Spacelab was a reusable laboratory developed by European Space Agency (ESA) and used on certain spaceflights flown by the Space Shuttle. The laboratory comprised multiple components, including a pressurized module, an unpressurized carrier, and other related hardware housed in the Shuttle's cargo bay. The components were arranged in various configurations to meet the needs of each spaceflight.
STS-75 was a 1996 NASA Space Shuttle mission, the 19th mission of the Columbia orbiter.
Marsha Sue Ivins is an American retired astronaut and a veteran of five Space Shuttle missions.
Umberto Guidoni is an Italian astrophysicist, science writer and a former ESA astronaut, being the first European to visit the International Space Station. He is a veteran of two NASA Space Shuttle missions. He was also a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2004 to 2009, with the Group of the European United Left (GUE/NGL).
STS-41 was the 36th Space Shuttle mission, and the eleventh mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery. The four-day mission had a primary objective of launching the Ulysses probe as part of the "International Solar Polar Mission" (ISPM).
STS-46 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission using Atlantis and was launched on July 31, 1992, and landed on August 8, 1992.
STS-51 was a NASA Space Shuttle Discovery mission that launched the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) in September 1993. The flight also featured the deployment and retrieval of the SPAS-ORFEUS satellite and its IMAX camera, which captured spectacular footage of Discovery in space. A spacewalk was also performed during the mission to evaluate tools and techniques for the STS-61 Hubble Space Telescope (HST) servicing mission later that year. STS-51 was the first shuttle mission to fly a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, a Trimble TANS Quadrex. It was mounted in an overhead window where limited field of view (FoV) and signal attenuation from the glass severely impacted receiver performance. Full triple-redundant 3-string GPS would not happen until 14 years later with STS-118 in 2007.
Andrew Michael "Andy" Allen is a retired American astronaut. A former Marine aviator and lieutenant colonel, he worked as a test pilot before joining NASA in 1987. He flew three Space Shuttle missions before retiring in 1997.
Jeffrey Alan Hoffman is an American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.
A skyhook is a proposed momentum exchange tether that aims to reduce the cost of placing payloads into low Earth orbit. A heavy orbiting station is connected to a cable which extends down towards the upper atmosphere. Payloads, which are much lighter than the station, are hooked to the end of the cable as it passes, and are then flung into orbit by rotation of the cable around the center of mass. The station can then be reboosted to its original altitude by electromagnetic propulsion, rocket propulsion, or by deorbiting another object with the same kinetic energy as transferred to the payload.
Gravity-gradient stabilization or tidal stabilization is a passive method of stabilizing artificial satellites or space tethers in a fixed orientation using only the mass distribution of the orbited body and the gravitational field. The main advantage over using active stabilization with propellants, gyroscopes or reaction wheels is the low use of power and resources. It can also reduce or prevent the risk of propellant contamination of sensitive components.
Electrodynamic tethers (EDTs) are long conducting wires, such as one deployed from a tether satellite, which can operate on electromagnetic principles as generators, by converting their kinetic energy to electrical energy, or as motors, converting electrical energy to kinetic energy. Electric potential is generated across a conductive tether by its motion through a planet's magnetic field.
The Space Test Program (STP) is the primary provider of spaceflight for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) space science and technology community. STP is managed by a group within the Advanced Systems and Development Directorate, a directorate of the Space and Missile Systems Center of the United States Space Force. STP provides spaceflight via the International Space Station (ISS), piggybacks, secondary payloads and dedicated launch services.
NASA Astronaut Group 9 was a group of 19 NASA astronauts announced on May 29, 1980, and completed their training by 1981. This group was selected to supplement the 35 astronauts that had been selected in 1978, and marked the first time that non-Americans were trained as mission specialists with the selections of ESA astronauts Claude Nicollier and Wubbo Ockels. In keeping with the previous group, astronaut candidates were divided into pilots and mission specialists, with eight pilots, eleven mission specialists, and two international mission specialists within the group.
SSETI Express was the first spacecraft to be designed and built by European students and was launched by the European Space Agency. SSETI Express is a small spacecraft, similar in size and shape to a washing machine. On board the student-built spacecraft were three CubeSat picosatellites, extremely small satellites weighing around one kg each. These were deployed one hour and forty minutes after launch. Twenty-one university groups, working from locations spread across Europe and with very different cultural backgrounds, worked together via the internet to jointly create the satellite. The expected lifetime of the mission was planned to be 2 months. SSETI Express encountered an unusually fast mission development: less than 18 months from kick-off in January 2004 to flight-readiness.
A number of space tethers have been deployed in space missions. Tether satellites can be used for various purposes including research into tether propulsion, tidal stabilisation and orbital plasma dynamics.
Space tethers are long cables which can be used for propulsion, momentum exchange, stabilization and attitude control, or maintaining the relative positions of the components of a large dispersed satellite/spacecraft sensor system. Depending on the mission objectives and altitude, spaceflight using this form of spacecraft propulsion is theorized to be significantly less expensive than spaceflight using rocket engines.
Tromsø Satellite Station, until 1988 known as Tromsø Telemetry Station, is a satellite earth station located in Tromsø, Norway. The facility is owned by Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), a joint venture between the Kongsberg Group and the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC). In addition to hosting its own antennas serving thirty satellites, TSS acts as the center-point of KSAT's operations and provides backbone services for the high Arctic Svalbard Satellite Station (SvalSat) and the Antarctic Troll Satellite Station (TrollSat).
OA-4, previously known as Orbital-4, was the fourth successful flight of the Orbital ATK uncrewed resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its third flight to the International Space Station (ISS) under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-1) contract with NASA. With the Antares launch vehicle undergoing a redesign following its failure during the Orb-3 launch, OA-4 was launched by an Atlas V launch vehicle. Following three launch delays due to inclement weather beginning on 3 December 2015, OA-4 was launched at 21:44:57 UTC on 6 December 2015. With a liftoff weight of 7,492 kg (16,517 lb), OA-4 became the heaviest payload ever launched on an Atlas V. The spacecraft rendezvoused with and was berthed to the ISS on 9 December 2015. It was released on 19 February 2016 after 72 days at the International Space Station. Deorbit occurred on 20 February 2016 at approximately 16:00 UTC.
Sputnix is a privately-owned satellite construction company headquartered at the Skolkovo Innovation Center. It is one of Russia's first private space companies. It was founded in 2011 by ScanEx.
