This flight, the first of a reused spacecraft made the pilot of the mission qualified under the rules of the U.S. Air Force and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale a what?
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X-15 Flight 91 X-15 Flight 91 was a 1963 American manned mission, and the second and final flight in the program to achieve sub-orbital spaceflight—a flight over 100 km in altitude—which was previously achieved during Flight 90 a month earlier. It was the highest flight of the X-15 program. It was the first flight of a reused spacecraft, as plane number three flew the previous sub-orbital flight on July 19. This mission was piloted by Joseph A. Walker on August 22, 1963, with the air-launch occurring from a modified Boeing B-52 Stratofortress support plane over Smith Ranch Dry Lake, Nevada, United States. Walker piloted the X-15 to an altitude of 107.96 km and remained weightless for approximately five minutes. The altitude was the highest manned flight by a spaceplane to that time and remained the record until the 1981 flight of Space Shuttle Columbia. Walker landed the X-15 about 12 minutes after it was launched, at Rogers Dry Lake, Edwards Airforce Base, in California. This was Walker's final X-15 flight.
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Joseph A. Walker Joseph Albert "Joe" Walker (February 20, 1921 – June 8, 1966) flew the world's first two spaceplane flights in 1963, thereby becoming the United States' seventh man in space. Walker was a Captain in the United States Air Force, an American World War II pilot, an experimental physicist, a NASA test pilot, and a member of the U.S. Air Force Man In Space Soonest spaceflight program. His two X-15 experimental rocket aircraft flights in 1963 that exceeded the Kármán line – the altitude of 100 km , generally considered to mark the threshold of outer space – qualified him as an astronaut under the rules of the U.S. Air Force and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
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Andrew J. Feustel Andrew Jay "Drew" Feustel ( ; born August 25, 1965) is an American geophysicist and a NASA astronaut. His first spaceflight in May 2009, STS-125, lasted just under 13 days. This was a mission with six other astronauts to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, aboard Space Shuttle "Atlantis". Feustel performed three spacewalks during the mission. Following several years working as a geophysicist, Feustel was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in July 2000. His second spaceflight was STS-134, which launched on May 16, 2011 and landed on June 1, 2011; that mission was the penultimate Space Shuttle flight.
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STS-121 STS-121 was a 2006 NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle " Discovery". The main purposes of the mission were to test new safety and repair techniques introduced following the "Columbia" disaster of February 2003 as well as to deliver supplies, equipment and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Reiter from Germany to the ISS.
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Kevin P. Chilton Kevin Patrick "Chilli" Chilton (born November 3, 1954) is an American mechanical engineer, and former United States Air Force four-star General and test pilot. His last assignment was as Commander, U.S. Strategic Command from October 3, 2007 to January 28, 2011. Prior to his appointment to general officer ranks, Chilton spent 11 years of his military career as a NASA astronaut. He retired from the Air Force on February 1, 2011, after having achieved the highest rank of any military astronaut. On January 30, 2012, General Chilton was named to the board of directors of Orbital Sciences Corporation.
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USA-214 USA-214, known before launch as Advanced Extremely High Frequency 1 or AEHF SV-1, is a military communications satellite operated by the United States Air Force. It is the first of four spacecraft to be launched as part of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency program, which will replace the earlier Milstar system.
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Pilot-Cosmonaut of the Russian Federation The Honorary Title Pilot-Cosmonaut of the Russian Federation (Russian: Летчик-космонавт Российской Федерации ) is a state award of the Russian Federation presented to all cosmonauts who fly for the Russian Federal Space Agency. Usually accompanying the distinction is the title of Hero of the Russian Federation, the highest title that can be awarded to a Russian for performing heroic deeds while in service of the state.
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NASA Astronaut Corps The NASA Astronaut Corps is a unit of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that selects, trains, and provides astronauts as crew members for U.S. and international space missions. It is based at Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
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STS-36 STS-36 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission, during which Space Shuttle "Atlantis" carried a classified payload for the U.S. Department of Defense (believed to have been a Misty reconnaissance satellite) into orbit. STS-36 was the 34th shuttle mission overall, the sixth flight for "Atlantis", and the fourth night launch of the shuttle program. It launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 28 February 1990, and landed on 4 March.
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Apollo 10 Apollo 10 was the fourth manned mission in the United States Apollo space program, and the second (after Apollo 8) to orbit the Moon. Launched on May 18, 1969, it was the F mission: a "dress rehearsal" for the first Moon landing, testing all of the components and procedures, just short of actually landing. The Lunar Module (LM) followed a descent orbit to within 8.4 nmi of the lunar surface, at the point where powered descent for landing would normally begin. Its success enabled the first landing to be attempted on the Apollo 11 mission two months later.
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Donald H. Peterson Donald Herod Peterson (born October 22, 1933) is a retired United States Air Force officer and a former USAF and NASA astronaut.
