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Featured article: From Friday 30th June onwards:
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.
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 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 [1]. 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 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 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 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.
