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Editorial FACTFILE
NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN
We ought to remember some other important milestones of the Space Race, whichserve the vivid examples of technological ingenuity and daring aspirations of themankind.
LUNOKHOD PROGRAM
Lunokhod 1
(
Луноход
,
moon walker 
in Russian) wasthe first of two unmanned lunar rovers landed on theMoon by the Soviet Union as part of its Lunokhodprogram. The spacecraft which carried Lunokhod 1 wasnamed Luna 17. Lunokhod was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world. The spacecraft soft-landed on the Moon in the Sea of Rains on November 17, 1970. The landing vehicle had dual ramps from which the payload, Lunokhod 1, coulddescend to the lunar surface. Three hours later the rover moved onto the moon'ssurface. The rover would run during the lunar day, stopping occasionally to recharge itsbatteries via the solar panels. At night the rover would hibernate until the nextsunrise, heated by the radioactive source.During its 322 Earth days of operations, Lunokhod traveled 10540 meters andreturned more than 20000 TV images and 206 high-resolution panoramas. Inaddition, Lunokhod 1 performed twenty-five lunar soil analyses with its RIFMA X-rayfluorescence spectrometer and used its penetrometer (a drilling probe) at 500different locations.
APOLLO-SOYUZ MISSION
 
 The Space Race slowed after theApollo landing, which manyobservers describe as its apex oreven as its end. Others,including space historian CaroleScott and Romanian Dr. FlorinPop's
Cold War Project 
, feel itsend, as well as the possible endof the Cold War, came mostclearly with the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission of 1975. The Soviet craft
Soyuz 19
metand docked in space with America's Apollo, allowing astronauts from the "rival"nations to pass into each other's ships and participate in combined experimentation.Although each country's endeavors in space persisted, they went largely in differentdirections, and the notion of acontinuing two-nation "race"became outdated after Apollo-Soyuz.
 
Left:
Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft displayed in the National Air and Space Museumin Washington D.C.
 
SPACE SHUTTLE
NASA's
Space Shuttle
,officially called the
SpaceTransportation System
(
STS
), is the spacecraftcurrently used by theUnited States government forits human spaceflightmissions and is scheduled tobe retired from service in2010. At launch, it consists of a rust-colored externaltank (ET), two white,slender Solid RocketBoosters (SRBs), and theorbiter, a winged spaceplane which is the spaceshuttle in the narrowestsense.
Right:
STS orbiter scale compared with the Russian Soyuz-TM spacecraft 
 The orbiter carries astronauts and payload such as satellites or space station partsinto low earth orbit, into the Earth's upper atmosphere or thermosphere. Usually,five to seven crew members ride in the orbiter. The payload capacity is22,700 kilograms (50,000 lb). When the orbiter's mission is complete it fires itsOrbital Maneuvering System (OMS) thrusters to drop out of orbit and re-enters thelower atmosphere. During the descent, the shuttle orbiter decelerates fromhypersonic speed primarily by aero braking and then for the landing phase it acts asa glider, making a completely unpowered ("dead stick") landing.
 
 
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
 
 The
International Space Station
(
ISS
) is a research facility currentlybeing assembled in Low Earth Orbit. On-orbit construction of the station beganin 1998, and is scheduled to becomplete by 2011, with operationscontinuing until around 2015. As of 2009, the ISS is the largest artificialsatellite in Earth orbit, larger than anyprevious space station. The ISS program is a joint projectamong the space agencies of the United States (NASA), Russia (RKA), Japan (JAXA),Canada (CSA) and ten European nations through the European Space Agency. TheBrazilian Space Agency (AEB) participates through a separate contract with NASA. The Italian Space Agency similarly has separate contracts for various activities notdone within the framework of ESA's ISS projects (where Italy also fully participates).China has reportedly expressed interest in the project, especially if it would be ableto work with the RKA, although as of 2009 it is not involved.
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