September 2009- On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, flying in the Freedom 7 as part of the Mercury space program. His spacecraft was 2 m long and 1.9 m in diameter, and his suborbital flight lasted less than 16 minutes.
Needless to say, human space flight has come a long way since then. NASA's spacecraft have also evolved over the years, becoming larger and more cutting-edge--but always requiring forming and fabrication technology.
The following are some of the spacecraft used in NASA's 48 years of human space flights:
- Freedom 7 (for the initial Mercury mission); first launched May 5, 1961
- Gemini-Titan III (for the first manned Gemini flight, lasted almost five hours); first launched March 23, 1965
- Apollo 11 (for the mission that took man to the moon); first launched July 16, 1969
Space shuttles
- Columbia (spacecraft used in first shuttle mission); first launched April 12, 1981
- Challenger (brought the first American woman, Sally Ride, into space); first launched April 4, 1983
- Discovery (deployed Hubble Space Telescope in April 1990); first launched Aug. 30, 1984
- Atlantis (flew the first seven missions to dock with Mir, the Russian space station); first launched Oct. 3, 1985
- Endeavour (named through a national competition involving elementary and high school students); first launched May 7, 1992
- Orion (NASA's current project); to be launched in 2015
FFJ
Read about NASA's current Orion space crew module project in the October issue of FFJournal.
