus flyby, the Mariner 2 continued in a heliocentric orbit. The last communication was received on 3 January 1963, officially ending the mission 129 days after launch.
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On 8 December 2019, SpaceX launched and recovered its Dragon spacecraft.
With that feat, it became the first private company to recover a spacecraft.
The SpaceX Dragon was launched in the morning of 8 December on a Falcon 9 booster. It was the first orbital flight for the Dragon spacecraft and only the second one for the Falcon 9 rocket.
The SpaceX COTS Demo Flight 1 was a mission paid for by NASA as part of its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.
This program was meant to coordinate the delivery of cargo and crew to the International Space Station.
SpaceX won Phase I of the contract, which gave them $278 million in seed money to develop the Falcon 9 launch vehicle.
Because the spacecraft was going to re-enter into the atmosphere, SpaceX needed to obtain the necessary permits from the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
This license was approved on 22 November 2010, the first such license awarded to a private company.
So after 2 orbits around Earth, the Dragon spacecraft started making its way back to Earth. It de-orbited and deployed it's three parachutes to slow down
About 3 hours after launch it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, about 800km west of Baja California.
The spacecraft landed within 800m of the target landing location, well within the 60 by 20 kilometer recovery zone and was picked up about 20 minutes after splashdown.
The 2 successful launches for the COTS program ware instrumental in SpaceX becoming a reliable contractor to NASA.
They paved the way for future contracts and missions.
]]>On 7 December 1995, Galileo arrived at Jupiter and completed the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter.
It was launched 6 years earlier and had as mission to study the Jovian system, Jupiter and its 4 moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto):
The Galilean moons. From left to right, in order of increasing distance from Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto
Galileo was originally planned for launch in 1986 with the Centaur-G liquid hydrogen fuelled booster. That rocket was powerful enough to take the Galileo directly to Jupiter.
But because of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in early 1986 the launch was pushed back and new safety protocols were instated.
That led to the postponing of the launch until 1989 by the Space Shuttle Atlantis, with a less powerful booster stage. One that wasn't powerful enough to make the direct trip.
To get there, they used a technique called the gravitational slingshot.
And the journey to Jupiter was going to require various gravitational slingshots to have additional velocity to reach its destination: the Venus-Earth-Earth Gravity Assist or VEEGA.
This means that the spacecraft flies by a planet and uses it's gravity to increase its speed. In this case it flew by Venus once and Earth twice to develop enough momentum to get to Jupiter.
Galileo remained active for 8 years, sending data about the Jupiter and its moons. And then on 12 September 2003, its orbit was altered so it would enter the planet's atmosphere and burn up.
This was done to avoid contamination because the spacecraft hadn't been sterilised before launching,
]]>On 4 December 1978, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter entered Venus Orbit.
In 1975, two Venus landers Venera 9 and 10 had already transmitted images from the surface of Venus.
So the goal of the Pioneer Venus Orbiter, also known as Pioneer Venus 1 or Pioneer 12, was to characterise the atmosphere and surface of Venus.
It launched in May 1978 on top of a Atlas-Centaur rocket from the Launch Complex 36A at the Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Here is an artist impression of what that would have looked like:
The Pioneer Venus Orbiter carried 17 experiments with a total mass of 45 kilograms. A list from Wikipedia:
As part of the experiments, it was able to produce a map a Venus like the one below:
Here is an image of Venus that the Pioneer Venus Orbit captured in ultraviolet light:
The Pioneer Venus Orbiter was operational and continued to send data back to Earth till October 1992, when it ran out of fuel. It's orbit than degraded and it was destroyed as it entered the atmosphere.
The Pioneer Venus Orbiter together with the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe were part of the Pioneer Venus project.
Cool fact: In February 1986, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter was able to observe Halley's Comet when it was unobservable from Earth because it was too close to the Sun.
Image copyright James McCloskey
On 3 December 2013, SpaceX successfully launched and the SES-8 satellite and brought it into orbit.
SES-8 is a communications satellite that was developed for SES.
With that achievement, it became the first private company to put a satellite in supersynchronous transfer orbit.
This is a geostationary but with a larger apogee (altitude) than the geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), that's more commonly used for communications satellites.
Here at 36,100 kilometres (22,400 mi) above sea level, approximately 300 kilometres (190 mi), higher than the GTO, the satellites serves the South Asian And Indo-China needs of SES clients.
The SES-8 Communications satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
It marked the seventh launch of the Falcon 9. And because it was the initial launch into supersynchronous orbit, SES, got a discounted launch price of "well under US$60 million".
]]>Mars 3 was part of the Soviet Mars program.
That whole program consisted of 2 mission: the Mars 2 and Mars 3. Both had identical rockets, orbiters, landers and rovers. Only difference is the launched at, which was 9 days apart.
