From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Space craft)
Jump to: navigation, search
"Spaceship" redirects here. For other uses, see Spaceship (disambiguation).
"Orbital vehicle" redirects here. For the Indian manned spacecraft, see ISRO Orbital Vehicle.
The US Space Shuttle flew 135 times from 1981 to 2011, supporting Spacelab, Mir, and ISS. (Columbia's first launch shown)



Orbital spacecraft may be recoverable or not. By method of reentry to Earth they may be divided in non-winged space capsules and winged spaceplanes.

Currently, humanity has achieved space flight but only twenty-four nations actually have spacefaring technology: Russia (Roscosmos, the Russian Space Forces), the United States (NASA, the US Air Force, and several commercial aerospace companies), the member states of the European Space Agency, the People's Republic of China (China National Space Administration), Japan (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and India (Indian Space Research Organisation).


The first spacecraft, Sputnik

Sputnik 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.[1][2] Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik also helped to identify the upper atmospheric layer's density, through measuring the satellite's orbital changes. It also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen in the satellite's false body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection. If a meteoroid penetrated the satellite's outer hull, it would be detected by the temperature data sent back to Earth[citation needed]. Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No.1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR (now at the Baikonur Cosmodrome). The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometers (18,000 mi) per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete an orbit, and emitted radio signals at 20.005 and 40.002 MHz

While Sputnik 1 was the first spacecraft to orbit the Earth, other man-made objects had previously reached an altitude of 100 km, which is the height required by the international organization Fédération Aéronautique Internationale to count as a spaceflight. This altitude is called the Kármán line. In particular, in the 1940s there were several test launches of the V-2 rocket, some of which reached altitudes well over 100 km.

Past and present spacecraft[edit]

Manned spacecraft[edit]

The first manned spacecraft, Vostok 1

As of 2011, only three nations have flown manned spacecraft: USSR/Russia, USA, and China. India, Japan, Europe/ESA, Iran, South Korea, North Korea, Denmark, and Romania have plans for manned spacecraft (for manned suborbital rockets).[citation needed]

The first manned spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, and completed a full Earth orbit. There were five other manned missions which used a Vostok spacecraft.[3] 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 kilometres (116 mi). There were five other manned missions using Mercury spacecraft.

Other Soviet manned spacecraft include the Voskhod, Soyuz, flown unmanned as Zond/L1, L3, TKS, and the Salyut and Mir manned space stations. Other American manned spacecraft include the Gemini Spacecraft, Apollo Spacecraft, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle with undetached European Spacelab and private US Spacehab space stations-modules. China developed, but did not fly Shuguang, and is currently using Shenzhou (its first manned mission was in 2003).

Except for the space shuttle, all of the recoverable manned spacecraft were space capsules.

The International Space Station, manned since November 2000, is a joint venture between Russia, the United States, Canada and several other countries.


Main article: Spaceplane
Columbia orbiter landing

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, which conducted two manned flights which reached an altitude of over 100 km in the 1960s. The first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19, 1963.

The first partially reusable orbital spacecraft, a winged non-capsule, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, on April 12, 1981. During the Shuttle era, six orbiters were built, all of which have flown in the atmosphere and five of which have flown in space. Enterprise was used only for approach and landing tests, launching from the back of a Boeing 747 SCA and gliding to deadstick landings at Edwards AFB, California. The first Space Shuttle to fly into space was Columbia, followed by Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. Endeavour was built to replace Challenger when it was lost in January 1986. Columbia broke up during reentry in February 2003.




XCOR Aerospace also plans to initiate a suborbital commercial spaceflight service with the Lynx rocketplane through a partnership with RocketShip Tours. First test flights are planned for 2014.

Unmanned spacecraft[edit]

Designed as manned but flown as unmanned only spacecraft
  • Zond/L1 – lunar flyby capsule
  • L3 – capsule and lunar lander
  • TKS – capsule
  • Buran Soviet shuttle
Semi-manned – manned as space stations or part of space stations
Earth Orbit satellites

As of June 2011, there are more than 2,000 spacecraft in orbit.[citation needed]

Lunar probes
Artist's conception of Cassini–Huygens as it enters Saturn's orbit
Artist's conception of the Phoenix spacecraft as it lands on Mars
Planetary probes
Other – deep space
Main article: Space probe
Fastest spacecraft
  • Helios I & II Solar Probes (252,792 km/h or 157,078 mph)
Furthest spacecraft from the Sun
  • Pioneer 11

Unfunded or canceled programs[edit]

The First Test Flight of the Delta Clipper-Experimental Advanced (DC-XA), a prototype launch system
Manned spacecraft
Multi-stage spaceplanes
SSTO spaceplanes

Spacecraft under development[edit]




A spacecraft system comprises various subsystems, dependent upon mission profile. Spacecraft subsystems comprise the spacecraft "bus" and may include: attitude determination and control (variously called ADAC, ADC or ACS), guidance, navigation and control (GNC or GN&C), communications (Comms), command and data handling (CDH or C&DH), power (EPS), thermal control (TCS), propulsion, and structures. Attached to the bus are typically payloads.

Life support 
Reaction control system thrusters on the front of the U.S. Space Shuttle
Attitude control 
Command and data handling 
Further information: On-Board Data Handling
Thermal control 
Ground segment 
Launch vehicle 

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Walter A. McDougall "Shooting the duck," American Heritage, Winter 2010.
  2. ^ ". . .On October 4, 1957 Sputnik I shot into orbit and forcibly opened the Space Age." Swenson, L, Jr, Grimwood, J. M. Alexander, C.C. ¶¶¶ 66-62424
  3. ^ "Vostok". Encyclopedia Astronautica. 
  4. ^ "The Rosetta ground segment". 2004-02-17. Retrieved 2008-02-11. 

External links[edit]