![]() Webb tells Congress the program is complete, June 12. NASA launches the last mission of the program Mercury 9 (May) NASA Administrator James E.The “Manned Spacecraft Center” opens in the Clear Lake area of Houston after two years of construction now consists of 100 buildings, designated “Space City” in 1967 renamed the Johnson Space Center in 1973.Construction starts on the “Launch Operations Center” on Merritt Island, Cape Canaveral, FL 210 square miles, one of ten NASA centers since 1968 has been the primary launch faculty for manned space flight with Apollo, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle coordinated through it now called Cape Kennedy.PROJECT GEMINI (1962-66): second of three manned spacecraft initiatives – developed space travel techniques in preparation to reach the moon, enlarged vehicle capacity to two men, practiced orbital rendezvous, extended crews’ duration in space, and ironed out problems of ground communication and control with facilities in Florida (Launch Complex 19/Cape Kennedy) and Texas.Mercury Program: Scott Carpenter becomes the second American to orbit the earth aboard Aurora 7.Mercury – aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn orbits the Earth 3 times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, becoming the first American to do so.Ranger 3 space probe misses the moon by 22,000 miles Ranger 4 crashes into the moon.Mariner Mission (1962-73): 10 ambitions missions to explore the Inner Solar System : Mariner 1 spacecraft flew erratically several minutes after launch and had to be destroyed (July 22) five weeks later Mariner 2 heads for Venus & becomes first probe to carry out a successful planetary encounter.In an address to a joint session of Congress (May 25), President Kennedy asks support for his goal to initiate a project to put a “man on the moon” before the end of the decade.The Soviet Union launches the Venera Program – 16 missions launched from Baikonur space installation in Kasakhstan, which lasted until 1983 to study Venus.Schwartz and Charles Hard Townes publish “Interstellar and Interplanetary Communication by Optical Masers” in Nature, providing a basis for Optical SETI. Mercury: the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, goes into space aboard Mercury-Redstone 3 (May 5).Yuri Gagarin of the USSR is the first human in space (April): launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan.A 37-pound male chimpanzee named Ham is rocketed into space in a test of the Project Mercury capsule (January 31) designed to carry American astronauts into space.Ranger (and the later Surveyor programs) competed with the Soviet Union’s Luna Program that launched 24 robotic spacecraft to land on, fly by, survey, and study various aspects of the Moon between 19. ![]() Ranger Program (1961-65) begins series of nine unmanned probes to photograph the Moon’s surface and transmit images to earth first two missions fail.“Twenty-Five Foot Space Simulator” chamber built at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena for testing of spacecraft (probes) in space-like temperatures, radiation, and vacuum pressures Manned Space Center (LBJ) in Houston builds the “Space Environment Simulation Laboratory” in 1965 for manned missions.Army Courier 1B, the world’s first active communications repeater satellite, is launched into low earth orbit. A Soviet SS-2 missile is successfully launched in a suborbital test from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia, the first Chinese spaceflight.Discoverer 13 Corona mission is successfully recovered from the Pacific Ocean, the first time any man-made object has been recovered successfully from orbit. MERCURY PROGRAM (1958-1963): first of three manned spaceflight initiatives, Mercury featured one-man orbital flights saw 19 launches, 2 unmanned test missions, 7 target vehicles, and 10 manned missions.NASA begins use of two rockets as expendable launch systems (ELS) in its unmanned robotic probe programs: 1) the Atlas-Agena (originally by Lockheed/Convair division of General Dynamics) – continued to 1978, propelled several Mariner, Ranger, and Lunar Orbiter probe missions and 2) the Delta family of rockets (Boeing) used for myriad communication, meteorological, and scientific missions – still in use (both began as ICBM platforms).BOLD CAPS = manned missions Bold lower-case = unmanned probes
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |