Portal:Spaceflight/Did you know

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Did you know...

…that to date, Britain has launched only one satellite, Prospero X-3, using a Black Arrow rocket (pictured)?
…that the crew of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Apollo spacecraft nearly died during re-entry due to a nitrogen tetroxide leak?
…that SpaceShipOne was the first manned spacecraft to be powered by a hybrid rocket motor?

Archive

Fortnight	Did you know…
5 January 2006 - 2 January 2008 And 2008 Fortnight 1	...that the Saturn V rocket (pictured) was 365 feet (111 metres) tall? ...that the USSR had its own Space Shuttle, Buran? ...that Pluto has 3 known natural satellites: Hydra, Nix, and Charon?
2008 Fortnight 2	...that less than half of missions sent to Mars have failed, leading some people to think that Mars is cursed? ...that Galileo probe (pictured) discovered the first binary asteroid, 243 Ida/Dactyl? ...that the New Horizons probe will pass within 10,000 kilometres of Pluto in 2015?
2008 Fortnight 3	…that the Vehicle Assembly Building is so large that rain clouds are reported to form inside it on humid days? …that when investigating the Challenger accident, Richard Feynman threatened to remove his name from the report unless it included his personal observations on the reliability of the shuttle? …that the Cassini spacecraft has discovered four new moons of Saturn?
2008 Fortnight 4	…that the rocket that launched Skylab was a Saturn INT-21 (pictured), not a Saturn V, as is commonly believed. …that the N1 rocket had 30 engines just to power its first stage. …that Space Shuttle mission STS-8 was the first night launch and night landing in 1983 for the shuttle program.
2008 Fortnight 5	…that Space Shuttle Enterprise (pictured) was originally to be called Constitution, but was renamed after the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek. …that Explorer 1, the first American satellite, was launched just 84 days after the programme was started. …that the Vostok 4 mission was shortened because cosmonaut Pavel Romanovich Popovich accidentally told flight controlers that he was "observing thunderstorms". This was a coded signal requesting an abort because the cosmonaut was feeling ill, however Popovich was actually trying to inform ground controllers that he could see thunderstorms from space.
2008 Fortnight 6	…that the Phoenix spacecraft (pictured) will investigate water ice at the North Pole of Mars. …that the Kennedy Space Center is built on the site of a nature reserve. …that there were 68 orbital launches in 2007, an increase of two from 2006.
2008 Fortnight 7	...that an Atlas V rocket (pictured) is 58.3 m (191 ft) tall? ...that in 1971 the USSR launched Salyut 1, the first space station? ...that 2060 Chiron, the first centaur planetoid, was discovered in 1977?
2008 Fortnight 8	...that engineers claim the Ares I rocket (pictured) would be more aerodynamically stable if flying backwards than in the normal direction? ...that STS-80, a mission flown by the Space Shuttle Columbia, lasted 17 days, 15 hours, 53 minutes and 18 seconds, making it the longest Shuttle mission to date? ...that the Ocean Odyssey launch platform, used by Sea Launch, was originally built as an oil rig?
2008 Fortnight 9	…that the oldest person to fly in space was John Glenn (pictured), aboard Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-95 (29 October-7 November 1998), at the age of 77. …and that the youngest person to fly in space was Gherman Titov, on Vostok 2 (6-7 August 1961), aged 25. …that Soyuz TMA-13, currently scheduled to launch on 12 October 2008, will be the 100^th manned Soyuz flight.
2008 Fortnight 10	…that Space Shuttle Endeavour (pictured) was built from spare parts left over from the construction of other Space Shuttle orbiters? …that the Little Joe was a rocket built to conduct boilerplate tests of Mercury spacecraft? …that the 100^th Long March rocket was launched on 1 June 2007?
2008 Fortnight 11	…that a CubeSat (pictured) is a cube, 10 centimetres in all dimensions, weighing less than one kilogram? …that to date 90 Explorer satellites have been launched, the most recent being AIM in 2007? …that Luna 1 became the first object to enter a heliocentric orbit after a guidance failure led to it missing its planned lunar impact?
2008 Fortnight 12	…that to date, Britain has launched only one satellite, Prospero X-3, using a Black Arrow rocket (pictured)? …that the crew of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Apollo spacecraft nearly died during re-entry due to a nitrogen tetroxide leak? …that SpaceShipOne was the first manned spacecraft to be powered by a hybrid rocket motor?
2008 Fortnight 13	…the record for the longest manned spaceflight stands at 437.7 days, which was set by Valeriy Polyakov aboard Mir (pictured)? …the Voskhod spacecraft was so cramped that the crew of Voskhod 1 were unable to wear spacesuits? …the upper stage of the GX rocket will be fuelled by liquid natural gas?
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2008 Fortnight 25	Portal:Spaceflight/Did you know/2008 Fortnight 25
2008 Fortnight 26	Portal:Spaceflight/Did you know/2008 Fortnight 26

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Portal:Spaceflight/Did you know

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