1.
Apollo program
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Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972. In these six spaceflights, twelve men walked on the Moon, Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, with the first manned flight in 1968. It achieved its goal of manned lunar landing, despite the setback of a 1967 Apollo 1 cabin fire that killed the entire crew during a prelaunch test. After the first landing, sufficient flight hardware remained for nine follow-on landings with a plan for extended lunar geological and astrophysical exploration, Budget cuts forced the cancellation of three of these. The crew returned to Earth safely by using the Lunar Module as a lifeboat for these functions, Apollo set several major human spaceflight milestones. It stands alone in sending manned missions beyond low Earth orbit, Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to orbit another celestial body, while the final Apollo 17 mission marked the sixth Moon landing and the ninth manned mission beyond low Earth orbit. The program returned 842 pounds of rocks and soil to Earth, greatly contributing to the understanding of the Moons composition. The program laid the foundation for NASAs subsequent human spaceflight capability, Apollo also spurred advances in many areas of technology incidental to rocketry and manned spaceflight, including avionics, telecommunications, and computers. The Apollo program was conceived during the Eisenhower administration in early 1960, while the Mercury capsule could only support one astronaut on a limited Earth orbital mission, Apollo would carry three astronauts. Possible missions included ferrying crews to a station, circumlunar flights. The program was named after the Greek god of light, music, and the sun by NASA manager Abe Silverstein, who later said that I was naming the spacecraft like Id name my baby. Silverstein chose the name at home one evening, early in 1960, in July 1960, NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh L. Dryden announced the Apollo program to industry representatives at a series of Space Task Group conferences. Preliminary specifications were laid out for a spacecraft with a mission module cabin separate from the module. On August 30, a feasibility study competition was announced, and on October 25, meanwhile, NASA performed its own in-house spacecraft design studies led by Maxime Faget, to serve as a gauge to judge and monitor the three industry designs. In November 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president after a campaign that promised American superiority over the Soviet Union in the fields of space exploration and missile defense. Beyond military power, Kennedy used aerospace technology as a symbol of prestige, pledging to make the US not first but, first and, first if. Despite Kennedys rhetoric, he did not immediately come to a decision on the status of the Apollo program once he became president and he knew little about the technical details of the space program, and was put off by the massive financial commitment required by a manned Moon landing. On April 12,1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, Kennedy was circumspect in his response to the news, refusing to make a commitment on Americas response to the Soviets
2.
Spacecraft
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A spacecraft is a vehicle, or machine designed to fly in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, on a sub-orbital spaceflight, a spacecraft enters space and then returns to the surface, without having gone into an orbit. For orbital spaceflights, spacecraft enter closed orbits around the Earth or around other celestial bodies, robotic spacecraft used to support scientific research are space probes. Robotic spacecraft that remain in orbit around a body are artificial satellites. Only a handful of interstellar probes, such as Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, orbital spacecraft may be recoverable or not. By method of reentry to Earth they may be divided in non-winged space capsules, Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, the launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments, while the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the Space Age. Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik 1 also helped to identify the upper atmospheric layers density and it also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen in the satellites false body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection, Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No. 1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR. The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometers per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete an orbit and this altitude is called the Kármán line. In particular, in the 1940s there were several test launches of the V-2 rocket, as of 2016, only three nations have flown manned spacecraft, USSR/Russia, USA, and China. The first manned spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, there were five other manned missions which used a Vostok spacecraft. The second manned spacecraft was named Freedom 7, and it performed a sub-orbital spaceflight in 1961 carrying American astronaut Alan Shepard to an altitude of just over 187 kilometers, there were five other manned missions using Mercury spacecraft. Other Soviet manned spacecraft include the Voskhod, Soyuz, flown unmanned as Zond/L1, L3, TKS, China developed, but did not fly Shuguang, and is currently using Shenzhou. Except for the shuttle, all of the recoverable manned orbital spacecraft were space capsules. Manned space capsules The International Space Station, manned since November 2000, is a joint venture between Russia, the United States, Canada and several other countries, some reusable vehicles have been designed only for manned spaceflight, and these are often called spaceplanes. The first example of such was the North American X-15 spaceplane, the first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19,1963. The first partially reusable spacecraft, a winged non-capsule, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarins flight
3.
