The Space Shuttle Enterprise (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-101) is the first orbiter of the Space Shuttle system. Rolled out on September 17, 1976, it was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform atmospheric test flights after being launched from a modified Boeing 747. It was constructed without engines or a functional heat shield. As a result, it was not capable of spaceflight. Originally, Enterprise had been intended to…
Pioneer 10 (originally designated Pioneer F) is a NASA space probe launched in 1972 that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. Pioneer 10 became the first of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System. This space exploration project was conducted by the NASA Ames Research Center in California. The space probe was manufactured by TRW Inc. Pioneer 10 was assembled around a hexagonal bus with a…
Buran was the first spaceplane to be produced as part of the Soviet/Russian Buran program. The Buran orbiters were similar in design to the U.S. Space Shuttle.Buran completed one uncrewed spaceflight in 1988, and was destroyed in 2002 due to the roof collapse of its storage hangar at Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Buran-class orbiters used the expendable Energia rocket, a class of super heavy-lift launch…
Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, as a part of the Voyager program. It was launched on a trajectory towards the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and enabled further encounters with the ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). The only spacecraft to have visited either of the ice…
Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft, along with Viking 2, each consisting of an orbiter and a lander, sent to Mars as part of NASA’s Viking program. The lander touched down on Mars on July 20, 1976, the first successful Mars lander in history. Viking 1 operated on Mars for 2,307 days…
The Magellan spacecraft was a 1,035-kilogram (2,282 lb) robotic space probe launched by NASA on May 4, 1989. Its mission objectives were to map the surface of Venus by using synthetic-aperture radar and to measure the planetary gravitational field. The Magellan probe was the first interplanetary mission to be launched from the Space Shuttle,…
The 1986 apparition of Halley’s Comet gave scientists the opportunity to study the comet closely, and several probes were launched to do so. The Soviet Vega 1 probe began returning images of Halley on 4th of March 1986, captured the first-ever image of its nucleus, and made its flyby on 6 March. It was…