Who invented spacecraft

Share Now. Follow us. Related Posts. Get In Touch. When they arrive at the Moon on Christmas Eve, the crew sends back more images of the planet along with Christmas greetings to humanity. The next day they fire the boosters for a return flight and splash down in the Pacific Ocean on December Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the Moon Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the Moon. The first lunar landing mission, Apollo 11 lifts off on July 16 to begin the 3-day trip.

At p. After more than 21 hours on the lunar surface, they return to the command module with July A. We came in Peace For All Mankind. Two years later the United States sends its first space station, Skylab , into orbit, where it hosts three crews before being abandoned in Russia continues to focus on long-duration space missions, launching the first modules of the Mir space station in Pioneer 10 sent to the outer solar system Pioneer 10 , the first mission to be sent to the outer solar system, is launched on March 2 by an Atlas-Centaur rocket.

The spacecraft makes its closest approach to Jupiter on December 3, , after which it is on an escape trajectory from the Solar System.

NASA launches Pioneer 11 on April 5, , and in December the spacecraft gives scientists their closest view of Jupiter, from 26, miles above the cloud tops. The last successful data acquisitions from Pioneer 10 occur on March 3, , the 30th anniversary of its launch date, and on April 27, Its signal is last detected on January 23, , after an uplink is transmitted to turn off the last operational experiment.

The first probe lands on July 20, , the second one on September 3. The last transmission reaches Earth on November 11, Over the next decade the Voyagers rack up a long list of achievements.

They find 22 new satellites 3 at Jupiter, 3 at Saturn, 10 at Uranus, and 6 at Neptune ; discover that Jupiter has rings and that Saturn's rings contain spokes and braided structures; and send back images of active volcanism on Jupiter's moon lo—the only solar body other than Earth with confirmed active volcanoes.

Astronauts John W. Young and Robert L. Using pressurized auxiliary tanks to improve the total vehicle weight ratio so that the craft can be inserted into its orbit, the mission is the first to use both liquid- and solid-propellant rocket engines for the launch of a spacecraft carrying humans. The explosion occurs 73 seconds into the flight when a leak in one of two solid rocket boosters ignites the main liquid fuel tank.

People around the world see the accident on television. The shuttle program does not return to flight until the fall of Stabilized in all three axes and equipped with special grapple fixtures and 76 handholds, the space telescope is intended to be regularly serviced by shuttle crews over the span of its year design life.

This meant that numerous flight tests ended with the rockets dramatically exploding seconds or minutes after leaving the launchpad. With time and experience, however, progress was made. A rocket was used for the first time to send something into space on the Sputnik mission, which launched a Soviet satellite on Oct.

After a few failed attempts, the United States used a Jupiter-C rocket to heft its Explorer 1 satellite into space on Feb. It took several more years before either country felt confident enough to use rockets to send people into space; both countries started with animals monkeys and dogs , for example. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space, leaving Earth on April 12, , aboard a Vostok-K rocket for a multiorbit flight. About three weeks later, Alan Shepard made the first American suborbital flight on a Redstone rocket.

When aiming for the moon, NASA used the Saturn V rocket , which, at feet tall, included three stages — the last one designed to be powerful enough to break away from Earth's gravity. The rocket successfully launched six moon-landing missions between and The Soviet Union developed a moon rocket called N-1, but its program was permanently suspended after multiple delays and problems, including a deadly explosion.

NASA's space-shuttle program to used solid rockets for the first time to boost humans into space, which is notable, because unlike liquid rockets, they cannot be turned off. The shuttle itself had three liquid-fueled engines, with two solid rocket boosters strapped on the sides. In , a solid rocket booster's O-ring failed and caused a catastrophic explosion, killing seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

The solid rocket boosters were redesigned after the incident. Rockets have since been used to send spacecraft farther into our solar system: past the moon, Venus and Mars in the early s, which later expanded into the exploration of dozens of moons and planets. Rockets have carried spacecraft throughout the solar system so that astronomers now have imagery of every planet as well as the dwarf planet Pluto , many moons, comets, asteroids and smaller objects.

And, because of powerful and advanced rockets, the Voyager 1 spacecraft was able to leave our solar system and reach interstellar space. Several companies in many countries now manufacture uncrewed rockets — the United States, India, Europe and Russia, to name a few — and routinely send military and civilian payloads into space. And scientists and engineers are continually working toward developing even more sophisticated rockets. Stratolaunch, the aerospace design company backed by Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, aims to launch satellites using civilian aircraft.