Page 8 - Aerotech News and Review, Oct 5 2018 - NASA Anniversary Special

NASA unmanned programs
More than 1,000 unmanned missions have been designed to explore the Earth and the so- lar system. Besides exploration, communication satellites have also been launched by NASA. The missions have been launched directly from Earth or from orbiting space shuttles, which could either deploy the satellite itself, or with a rocket stage to take it farther.
The first U.S. unmanned satellite was Ex- plorer 1, which started as an ABMA/JPL proj- ect during the early part of the Space Race. It was launched in January 1958, two months after Sputnik. At the creation of NASA, the Explorer project was transferred to the agency and still continues to this day. Its missions have been focusing on the Earth and the Sun, measuring magnetic fields and the solar wind, among other aspects. A more recent Earth mission, not re- lated to the Explorer program, was the Hubble Space Telescope, which as mentioned above was brought into orbit in 1990.
The inner Solar System has been made the goal of at least four unmanned programs. The first was Mariner in the 1960s and 1970s, which made multiple visits to Venus and Mars and one to Mercury. Probes launched under the Mariner program were also the first to make a planetary flyby (Mariner 2), to take the first pictures from another planet (Mariner 4), the first planetary orbiter (Mariner 9), and the first to make a gravity assist maneuver (Mariner 10). This is a technique where the satellite takes advantage of the gravity and velocity of planets to reach
its destination.
The first successful landing on Mars was
made by Viking 1 in 1976. Twenty years later a rover was landed on Mars by Mars Pathfinder.
Outside Mars, Jupiter was first visited by Pio- neer 10 in 1973. More than 20 years later Gali- leo sent a probe into the planet’s atmosphere, and became the first spacecraft to orbit the planet. Pioneer 11 became the first spacecraft to visit Saturn in 1979, with Voyager 2 making the first (and so far only) visits to Uranus and Nep- tune in 1986 and 1989, respectively. The first spacecraft to leave the solar system was Pioneer 10 in 1983. For a time it was the most distant spacecraft, but it has since been surpassed by both V oyager 1 and V oyager 2.
Pioneers 10 and 11 and both Voyager probes carry messages from the Earth to extraterrestrial life. Communication can be difficult with deep space travel. For instance, it took about three hours for a radio signal to reach the New Hori- zons spacecraft when it was more than halfway to Pluto. Contact with Pioneer 10 was lost in 2003. Both Voyager probes continue to operate as they explore the outer boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space.
On Nov. 26, 2011, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission was successfully launched for Mars. Curiosity successfully landed on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, and subsequently began its search for evidence of past or present life on Mars.
NASA photographs
Oct. 11, 1958: NASA’s First Satellite Pioneer 1 — NASA launches Pioneer 1. A project inherited from the U.S. Army, Pioneer 1 became NASA’s first spacecraft. Meant to go into lunar orbit and carrying a TV camera to study the moon’s surface, a mechanical problem limited the spacecraft to sending 43 minutes of data back before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
July 10, 1962: The Start of the Space Communications Industry — NASA launches the communications satellite Telstar I, the first active communications satellite and, also the first satellite launched for a private company. Telstar was built and operated by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). On July 23, it relayed the first publicly available transatlantic TV signal, showing pictures of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, part of a baseball game and remarks by President Kennedy on the value of the American dollar, which was causing concern in Europe. When Kennedy denied that the United States would devalue the dollar, it immediately strengthened on world markets. CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, also on the broadcast, later said that “We all glimpsed something of the true power of the instrument we had wrought.”
July 20, 1976: Viking 1 Lands on Mars — Viking 1 lands on Mars, beginning NASA’s 40 years of exploration of the Red Planet.
Nov. 13, 1971: Mariner 9 Reaches Mars — Mariner 9 reaches Mars and becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. Its mapping mission is initially delayed by a dust storm that obscures all of Mars’ surface except the tops of its tallest mountains.
Jan. 14, 2005: Huygens Probe Lands
on Titan
— ESA’s Huygens probe, which traveled to Saturn with the Cassini spacecraft, lands on Titan.
June 13, 1983: Pioneer 10 Goes Beyond Our Planets — Pioneer 10 becomes the first spacecraft to travel beyond the orbits of the known planets. In about 2 million years,
Artists’ impression it will come close to the star Aldeberan.
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July 4, 2016: Juno Orbits Around Jupiter — Juno reaches orbit around Jupiter.
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October 5, 2018