Assuming an average Space Shuttle configuration of 7 seats per mission; there are only 14 unfilled/assigned shuttle seats remaining till the end of the Space Shuttle program. Currently NASA has 120 active astronauts.
NASA estimates 1660 scenarios where a single Space Shuttle failure would cause the catastrophic loss of the vehicle and crew.
FACT: A single coated tile can cost as much as $2,000 (1989 Dollars)
Cosmonauts get pre-launch enemas to avoid using the Soyuz toilet for bowel movements.
Because the propellant in the Agena’s tanks would float away from the rocket engine in weightlessness, the Agena was equipped with small solid-propellant rockets at the rear called “ullage” rockets. These fired briefly and pushed the vehicle forward, and the propellant sloshed back against the rocket engine so it could fire.
The most visible use of the Agena came during the Gemini program, when six Gemini spacecraft rendezvoused with their Gemini Agena Target Vehicles to simulate the techniques necessary for a lunar mission. During two of these missions, Agenas restarted their engines in space to push the Gemini spacecraft and their crews to much higher orbits. Agena proved so successful as an upper stage that more than 380 were built and the upper stage remained in use until the mid-1980s.
As of 2009, the United Kingdom is the only country to have successfully developed and then abandoned a satellite launch capability.
In all there were only four Black Arrow launches. The UK government canceled the program in July 1971. The fourth and final launch was allowed after the programs canceling; allowing the Prospero scientific satellite to be launched from the Woomera site in Australia. The Prospero satellite was used to test equipment for future satellites and to conduct a scientific experiment to measure the incidence of micrometeoroids. It had an external shape similar to a pumpkin, with an equatorial diameter of 1.2 m and a height of 0.7 m. Its anticipated life was 100 years.
This launch made the United Kingdom the sixth nation to put a satellite into orbit on its own rocket. It also was the UK’s only satellite launch.
Laika, the first animal ever sent to space, rode to orbit in Sputnik II on the 3rd of November, 1957.
When translated into English Lakia means “Barker”.
Located 195 feet above the ground, at the same level on the fixed service structure as the orbiter access arm, is the emergency exit, or egress, system. It provides an escape route for personnel inside the orbiter or on the orbiter access arm.
The system includes seven baskets suspended from seven slidewires that extend from the fixed service structure to a landing zone 1,200 feet to the west. Each basket can hold up to three people. A braking system catch net and drag chain slow and then halt the baskets sliding down the wire approximately 55 miles per hour in about half a minute.
Also located in the landing zone is a bunker, with an M-113 armored personnel carrier stationed nearby.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is an orbiting infrared observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, with longer wavelength coverage and greatly improved sensitivity. The longer wavelengths enable the JWST to look much closer to the beginning of time and to hunt for the unobserved formation of the first galaxies, as well as to look inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today.
(Above) A full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope was built by the prime contractor, Northrop Grumman, to provide a better understanding of the size, scale and complexity of this satellite. The model is constructed mainly of aluminum and steel, weighs 12,000 lb., and is approximately 80 feet long, 40 feet wide and 40 feet tall. The model requires 2 trucks to ship it and assembly takes a crew of 12 approximately four days. This JWST model has traveled to a few sites since 2005.
In early July 1969, at a meeting with space planners from outside the government, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew stated that “a manned spaceflight to Mars” could be the “overture to a new era of civilization.” He compared this mission to the early voyages of exploration: “Would we want to answer through eternity for turning back a Columbus or a Magellan? Would we be denying the people of the world the enlightenment and evolution which accompany every great age of discovery?”
At the time Vice President Agnew had restricted his comments only to audiences at Space Task Group (STG) meetings. On July 16, however, as he joined thousands of people at Cape Canaveral for the liftoff of Apollo 11, he went public.
Agnew stated in an interview that he had the “individual feeling that we should articulate a simple, ambitious, optimistic goal of a manned flight to Mars by the end of this century.”