Lunar orbit
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In astronomy, lunar orbit refers to the orbit of an object around the Moon. As used in the program, this refers not to the orbit of the Moon about the Earth. The Soviet Union sent the first spacecraft to the vicinity of the Moon and it passed within 6,000 kilometres of the Moons surface, but did not achieve lunar orbit. This craft provided the first pictures of the far side of the Lunar surface, the Soviet Luna 10 became the first spacecraft to actually orbit the Moon in April 1966. It studied micrometeoroid flux, and lunar environment until May 30,1966, the first United States spacecraft to orbit the Moon was Lunar Orbiter 1 on August 14,1966. The first orbit was an elliptical orbit, with an apolune of 1,008 nautical miles, then the orbit was circularized at around 170 nautical miles to obtain suitable imagery. Five such spacecraft were launched over a period of thirteen months, all of which successfully mapped the Moon, the most recent was the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, which became a ballistic impact experiment in 2014. The Apollo programs Command/Service Module remained in a parking orbit while the Lunar Module landed. The combined CSM/LM would first enter an orbit, nominally 170 nautical miles by 60 nautical miles. Orbital periods vary according to the sum of apoapsis and periapsis, the LM began its landing sequence with a Descent Orbit Insertion burn to lower their periapsis to about 50,000 feet, chosen to avoid hitting lunar mountains reaching heights of 20,000 feet. These anomalies are significant enough to cause an orbit to change significantly over the course of several days. The Apollo 11 first manned landing mission employed the first attempt to correct for the perturbation effect. The parking orbit was circularized at 66 nautical miles by 54 nautical miles, but the effect was overestimated by a factor of two, at rendezvous the orbit was calculated to be 63.2 nautical miles by 56.8 nautical miles. The Apollo 15 subsatellite PFS-1 and the Apollo 16 subsatellite PFS-2, PFS-1 ended up in a long-lasting orbit, at 28 degrees inclination, and successfully completed its mission after one and a half years. PFS-2 was placed in a particularly unstable orbital inclination of 11 degrees, list of orbits Mass concentration Orbital mechanics
4.
Space rendezvous
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A space rendezvous is an orbital maneuver during which two spacecraft, one of which is often a space station, arrive at the same orbit and approach to a very close distance. Rendezvous requires a precise match of the velocities and position vectors of the two spacecraft, allowing them to remain at a constant distance through orbital station-keeping. Rendezvous may or may not be followed by docking or berthing, procedures which bring the spacecraft into physical contact, in its first human spaceflight program Vostok, the Soviet Union launched pairs of spacecraft from the same launch pad, one or two days apart. The initial separation distances were in the range of 5 to 6.5 kilometers, in 1963 Buzz Aldrin submitted his doctoral thesis titled, Line-Of-Sight Guidance Techniques For Manned Orbital Rendezvous. As a NASA astronaut, Aldrin worked to translate complex orbital mechanics into relatively simple flight plans for my colleagues. The first attempt at rendezvous was made on June 3,1965, McDivitt was unable to get close enough to achieve station-keeping, due to depth-perception problems, and stage propellant venting which kept moving it around. However, the Gemini 4 attempts at rendezvous were unsuccessful largely because NASA engineers had yet to learn the mechanics involved in the process. Simply pointing the active vehicles nose at the target and thrusting was unsuccessful, if the target is ahead in the orbit and the tracking vehicle increases speed, its altitude also increases, actually moving it away from the target. The higher altitude then increases orbital period due to Keplers third law, putting the tracker not only above, as GPO engineer André Meyer later remarked, There is a good explanation for what went wrong with rendezvous. The crew, like everyone else at MSC, just didnt understand or reason out the mechanics involved. As a result, we all got a lot smarter and really perfected rendezvous maneuvers. Rendezvous was first successfully accomplished by US astronaut Wally Schirra on December 15,1965, Schirra maneuvered the Gemini 6 spacecraft within 1 foot of its sister craft Gemini 7. The spacecraft were not equipped to dock with other. When you come to three miles, youve rendezvoused. If anybody thinks theyve pulled a rendezvous off at three miles, have fun and this is when we started doing our work. I dont think rendezvous is over until you are stopped – completely stopped – with no motion between the two vehicles, at a range of approximately 120 feet. Thats when you can go back and play the game of driving a car or driving an airplane or pushing a skateboard – its about that simple. The first docking of two spacecraft was achieved on March 16,1966 when Gemini 8, under the command of Neil Armstrong, Gemini 6 was to have been the first docking mission, but had to be cancelled when that missions Agena vehicle was destroyed during launch
5.