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Kathy La Sauce Kathy La Sauce (born 1949/1950(age –) ) is a former United States Air Force pilot. She was the first woman to pilot a C-141 Starlifter, and the first woman aircraft commander at Norton Air Force Base.
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Advanced Gemini Advanced Gemini is a number of proposals that would have extended the Gemini program by the addition of various missions, including manned low Earth orbit, circumlunar and lunar landing missions. Gemini was the second manned spaceflight program operated by NASA, and consisted of a two-seat spacecraft capable of maneuvering in orbit, docking with unmanned spacecraft such as Agena Target Vehicles, and allowing the crew to perform tethered extra-vehicular activities.
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Johnson Space Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Manned Spacecraft Center, where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was built and leased to NASA by Joseph L. Smith & Associates, Inc. It was renamed in honor of the late U.S. president and Texas native, Lyndon B. Johnson, by an act of the United States Senate on February 19, 1973.
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International Day of Human Space Flight The International Day of Human Space Flight (in other official languages of the UN: Russian. Международный день полёта человека в космос, Spanish. Día Internacional de los Vuelos Espaciales Tripulados, French. Journée internationale du vol spatial habité), which is also Cosmonautics Day in Russia and other countries, is the annual celebration, held on April 12, of the anniversary of the first human space flight by Yuri Gagarin. It was proclaimed at the 65th session of the United Nations General Assembly on April 7, 2011.
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STS-70 STS-70 was the 21st flight of the Space Shuttle "Discovery", and the last of 7 shuttle missions to carry a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS). This was the first shuttle mission controlled from the new mission control center room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. STS-70 was also the first flight of the new Block 1 orbiter main engine, designed to improve both engine performance and safety. The mission was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 13 July 1995, only six days after the landing of sister ship "Atlantis", marking the fastest turnaround between flights in the history of the program.
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Blue Gemini Blue Gemini was a United States Air Force (USAF) project first proposed in August 1962 for a series of seven flights of Gemini spacecraft to enable the Air Force to gain manned spaceflight experience prior to the launch of the Manned Orbital Development System, or MODS. The plan was to use off-the-shelf Gemini spacecraft.
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Rex J. Walheim Rex Joseph Walheim (born October 10, 1962) is a United States Air Force officer, engineer and a NASA astronaut. He has flown three space shuttle missions, STS-110, STS-122, and STS-135. Rex has logged over 566 hours in space, including 36 hours and 23 minutes of spacewalk (EVA) time. He was assigned as mission specialist and flight engineer on STS-135, the final space shuttle mission.
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Gemini 8 Gemini 8 (officially Gemini VIII) was the sixth manned spaceflight in NASA's Gemini program. The mission conducted the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit, but suffered the first critical in-space system failure of a U.S. spacecraft which threatened the lives of the astronauts and required immediate abort of the mission. The crew was returned to Earth safely. The only other time this happened was on the flight of Apollo 13.
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STS-127 STS-127 (ISS assembly flight 2J/A) was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS). It was the twenty-third flight of "Endeavour" . The primary purpose of the STS-127 mission was to deliver and install the final two components of the Japanese Experiment Module: the Exposed Facility (JEM EF), and the Exposed Section of the Experiment Logistics Module (ELM-ES). When "Endeavour" docked with the ISS on this mission in July 2009, it set a record for the most humans in space at the same time in the same vehicle, the first time thirteen people have been at the station at the same time. It also tied the record of thirteen people in space at any one time.
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STS-61 STS-61 was the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, and the fifth flight of the Space Shuttle "Endeavour". The mission launched on 2 December 1993 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission restored the spaceborne observatory's vision, marred by spherical aberration, with the installation of a new main camera and a corrective optics package. This correction occurred more than three and a half years after the Hubble was launched aboard STS-31 in April 1990. The flight also brought instrument upgrades and new solar arrays to the telescope. With its very heavy workload, the STS-61 mission was one of the most complex in the Shuttle's history. It lasted almost 11 days, and crew members made five spacewalks (EVAs), an all-time record. Even the re-positioning of Intelsat VI on STS-49 in May 1992 required only four. The flight plan allowed for two additional EVAs, which could have raised the total number to seven. The final two contingency EVAs were not made. In order to complete the mission without too much fatigue, the five extravehicular working sessions were shared between two pairs of different astronauts alternating their shifts.
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Soyuz TMA-1 Soyuz TMA-1 , also catalogued as Soyuz TM-35, was a Soyuz mission to the International Space Station (ISS) launched by a Soyuz FG launch vehicle with a Russian-Belgian cosmonaut crew blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This was the fifth Russian Soyuz class shuttle to fly to the International Space Station. It was also the first flight of the TMA-class Soyuz spacecraft. Soyuz TM-34 was the last of the prior Soyuz-TM spacecraft to be launched.