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2018 In Spaceflight
This article documents notable spaceflight events during the year 2018. For the first time since 1990, more than 100 orbital launches were performed globally. Overview Planetary exploration The NASA InSight seismology probe was launched in May 2018 and landed on Mars in November. The Parker Solar Probe was launched to explore the Sun in August 2018, and reached its first perihelion in November, traveling faster than any prior spacecraft. On 20 October the ESA and JAXA launched BepiColombo to Mercury, on a 10-year mission featuring several flybys and eventually deploying two orbiters in 2025 for local study. The asteroid sampling mission Hayabusa2 reached its target Ryugu in June, and the similar OSIRIS-REx probe reached Bennu in December. China launched its Chang'e 4 lander/rover in December which performed the first ever soft landing on the far side of the Moon in January 2019; a communications relay was sent to the second Earth-Moon Lagrange point in May. The Google Lu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster
Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster is an electric sports car that served as the dummy payload for the February 2018 Falcon Heavy test flight and became an artificial satellite of the Sun. A mannequin in a spacesuit, dubbed "Starman", occupies the driver's seat. The car and rocket are products of Tesla and SpaceX, respectively, both companies headed by Elon Musk. The 2010 Roadster is personally owned by and previously used by Musk for commuting to work. It is the first production car launched into space. The car, mounted on the rocket's second stage, acquired enough velocity to escape Earth's gravity and enter an elliptical heliocentric orbit crossing the orbit of Mars. The orbit reaches a maximum distance from the Sun at aphelion of . During the early portion of the voyage outside the Earth's atmosphere, live video was transmitted back to the mission control center and live-streamed for slightly over four hours. Advertising analysts noted Musk's sense of brand management and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Delta II
Delta II was an expendable launch system, originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas. Delta II was part of the Delta rocket family and entered service in 1989. Delta II vehicles included the Delta 6000, and the two later Delta 7000 variants ("Light" and "Heavy"). The rocket flew its final mission ICESat-2 on 15 September 2018, earning the launch vehicle a streak of 100 successful missions in a row, with the last failure being GPS IIR-1 in 1997. History In the early 1980s, all United States expendable launch vehicles were planned to be phased out in favor of the Space Shuttle, which would be responsible for all government and commercial launches. Production of Delta, Atlas-Centaur, and Titan 34D had ended. The ''Challenger'' disaster of 1986 and the subsequent halt of Shuttle operations changed this policy, and President Ronald Reagan announced in December 1986 that the Space Shuttle would no longer launch commercial payloads, and NASA would seek to purchase launches ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moon Landing
A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2, on 13 September 1959. The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There were six crewed U.S. landings between 1969 and 1972, and numerous uncrewed landings, with no soft landings happening between 22 August 1976 and 14 December 2013. The United States is the only country to have successfully conducted crewed missions to the Moon, with the last departing the lunar surface in December 1972. All soft landings took place on the near side of the Moon until 3 January 2019, when the Chinese Chang'e 4 spacecraft made the first landing on the far side of the Moon. Uncrewed landings After the unsuccessful attempt by Luna 1 to land on the Moon in 1959, the Soviet Union performed the first hard Moon landing – "hard" meaning the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Google Lunar X Prize
The Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP), sometimes referred to as Moon 2.0, was a 2007–2018 inducement prize space competition organized by the X Prize Foundation, and sponsored by Google. The challenge called for privately funded teams to be the first to land a lunar rover on the Moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit back to Earth high-definition video and images. The original deadline was the end of 2014, with enhanced prize money for a landing by 2012. In 2015, XPRIZE announced that the competition deadline would be extended to December 2017 if at least one team could secure a verified launch contract by 31 December 2015. Two teams secured such a launch contract, and the deadline was extended. In August 2017, the deadline was extended again, to 31 March 2018. Entering 2018, five teams remained in the competition: SpaceIL, Moon Express, Synergy Moon, Team Indus, and Team Hakuto, having secured verified launch contracts with Spaceflight Industries, Rocket Lab, Interorbital S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earth–Moon L2
In celestial mechanics, the Lagrange points (; also Lagrangian points or libration points) are points of equilibrium for small-mass objects under the influence of two massive orbiting bodies. Mathematically, this involves the solution of the restricted three-body problem in which two bodies are far more massive than the third. Normally, the two massive bodies exert an unbalanced gravitational force at a point, altering the orbit of whatever is at that point. At the Lagrange points, the gravitational forces of the two large bodies and the centrifugal force balance each other. This can make Lagrange points an excellent location for satellites, as few orbit corrections are needed to maintain the desired orbit. Small objects placed in orbit at Lagrange points are in equilibrium in at least two directions relative to the center of mass of the large bodies. For any combination of two orbital bodies there are five Lagrange points, L1 to L5, all in the orbital plane of the two lar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Far Side Of The Moon
The far side of the Moon is the lunar hemisphere that always faces away from Earth, opposite to the Near side of the Moon, near side, because of synchronous rotation in the Moon's orbit. Compared to the near side, the far side's terrain is rugged, with a multitude of impact craters and relatively few flat and dark lunar mare, lunar maria ("seas"), giving it an appearance closer to other barren places in the Solar System such as Mercury (planet), Mercury and Callisto (moon), Callisto. It has one of the largest craters in the Solar System, the South Pole–Aitken basin. The hemisphere is sometimes called the "dark side of the Moon", where "dark" means "unknown" instead of "lacking sunlight" each side of the Moon experiences two weeks of sunlight while the opposite side experiences two weeks of night. About 18 percent of the far side is occasionally visible from Earth due to libration. The remaining 82 percent remained unobserved until 1959, when it was photographed by the Sovie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chang'e 4