The goal of the program was to reach Mars, start orbiting the ref planet, image the surface and put a rover on Mars.
The US had beaten them to the first goal. The Mariner 9 had gotten first into Mars' orbit.
But there was still the possibility of that other, bigger goal: getting to the surface of Mars.
A couple of days earlier, the Mars 2 had failed it's descent towards. The lander was destroyed on impact.
The theory was that the entry had been at too steep of angle, causing the parachute deployment to malfunction.
So all hope were on the Mars 3 to achieve the goal for the Motherland.
On 2 December 1971, the Mars 3 lander started making it's way down through the thick dust storm that was going on at the time.
The lander entered Mars atmosphere at about 5.7 km/s. With the help of retrorockets, parachutes and aerodynamic braking it landed safely on the surface!
If you're curious what that would have looked like, check the video below to see the descent of the Mars Curiosity rover in 2012:
90 seconds after landing, the landing started sending information the the Mars 3 orbiter, which acted as a relay to send communications back to Earth.
But after 20 seconds, the transmission stopped.
There are a couple of theories why this happened. It could be a technical fault with the lander or orbiter.
Or the dust storm that was raging on the martian surface could have damaged the equipement or hampered it's ability to send back data.
As part of that 20 seconds, a partial image was transmitted:
The first image of Mars' surface
The photograph was taken with a cycloramic camera, so the get the positioning right, you would have to rotate the picture 90 degrees clockwise.
Then it appears to show a horizon and dark sky, but according to the Soviet Academy of Sciences there is nothing, horizon or otherwise, identifiable in this photograph
For the first clear picture, the world would have to wait 5 more years when the Viking 1 lander arrived:
On 11 April 2013, NASA announced that their Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) could have imaged the Mars 3 lander hardware.
The images were further picked apart by space enthusiasts and they identified all of the hubris: the parachute, a retrorocket, and heat shield.
In the years following, many scientist have speculated what exactly the Mars 3 image was showing.
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Soviet mission control center
6 months earlier you've blasted a Proton-K rocket off to Mars.
Within 11 days, the US has done exactly the same.
With the Moon conquered, both nations are racing towards their next target, Mars.
Even though the Soviets had a head start, NASA's Mariner 9 becomes the first human-made object to orbit Mars.
Two weeks later, on 27 November 1971, the Mars 2 (consisting of an orbiter and lander) also arrived to Mars.
Late to that milestone, the Mars 2 mission had another, bigger objective, to put an unmanned rover on the surface of the red planet!
Mars 2 lander
The Mars 2 orbiter had very similar mission goals to the Mariner 9: study Mars, image its surface and act as a communication relay for the landers with Earth.
But when the probe arrived, a bad surprise awaited them: a large duststorm.
Unable to execute on part of the mission, the lander was immediately deployed.
So on the 1,210 kg heavy Mars 2 lander started making it's way through the thick dust clouds to the surface.
The Mars 2 lander had a 4.5 kg heavy rover on board that would manoever with skis while staying connected to the lander via a 15 meter long cable.
Mars 2 rover
Having seen the power of video with the Moon landing, the Soviet had planned for an elaborate staging.
After landing, the lander would deploy the rover to the surface in full view of a video camera.
Big plans, which unfortunately never came to fruition. The descent system malfunctioned, which failed to deploy the parachute.
This caused the lander to crash land on Martian surface.
Location of the crash of the Mars 2 lander - Image source
Any attempts to contact the lander afterwards failed.
A big setback, but luckily they had launched a second, identical probe, the Mars 3. That lander would make it's way to Mars' surface a couple of days later, on 2 December 1971.
]]>On 25 November 2015, United States President Barack Obama signed the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship (SPACE) Act into law.
The law is a first of its kind. It gives U.S. citizens the right to "engage in the commercial exploration and exploitation of 'space resources' [including ... water and minerals]".
]]>On 25 November 2015, United States President Barack Obama signed the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship (SPACE) Act into law.
The law is a first of its kind. It gives U.S. citizens the right to "engage in the commercial exploration and exploitation of 'space resources' [including ... water and minerals]".
The main goal was to boost commercialisation of space. It's mainly focused on defining the property claims.
An example is asteroid mining.
Described as the next goldrush, its potential is huge.
Asteroid tracker Asterank estimates the value of the most valuable asteroids over $100 trillion!
Map of all asteroids in the Solar System - Asterank
That value is calculated based on current-day commodity prices if the asteroid could be fully mined for materials such as nickel, iron or cobalt.
In order to get to these asteroids, huge investments are needed to develop the necessary technologies to enable this level of space exploration.
And until this law, the lack of property claims made this a very unreliable and extremely risky investment. And it still is very risky, but this law took the first step towards establishing a new space law.
Since the signing, a number of companies like Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries and Moon Express have emerged. All hoping to lay claim to those trillions of untapped ressources that are floating in space.
