Portal:Spaceflight

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The Spaceflight Portal

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Astronaut café

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Introduction

Spaceflight (also written space flight) is ballistic flight into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft with or without humans on board. Examples of human spaceflight include the U.S. Apollo Moon landing and Space Shuttle programs and the Russian Soyuz program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station. Examples of unmanned spaceflight include space probes that leave Earth orbit, as well as satellites in orbit around Earth, such as communications satellites. These operate either by telerobotic control or are fully autonomous.

Spaceflight is used in space exploration, and also in commercial activities like space tourism and satellite telecommunications. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites and other Earth observation satellites.

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ISS crew member stores samples

This shows an extreme ultraviolet view of the sun (the Apollo Telescope Mount SO82A Experiment) taken during Skylab 3, with the Earth added for scale. On the right an image of the Sun shows a helium emissions, and there is an image on the left showing emissions from iron. One application for spaceflight is to take observation hindered or made more difficult by being on Earth's surface. Skylab included a massive manned solar observatory that revolutionized solar science in the early 1970s using the Apollo-based space station in conjunction with manned spaceflights to it.

Sojourner takes its APXS measurement of the Yogi Rock.

Columbia launches again on STS-2

Columbia landing, concluding the STS-1 mission

Apollo 6 heads into orbit

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Soyuz 7K-ST No. 16L (sometimes known as Soyuz T-10a or T-10-1) was an unsuccessful Soyuz mission intended to visit the Salyut 7 space station, which was occupied by the Soyuz T-9 crew.

It was set to launch atop a Soyuz-U rocket on September 26, 1983. However, prior to launch, the rocket caught fire on its launch pad at Site 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome. The launch escape system of the Soyuz spacecraft fired two seconds before the launch vehicle exploded, saving the crew of commander Vladimir G. Titov and flight engineer Gennadi Strekalov. It is so far the only case in which a launch escape system has been fired with a crew aboard.

The mission was a visiting expedition to Salyut 7. The crew was scheduled to return in Soyuz T-9, leaving Soyuz T-10 for the crew on the space station to return in later. The failure briefly led to speculation in the West that the crew of Soyuz T-9 may be stranded on the space station, but this was never the case. That crew would return to Earth as normal on November 23, 1983, aboard Soyuz T-9.

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Selected biography

Eugene Francis "Gene" Kranz (born August 17, 1933) is a retired NASA Flight Director and manager. Kranz served as a Flight Director, the successor to NASA founding Flight Director Chris Kraft, during the Gemini and Apollo programs, and is best known for his role in directing the successful Mission Control team efforts to save the crew of Apollo 13, which later became the subject story of a major motion picture of the same name. He is also noted for his trademark close-cut flattop hairstyle, and the wearing of dapper white "mission" vests (waistcoats), of different styles and materials made by Mrs. Kranz, during missions for which he acted as Flight Director. A personal friend to the American astronauts of his time, Kranz remains a prominent and colorful figure in the history of U.S. manned space exploration, literally, the embodiment of 'NASA tough-and-competent' of the Kranz Dictum. Kranz has been the subject of movies, documentary films, and books and periodical articles. Kranz is the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Spaceflight news

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Next scheduled launch

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On This Day

28 October

1964 - A Vostok-2 launches the Kosmos 50 satellite.

1965 - A Voskhod rocket launches the Kosmos 94 satellite.

1965 - A Thor-Agena launches a CORONA satellite.

1966 - A Scout B launches the OV3-2 satellite.

1967 - An R-36 launches the Kosmos 187 satellite.

1971 - The last Black Arrow rocket makes Britain's first, and so far, only satellite launch, orbiting the Prospero X-3 satellite.

1974 - A Vostok-2M launches a Meteor satellite.

1974 - A Proton-K launches the Luna 23 probe.

1977 - A Molniya-M launches a Molniya-3 satellite.

1977 - A Scout D-1 launches the Transat satellite.

1977 - A Kosmos-3M launches the Kosmos 962 satellite.

1982 - A Delta 3924 launches the Satcom 5 satellite.

1983 - A Vostok-2M launches a Meteor satellite.

1985 - A Molniya-M launches a Molniya-1 satellite.

1987 - A Proton-K launches the Kosmos 1894 satellite.

1988 - An Ariane 2 launches the TDF-1 satellite.

1992 - An Ariane 4 launches the Galaxy 7 satellite.

1993 - A Proton-K launches a Gorizont satellite.

1998 - An Ariane 4 launches the Afristar and GE-5 satellites.

2006 - A Long March 3B launches the Sinosat-2 satellite.

2010 - An Ariane 5 ECA launches the Eutelsat W3B and BSat-3B satellites.

2011 - A Delta II launches the Suomi NPP weather satellite and 6 cubesats.

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Did you know...

…that the South Korean launch system Naro-1, which made its first flight on 25 August 2009, is based on the Russian Angara (pictured)?

…that Luna 1 became the first man-made object to enter a heliocentric orbit after a guidance failure led to it missing its planned lunar impact?

…that the first words from the surface of the Moon were "Contact light, okay, engine stop", spoken by Buzz Aldrin?

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Key topics

Astrodynamics
• Human spaceflight
• ISS
• Orbit
• Outer space
• Robotic spacecraft
• Rocket
• Satellite
• Space exploration
• Spaceflight
• Timeline of spaceflight