Spacecraft launched in 1966

A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, and transportation of humans and cargo. All spacecraft except single-stage-to-orbit vehicles cannot get into space on their own, and require a launch vehicle (carrier rocket).

On a sub-orbital spaceflight, a space vehicle enters space and then returns to the surface without having gained sufficient energy or velocity to make a full Earth orbit. For orbital spaceflights, spacecraft enter closed orbits around the Earth or around other celestial bodies. Spacecraft used for human spaceflight carry people on board as crew or passengers from start or on orbit (space stations) only, whereas those used for robotic space missions operate either autonomously or telerobotically. Robotic spacecraft used to support scientific research are space probes. Robotic spacecraft that remain in orbit around a planetary body are artificial satellites. To date, only a handful of interstellar probes, such as ''Pioneer 10'' and '' 11'', ''Voyager 1'' and '' 2'', and ''New Horizons'', are on trajectories that leave the Solar System.

Orbital spacecraft may be recoverable or not. Most are not. Recoverable spacecraft may be subdivided by a method of reentry to Earth into non-winged space capsules and winged spaceplanes. Recoverable spacecraft may be reusable (can be launched again or several times, like the SpaceX Dragon and the Space Shuttle orbiters) or expendable (like the Soyuz). In recent years, more space agencies are tending towards reusable spacecraft.

Humanity has achieved space flight, but only a few nations have the technology for orbital launches: Russia (RSA or "Roscosmos"), the United States (NASA), the member states of the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan (JAXA), China (CNSA), India (ISRO), Taiwan National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, Taiwan National Space Organization (NSPO), Israel (ISA), Iran (ISA), and North Korea ( NADA). In addition, several private companies have developed or are developing the technology for orbital launches independently from government agencies. The most prominent examples of such companies are SpaceX and Blue Origin.

History

A German V-2 became the first spacecraft when it reached an altitude of 189 km in June 1944 in Peenemünde, Germany. Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit (LEO) 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.Dougall, Walter A. (Winter 2010
"Shooting the duck"
'' American Heritage'' Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik 1 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. 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 traveled at , 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.

Spacecraft types

Crewed spacecraft

As of 2016, only three nations have flown crewed spacecraft: USSR/Russia, USA, and China.
The first crewed spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, and completed a full Earth orbit. There were five other crewed missions which used a Vostok spacecraft. The second crewed 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 . There were five other crewed missions using Mercury spacecraft.

Other Soviet crewed spacecraft include the Voskhod, Soyuz, flown uncrewed as Zond/L1, L3, TKS, and the Salyut and '' Mir'' crewed space stations. Other American crewed spacecraft include the Gemini spacecraft, the Apollo spacecraft including the Apollo Lunar Module, the Skylab space station, the Space Shuttle with undetached European Spacelab and private US Spacehab space stations-modules, and the SpaceX Crew Dragon configuration of their Dragon 2. US company Boeing also developed and flown a spacecraft of their own, the CST-100, commonly referred to as Starliner, but a crewed flight is yet to occur. China developed, but did not fly Shuguang, and is currently using Shenzhou (its first crewed mission was in 2003).

Except for the Space Shuttle, all of the recoverable crewed orbital spacecraft were space capsules.

File:NASA spacecraft comparison.jpg, alt=Drawings of Mercury, Gemini capsules and Apollo spacecraft, with their launch vehicles, American Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft
File:Vostok Spacecraft Diagram.svg, Soviet Vostok capsule
File:Voskhod 1 and 2.svg, alt=Line drawing of Voskhod capsules, Soviet Voskhod (variant of Vostok)
File:Soyuz 7K-OK(A) drawing.svg, alt=Soyuz 7K-OK(A) drawing, 1967 Soviet/Russian Soyuz spacecraft
File:Post S-7 Shenzhou spacecraft.png, alt=Drawing of Shenzhou spacecraft, Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft

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

Spaceplanes

Spaceplanes are spacecraft are built in the shape of, and function as, airplanes. The first example of such was the North American X-15 spaceplane, which conducted two crewed flights which reached an altitude of over 100 km in the 1960s. This first reusable spacecraft 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.

The first automatic partially reusable spacecraft was the ''Buran''-class shuttle, launched by the USSR on November 15, 1988, although it made only one flight and this was uncrewed. This spaceplane was designed for a crew and strongly resembled the U.S. Space Shuttle, although its drop-off boosters used liquid propellants and its main engines were located at the base of what would be the external tank in the American Shuttle. Lack of funding, complicated by the dissolution of the USSR, prevented any further flights of Buran. The Space Shuttle was subsequently modified to allow for autonomous re-entry in case of necessity.

Per the Vision for Space Exploration, the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011 mainly due to its old age and high cost of program reaching over a billion dollars per flight. The Shuttle's human transport role is to be replaced by SpaceX's SpaceX Dragon 2 and Boeing's CST-100 Starliner and ULA's Vulcan rocket, as well as the commercial launch vehicles.

Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne was a reusable suborbital spaceplane that carried pilots Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie on consecutive flights in 2004 to win the Ansari X Prize. The Spaceship Company will build its successor SpaceShipTwo. A fleet of SpaceShipTwos operated by Virgin Galactic was planned to begin reusable private spaceflight carrying paying passengers in 2014, but was delayed after the crash of VSS ''Enterprise''.