Chang'e 4 (; ) is a robotic spacecraft mission, part of the second phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. China achieved humanity's first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, on 3 January 2019. A communication relay satellite, , was first launched to a halo orbit near the Earth–Moon L2 point in May 2018. The robotic lander and ''Yutu-2'' () rover were launched on 7 December 2018 and entered lunar orbit on 12 December 2018, before landing on the Moon's far side. The mission is the follow-up to Chang'e 3, the first Chinese landing on the Moon. The spacecraft was originally built as a backup for Chang'e 3 and became available after Chang'e 3 landed successfully in 2013. The configuration of Chang'e 4 was adjusted to meet new scientific and performance objectives. Like its predecessors, the mission is named after Chang'e, the Chinese Moon goddess. In November 2019, Chang’e 4 mission team was awarded Gold Medal by the Royal Aeronautical Society. In October ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASASpaceFlight
''NASASpaceflight.com'' is a private news website and forum which launched in 2005, covering crewed and uncrewed spaceflight and aerospace engineering news. Its original reporting has been referenced by various news outlets on spaceflight-specific news, such as MSNBC, USA Today and ''The New York Times'' among others. NASASpaceflight also produces videos and live streams of rocket launches online, with a special focus on developments at SpaceX's Starbase facility, for which they were recognized with an award by SpaceNews. NSF is owned and operated by managing editor Chris Bergin and content is produced by a team of spaceflight reporters, journalists, contributors, editors, photographers, and videographers across the United States and other countries. NASASpaceflight and NASASpaceflight.com are not affliated with NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
162173 Ryugu
162173 Ryugu, provisional designation , is a near-Earth object and a potentially hazardous asteroid of the Apollo group. It measures approximately in diameter and is a dark object of the rare spectral type Cb, with qualities of both a C-type asteroid and a B-type asteroid. In June 2018, the Japanese spacecraft '' Hayabusa2'' arrived at the asteroid. After making measurements and taking samples, ''Hayabusa2'' left Ryugu for Earth in November 2019/ and returned the sample capsule to Earth on 5 December 2020. History Discovery and name Ryugu was discovered on 10 May 1999 by astronomers with the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research at the Lincoln Lab's ETS near Socorro, New Mexico, in the United States. It was given the provisional designation . The asteroid was officially named "Ryugu" by the Minor Planet Center on 28 September 2015 (). The name refers to Ryūgū-jō (Dragon Palace), a magical underwater palace in a Japanese folktale. In the story, the fisherman Urashima ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hayabusa2
is an asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japanese state space agency JAXA. It is a successor to the ''Hayabusa'' mission, which returned asteroid samples for the first time in June 2010. ''Hayabusa2'' was launched on 3 December 2014 and rendezvoused in space with near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu on 27 June 2018. It surveyed the asteroid for a year and a half and took samples. It left the asteroid in November 2019 and returned the samples to Earth on 5 December 2020 UTC. Its mission has now been extended through at least 2031, when it will rendezvous with the small, rapidly-rotating asteroid . ''Hayabusa2'' carries multiple science payloads for remote sensing and sampling, and four small rovers to investigate the asteroid surface and analyze the environmental and geological context of the samples collected. Mission overview Asteroid 162173 Ryugu (formerly designated ) is a primitive carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid. Carbonaceous asteroids are thought to p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercury (planet)
Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System and the closest to the Sun. Its orbit around the Sun takes 87.97 Earth days, the shortest of all the Sun's planets. It is named after the Roman god ' ( Mercury), god of commerce, messenger of the gods, and mediator between gods and mortals, corresponding to the Greek god Hermes (). Like Venus, Mercury orbits the Sun within Earth's orbit as an inferior planet, and its apparent distance from the Sun as viewed from Earth never exceeds 28°. This proximity to the Sun means the planet can only be seen near the western horizon after sunset or the eastern horizon before sunrise, usually in twilight. At this time, it may appear as a bright star-like object, but is more difficult to observe than Venus. From Earth, the planet telescopically displays the complete range of phases, similar to Venus and the Moon, which recurs over its synodic period of approximately 116 days. The synodic proximity of Mercury to Earth makes Mercury most ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BepiColombo
BepiColombo is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to the planet Mercury. The mission comprises two satellites launched together: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and ''Mio'' (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, MMO). The mission will perform a comprehensive study of Mercury, including characterization of its magnetic field, magnetosphere, and both interior and surface structure. It was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket on 20 October 2018 at 01:45 UTC, with an arrival at Mercury planned for on 5 December 2025, after a flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and six flybys of Mercury. The mission was approved in November 2009, after years in proposal and planning as part of the European Space Agency's Horizon 2000+ programme; it is the last mission of the programme to be launched. Names ''BepiColombo'' is named after Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo (1920–1984), a scientist, mathematician and engineer at the University ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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