Docking and berthing of spacecraft
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Docking and berthing of spacecraft is the joining of two space vehicles. This connection can be temporary, or semipermanent such as for space station modules, Docking specifically refers to joining of two separate free-flying space vehicles. Berthing refers to mating operations where an inactive module/vehicle is placed into the interface of another space vehicle by using a robotic arm. Because the modern process of un-berthing is manually laborious, berthing operations are seen as unsuited for rapid crew evacuations in the event of an emergency, a docking/berthing connection is referred to as either soft or hard. Typically, a spacecraft first initiates a soft dock by making contact, spacecraft docking capability depends on space rendezvous, the ability of two spacecraft to find each other and station-keep in the same orbit. This was first developed by the United States for Project Gemini, on the revised mission Gemini 6A, Schirra successfully performed a rendezvous in December 1965 with the manned Gemini 7, but there was no docking capability. The first docking with an Agena was successfully performed under the command of Neil Armstrong on Gemini 8 on March 16,1966, manual dockings were performed on three subsequent Gemini missions in 1966. The Apollo program depended on lunar orbit rendezvous to achieve its objective of landing men on the Moon. Then after completing the lunar landing mission, two astronauts in the LM had to rendezvous and dock with the CSM in lunar orbit, the spacecraft were designed to permit intra-vehicular crew transfer through a tunnel between the nose of the Command Module and the roof of the Lunar Module. These maneuvers were first demonstrated in low Earth orbit on March 7,1969, on Apollo 9, then in orbit in May 1969 on Apollo 10. The Soviet Union first achieved rendezvous of Soyuz 3 with the unmanned Soyuz 2 craft on October 25,1968, the first Soviet docking was achieved on January 16,1969, between the manned Soyuz 4 and manned Soyuz 5. This early version of the Soyuz spacecraft had no internal transfer tunnel, in the 1970s, the Soviets upgraded the Soyuz spacecraft to add an internal transfer tunnel and used it for their Salyut space station program. The United States docked its Apollo spacecraft to its Skylab space station, in the 1990s, the Russians demonstrated automated docking capability to allow unmanned cargo ships to ferry supplies to their Mir space station and the International Space Station. Docking/berthing systems may be either androgynous or non-androgynous, indicating which parts of the system may mate together, early systems for conjoining spacecraft were all non-androgynous docking system designs. Non-androgynous designs are a form of gender mating where each spacecraft to be joined has a unique design, furthermore, two spacecraft of the same gender cannot be joined at all. Androgynous docking by contrast has an interface on both spacecraft. In an androgynous interface, there is a design which can connect to a duplicate of itself. This allows system-level redundancy as well as rescue and collaboration between any two spacecraft and it also provides more flexible mission design and reduces unique mission analysis and training
6.
Gravity well
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The Sun is very massive, relative to other bodies in the Solar System, so the corresponding gravity well that surrounds it appears deep and far-reaching. The gravity wells of asteroids and small moons, conversely, are depicted as very shallow. The deeper a gravity well is, the energy any space-bound climber must use to escape it. In astrophysics, a gravity well is specifically the potential field around a massive body. Other types of potential wells include electrical and magnetic potential wells, physical models of gravity wells are sometimes used to illustrate orbital mechanics. Gravity wells are frequently confused with embedding diagrams used in relativity theory. If G is the gravitational constant, the external gravitational potential of a spherically symmetric body of mass M is given by the formula. A plot of this function in two dimensions is shown in the figure, the potential function has a hyperbolic cross section, the sudden dip in the center is the origin of the name gravity well. A black hole would not have this closing dip due to its size being only determined by its event horizon, in a uniform gravitational field, the gravitational potential at a point is proportional to the height. As a result, an object constrained to move on the surface will have roughly the same equation of motion as an object moving in the potential field Φ itself, gravity wells constructed on this principle can be found in many science museums. There are several sources of inaccuracy in this model, The friction between the object and the surface has no analogue in vacuum and this effect can be reduced by using a rolling ball instead of a sliding block. The objects vertical motion contributes kinetic energy which has no analogue and this effect can be reduced by making the gravity well shallower. A rolling balls rotational kinetic energy has no analogue and this effect can be reduced by concentrating the balls mass near its center so that the moment of inertia is small compared to mr². A balls center of mass is not located on the surface but at a distance r. For balls of a size, this effect can be eliminated by constructing the surface so that the center of the ball, rather than the surface itself. Consider an idealized rubber sheet suspended in a gravitational field normal to the sheet. The mass density may be viewed as intrinsic to the sheet or as belonging to objects resting on top of the sheet. This equilibrium condition is identical in form to the gravitational Poisson equation ∇2 Φ = −4 π G ρ where Φ is the gravitational potential, in particular, the embedding diagram most commonly found in textbooks superficially resembles a gravity well
7.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
8.