This image was taking by ESA's Rosetta probe on 10 September 2014, 2 months before the successful landing of the Philae on the comet's surface.
The 2015 SPACE Act is still a very controversial one law. Up until 2015, all laws with regards to space were part of a set of 5 international treaties, of which the Outer Space Treaty is the most famous one.
This new law is the first one put forward by a set to lay claim at something in space.
It might not seem like a big deal today because these are still the early days of space exploration. Few nations or private companies are active in space, so there aren't a lot of conflicts. But looking at the billion or trillion dollar asteroids, conflicts will definitely arise.
For a deeper dive into the SPACE act, check this 2015 VPRO documentary The Race To Space:
Image credit: NASA
On 20 November 1998, the first module of the ISS (or international space station) was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan on a Proton rocket.
The purpose of the Zarya module, also call Functional Cargo Block (or FGB) was to provide power, storage, propulsion and guidance during the assembly of the ISS.
Today more specialised modules have taken over all of the functions of the Zayra and it's now mainly used for storage.
Image credit: NASA
The name Zarya or Заря́ in Russian, means sunrise and it's launch meant the start of a new international era of space exploration.
The module was origianlly designed to be part of the MIR space station, but with the end of the Mir, the design was altered.
Although the module was built by Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, a Russian company, it is owned by the United States. The main reason it was manufactured in Russia was cost. NASA paid US$220 million for the module.
The other contractor that had proposed a bid for this module was Lockheed's Bus-1., which cost US$450 million.
Two weeks after the launch of the Zarya, another NASA module Unity was launched with the Space Shuttle STS-88 mission.
Image credit: NASA
It was later attached by astronauts. This extra module allowed the Space Shuttle to dock to the International Space Station.
Here is what the interior of the Zarya module looks like:
Image credit: NASA
After a failed launch of a first rover, Lunokhod 1 was launched on the Luna 17 spacecraft on 10 November 1970 from Baikonur, Kazachstan.
After a couple of days in orbit, Luna 17 set course to the Moon surface on the morning of 17 November 1970. It landed and rolled out a ramp to release the Lunokhod 1 rover.
On that day, it became the first lunar rover and the first remote controlled rover on any celestial body.
Its goal was to provide close up pictures of the Moon's surface and also analyze lunar soil samples.
The Lunokhod 1 was equipped with solar panels to power up during the day an a polonium-210 radioisotope heater to keep the equipment at operating temperature at night.
The rover was operational until 4 September 1971, when communication was lost.
]]>On 15 November 1988, the Soviets launched the Buran, Orbiter K1. The first flight of its Space Shuttle program.
It was the first time the Soviets launched a reusable orbiter.
It launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on an expendable Energia rocket.
Here you can see the Buran ready at sunset the day before the launch
This first 3-hour, 20- minute flight was unmanned. A second unmanned mission was planned for 1989. But the collapse of the Soviet union prevented this. The Buran program was officially cancelled in 1993.
With the end of the Soviet Union, the funding for space exploration also dried up. This led to a collapse of a hangar on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan which housed the Buran in 2002.
The spacecraft was completely destroyed.
]]>On 14 November 1971, the NASA Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit a planet other than Earth!
This achievement beat the Soviets by a couple of months, when the Mars 2 & 3 arrived.
The Mariner 9 was launched on 30 May 1971.
Image credit: PD-USGov-Military-Air Force
Its 2 missions were to build on the atmospheric research gathered by the Mariner 6 & 7 missions and to map out the planet's surface.
On arrival, scientists found that a massive storm was raging on Mars' surface, something that continued for the next couple of months.
NASA computer engineers were able to delay the image reconnaissance until mid-January 1972, after the dust had settled.
The Mars 2 & 3 probes, which also arrived during that storm weren't able to remotely update the software, resulting in a limited supply of valuable data.
From January to October 1972 Mariner 9 orbited Mars at 1,500 km altitude. It sent back 7329 images back to Earth, covering about 85% of Mars' surface.
This detailed mapping resulted in a number of big discoveries: the existence of the high-altitude volcanos in the Tharsis plateau like Olympus Mons, extensive canyon network and evidence of wind and water erosion.
Olympus Mons is the tallest planetary mountain in the Solar System over 21 km or almost 70k feet.
Here is a picture that Mariner 9 took on 27 November 1971:
Image Credit: NASA/JPL
At first it was thought to be Olympus Mons, but later study showed that the volcano in the picture above actually is Ascraeus Mons, the 18 kilometer, second tallest mountain on Mars.
Not a lot of Mars' surface is visible because of the dust storms. This gives an idea of the scales of the dust storms.
Another discover was a canyon system of over 3,000 km. It became known as the Valles Marineris, in honor of Mariner 9.
You can see the massive valley in the middle of the image below, which was taken by a later Viking mission.
Image credit: Viking, USGS, NASA