Uncrewed spacecraft

Semi-crewed – crewed as space stations or part of space stations

* Progress – uncrewed USSR/Russia cargo spacecraft
* TKS – uncrewed USSR/Russia cargo spacecraft and space station module
* Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) – uncrewed European cargo spacecraft
* H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) – uncrewed Japanese cargo spacecraft
* SpaceX Dragon – uncrewed private spacecraft
* '' Tianzhou'' – China's uncrewed cargo spacecraft
* Northrop Grumman Cygnus – uncrewed commercial spacecraft

Earth-orbit satellites

* Explorer 1 – first US satellite
* Project SCORE – first communications satellite
* Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) - orbits the Sun near L1
* Sputnik 1 – world's first artificial satellite
* Sputnik 2 – first animal in orbit (Laika)
* Korabl-Sputnik 2 – first capsule recovered from orbit ( Vostok precursor) – animals survived
* Syncom – first geosynchronous communications satellite
* Hubble Space Telescope – largest orbital observatory
* X-37 – spaceplane

Lunar probes

* Clementine – US Navy mission, orbited Moon, detected hydrogen at the poles
* Kaguya JPN – lunar orbiter
* Luna 1 – first lunar flyby
* Luna 2 – first lunar impact
* Luna 3 – first images of lunar far side
* Luna 9 – first soft landing on the Moon
* Luna 10 – first lunar orbiter
* Luna 16 – first uncrewed lunar sample retrieval
* Lunar Orbiter – very successful series of lunar mapping spacecraft
* Lunar Prospector – confirmed detection of hydrogen at the lunar poles
* Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter – Identifies safe landing sites and locates Moon resources
* Lunokhod - Soviet lunar rovers
* SMART-1 ESA – Lunar Impact
* Surveyor – USA's first soft lander
* Chang'e 1 – China's first lunar mission
* Chang'e 2 – China's second lunar mission
* Chang'e 3 – China's first soft landing on the Moon
* Chang'e 4 – first soft landing on far side of the Moon
* Chang'e 5 – China's first lunar probe which completed a sample-return mission
* Chandrayaan 1 – first Indian Lunar mission
* Chandrayaan 2 – second Indian Lunar mission

Planetary probes

*''Akatsuki'' JPN – a Venus orbiter
*''Cassini–Huygens'' – first Saturn orbiter and Titan lander
* ''Curiosity'' – Rover sent to Mars by NASA in 2012
* ''Galileo'' – first Jupiter orbiter and descent probe
*IKAROS JPN – first solar-sail spacecraft
*Mariner 4 – first Mars flyby, first close and high resolution images of Mars
*Mariner 9 – first Mars orbiter
*Mariner 10 – first Mercury flyby, first close up images
*Mars Exploration Rovers ('' Spirit'' and ''Opportunity'')– Mars rovers
*''Mars Express'' – Mars orbiter
*''Mars Global Surveyor'' – Mars orbiter
*Mars Orbiter Mission (''Mangalyaan'') - India's first Interplanetary probe
*''Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter'' – an advanced climate, imaging, sub-surface radar, and telecommunications Mars orbiter
*''MESSENGER'' – first Mercury orbiter (arrival 2011)
*''Mars Pathfinder'' – Mars lander, carrying the '' Sojourner'' rover
*''New Horizons'' – first Pluto flyby (arrival 2015)
*''Pioneer 10'' – first Jupiter flyby, first close up images
*''Pioneer 11'' – second Jupiter flyby and first Saturn flyby (first close up images of Saturn)
* Pioneer Venus – first Venus orbiter and landers
* Vega 1 – Balloon release into Venus atmosphere and lander, mothership continued on to fly by Halley's Comet. Joint mission with Vega 2.
*Venera 4 – first soft landing on another planet (Venus)
*'' Viking 1'' – first soft landing on Mars
*''Voyager 1'' - flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's moon Titan
*''Voyager 2'' – Jupiter flyby, Saturn flyby, and first flybys/images of Neptune and Uranus
* ''Hope'' - Mars orbiter of the United Arab Emirates in 2020
* '' Tianwen-1 '' - China's orbiter, lander and rover mission to Mars in 2020
* Perseverance - Rover sent to Mars in 2020
* Ingenuity - experimental rotorcraft sent to Mars in 2020

Other – deep space

* Cluster
* Deep Space 1
* '' Deep Impact''
* ''Genesis''
* ''Hayabusa''
* Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous
* Rosetta
* ''Stardust''
* STEREO – Heliospheric and solar sensing; first images of the entire Sun
* WMAP

Fastest spacecraft

* Parker ''Solar Probe'' (estimated at first sun close pass, will reach at final perihelion)
*Helios I and II ''Solar Probes'' ()

Furthest spacecraft from the Sun

* ''Voyager 1'' at 156.13 AU as of April 2022, traveling outward at about
* ''Pioneer 10'' at 122.48 AU as of December 2018, traveling outward at about
*''Voyager 2'' at 122.82 AU as of January 2020, traveling outward at about
*''Pioneer 11'' at 101.17 AU as of December 2018, traveling outward at about

Unfunded and canceled programs

Crewed spacecraft

* Chinese Shuguang capsule
* Soviet Zond/L1 – lunar flyby capsule
* Soviet L3 – capsule and lunar lander
* Soviet LK – lunar lander
* Soviet TKS – space station resupply capsule
* Soviet ''Buran''-class shuttle – spaceplane
* Soviet Soyuz Kontakt capsule
* Soviet Almaz space station
* US Manned Orbiting Laboratory space station
* US Altair lunar lander

Multi-stage spaceplanes

* US X-20 spaceplane
* Soviet Spiral

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