Yuri Kondratyuk
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Yuriy Vasilievich Kondratyuk was a Ukrainian engineer and mathematician. The LOR was later used for the plotting of the first actual human spaceflight to the Moon, many other aspects of spaceflight and space exploration are covered in his works. Kondratyuk made his discoveries in circumstances of war, repetitious persecutions from authorities. Yuriy Kondratyuk is an identity under which the author was hiding after the Russian revolution. Kondratyuk was born as Aleksandr Ignatyevich Shargei in 1897 in Poltava and his father, Ignat Benediktovich Shargei, studied physics and mathematics in Kiev University at the time of his marriage. Kondratyuks mother, Ludmila Lvovna Schlippenbach taught French at a Kiev school and she is a direct descendant of Wolmar Anton von Schlippenbach, a general who took part in Charles XII of Swedens failed invasion of Russia. Her grandfather Anton von Schlippenbach was Lt. Colonel of Russian army, ludmyla was devoted to social activism and was imprisoned on several occasions for participating in demonstrations. During her last stay in a Kiev prison, shortly before Aleksandr was born, she was diagnosed with a mental disorder and placed into an asylum in 1902. Aleksandr lived with his father and step-mother in St. Petersburg until 1910, from an early age, Kondratyuk was fascinated by his fathers books on physics and mathematics and demonstrated great abilities in these areas. When he was old enough to attend school, he was admitted straight into the third form of a prestigious high school. Kondratyuk later enrolled at the Great Polytechnic in Petrograd to study engineering, soon he was drafted into the army at the outbreak of World War I and graduated from warrant officer school there. During his military service on the Caucasian Front, Kondratyuk filled four notebooks with his ideas of interplanetary flight. These included suggesting the use of a spacecraft to reach the Moon, leaving the propulsion section of the vehicle on orbit while a smaller lander journeyed to the surface. He included detailed calculations of the trajectory to take a spacecraft from Earth orbit to lunar orbit and back to Earth orbit, Kondratyuk left the army in 1917 following the Russian Revolution and tried to make a living stoking boilers back in Poltava. As a locally born former officer of the Tsarist army, he was at risk of arrest by Bolshevik authorities as an enemy of the people. The following year, Kondratyuk made an attempt to escape for Poland but was stopped and turned back by border guards, ordinarily, he would probably have been shot, but the guards recognised the early symptoms of typhus in him and perhaps decided to spare themselves a bullet. He was nursed back to health by a neighbour, and on the advice of friends and his friends obtained forged identification papers for him, with the name of Yuri Vasilievich Kondratyuk, born in Lutsk in 1900. With this new identity, Kondratyuk lived in southern Ukraine, Kuban and Northern Caucasus, working as a mechanic and he settled in Novosibirsk in Siberia in 1927
9.
Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle
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The Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle, also known as the High Confidence Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle was an alternate Super heavy-lift launch vehicle proposal for the NASA Constellation program. It was first presented on June 17,2009 by John Shannon, NASAs Shuttle Program manager and it was based on the Shuttle-C concept which has been the subject of various studies since the 1980s. The designs of the Space Shuttles External Tank and the four-segment Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters would have been reused, according to NASAs John Shannon the HLV could have be developed within 4 1⁄2 years until the first manned flight occurs. The development program should have costed about US$6.6 billion, an unmanned side-mounted concept of the Space Shuttle named Shuttle-C was the subject of various concepts that were investigated between 1984 and 1995. After the Space Shuttle Columbia accident a two-year industry study was prepared in 2004 and 2005 to further investigate the concept in order to replace the Space Shuttle. The Exploration Systems Architecture Study in 2005 also investigated a Shuttle-C option for Project Constellation, all these concepts included the side-mounted carrier to be an autonomous spacecraft which would detach from the External Tank after main engine cut-off similarly to the Space Shuttle. Some of the studies included the reuseability of the Space Shuttle Main Engines on this side-mounted carrier, none of the concepts involved in-ascent fairing separation. The Shuttle-C concept as an only option was not funded in the 1980s and 1990s due to NASAs budgetary constraints. The 2004–2005 industry study provided a proposal, which was looked at by ESAS but was ultimately deemed inferior to the Ares I. Crewed side-mounted Shuttle-C concepts were not looked at all in ESAS, the team involved in analysing and designing the HLV design at NASA include about 60 NASA engineers headed by Rick Manella. The basic vehicle would not require an upper stage, the only completely new hardware development to be required for the HLV was the side-mounted carrier. All other components used on the HLV were previously in use with the Space Shuttle, virtually no change to the existing Space Shuttle infrastructure, from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the External Tank barge to the launch pads was to be required. It would have provided nearly 300,000 pounds-force and had an impulse of 448 sec. Alternatively The United Launch Alliance had proposed that their Dual Thrust Axis Lander could fit in a side mount payload shroud and this would have eliminate the need for evolving the directly shuttle derived vehicle when combined with a fuel depots architecture. The HLVs 4-segment SRBs were to deliver an impulse of 267 sec. The SSME main engines were to be flown at 104. 5% and deliver an impulse of 452 sec and 1,500,000 pounds-force. In contrast to prior proposals of Shuttle-C no part of the vehicle is recoverable and reusable, the HLV was to use a different flight profile than the Space Shuttle because no loads on wings had to be considered. The payload fairing 23,000 pounds was to be jettisoned after 185 seconds into the flight at about 57 nautical miles altitude in order to improve payload mass of the vehicle
10.
Apollo Command/Service Module
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The Command/Service Module was one of two spacecraft, along with the Lunar Module, used for the United States Apollo program which landed astronauts on the Moon. It was built for NASA by North American Aviation and it was launched by itself on three suborbital and low Earth orbit Apollo test missions using the Saturn IB launch vehicle. It was also launched twelve times on the larger Saturn V launch vehicle and it made a total of nine manned flights to the Moon aboard the Saturn V. The Service Module was cast off and allowed to burn up in the atmosphere before the Command Module re-entered, the Apollo 1 flight was cancelled after a cabin fire killed the entire crew and destroyed the Command Module during a launch rehearsal test. Corrections of the problems caused the fire were applied to the Block II spacecraft. Therefore, design proceeded without a means of docking the Command Module to a Lunar Excursion Module, but the change to lunar orbit rendezvous, plus several technical obstacles encountered in some subsystems, soon made it clear that substantial redesign would be required. Block II would be the version, including a docking hatch and incorporating weight reduction. Detailed design of the docking capability depended on design of the LEM, by January 1964, North American started presenting Block II design details to NASA. Block I spacecraft were used for all unmanned Saturn 1B and Saturn V test flights, initially two manned flights were planned, but this was reduced to one in late 1966. This mission, designated AS-204 but named Apollo 1 by its crew, was planned for launch on February 21,1967. After a thorough investigation by the Apollo 204 Review Board, it was decided to terminate the manned Block I phase, the two blocks were essentially similar in overall dimensions, but several design improvements resulted in weight reduction in Block II. Also, the Block I Service Module propellant tanks were slightly larger than in Block II, the Apollo 1 spacecraft weighed approximately 45,000 pounds, while the Block II Apollo 7 weighed 36,400 lb. In the specifications given below, unless noted, all weights given are for the Block II spacecraft. The total cost of the CSM for development and the produced was $36. 9B in 2016 dollars. The Command Module was a truncated cone 10 feet 7 inches tall with a diameter of 12 feet 10 inches across the base, the forward compartment contained two reaction control engines, the docking tunnel, and the components of the Earth Landing System. The inner pressure vessel housed the crew accommodations, equipment bays, controls and displays, the last section, the aft compartment, contained 10 reaction control engines and their related propellant tanks, fresh water tanks, and the CSM umbilical cables. The Command Module consisted of two basic structures joined together, the structure and the outer structure. The inner structure was a sandwich construction which consisted of a welded aluminum inner skin, adhesively bonded aluminum honeycomb core
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
