Unusually, Mercury capsules had individual names beyond the series itself; others included Liberty Bell 7, Sigma 7 and Aurora 7. The final crewed Mercury capsule flew in The Voskhod capsule was based heavily on the design of Vostok but adapted to carry more crewmembers, and later to facilitate spacewalking, the next milestone achievement the USSR had set its sights on.
First, the USSR needed to squeeze multiple crewmembers into the small capsule. To accomplish that, spacecraft engineers ditched the ejection seat and replaced it with stable couches and a landing system, according to NASA. Voskhod first carried humans in , launching with a crew of three: a pilot, a medical doctor and a spacecraft engineer. To accommodate the tight conditions, the trio did not wear space suits.
A second version of the Voskhod capsule was adapted for a spacewalk, carrying an inflatable airlock. The USSR flew an uncrewed test mission for the vehicle, then in launched Voskhod 2, which carried two cosmonauts in pressure suits on a hour flight. One of those cosmonauts, Alexei Leonov , exited the inflatable airlock and spent about 12 minutes in space, clinching the accomplishment of first spacewalk.
The mission was Voskhod's last flight. Related: In pictures: The most memorable spacewalks in history. Like the pair of Soviet vehicles, Gemini was at heart an adapted version of the Mercury capsule designed to let more astronauts tackle more advanced tasks. The larger capsule flew humans for the first time in March , just a few days after the Voskhod 2 mission.
Gemini capsules were designed to carry two astronauts, rather than just one, and their primary task was to teach engineers how to dock spacecraft in orbit , which NASA believed would be necessary to land humans on the moon. Two other vital tasks for the Gemini vehicles were extending the duration of spaceflight and permitting spacewalks.
The second crewed Gemini mission, Gemini 4 , lasted for four days and included the first American extravehicular activity, a minute sortie by Ed White. By Gemini 7, missions were stretching longer than a week to help scientists understand the consequences of lengthier spaceflights, according to NASA.
In , the program tackled the other key goal of the Gemini program, docking in space, when two Gemini 8 astronauts latched their vehicle onto an uncrewed Agena spacecraft. The final Gemini mission, Gemini 12 , launched in November and included three separate spacewalks and docking maneuvers with another uncrewed Agena.
After that success, NASA deemed itself ready to start tackling lunar missions. The Soyuz capsule , which still ferries cosmonauts into space today, began flying shortly after the retirement of the Voskhod vehicle. Its first crewed launch was in , although that mission's sole cosmonaut was killed during reentry by a parachute malfunction.
Needless to say, Soyuz capsules flying today are not identical to those of the s. The name means "union. However, each of those variants has followed the same basic three-part recipe. At the center is the descent module, which astronauts sit in during launch and which is the only component to return to Earth at the end of a mission. To one side of that module is the orbital module, which includes crew living space and the docking mechanism to attach to other spacecraft.
To the other side is the propulsion module, which carries fuel, engines and solar power panels. All told, Soyuz spacecraft have made nearly crewed flights since the vehicle design was introduced. The vehicle also docked with an Apollo command module in to mark the end of the Cold War space race. Soyuz capsules have been the mainstay of Russia's long-term space exploration goals.
The vehicles visited the Salyut and Mir stations for decades and still visit the International Space Station. Since the space shuttle retired in , NASA astronauts have caught rides to the orbiting laboratory on Soyuz capsules along with their international colleagues. Related: Experience a Soyuz spacecraft landing with this amazing degree, VR video. The Apollo program and its command module were meant to carry humans to the moon in the final leg of the Cold War space race; the vehicle was also meant to pull together lessons learned with the Mercury and Gemini capsules and further increase crew sizes.
The main crew capsule of the Apollo program, called the command module , slightly tweaked the shape of the previous vehicles, discarding the straight segment that stretched out the cone and giving the capsule a rather more squat profile.
The command module was meant to serve only as a transport vehicle, carrying three astronauts during launch, Earth orbit, lunar orbit and landing.
The spacecraft that aimed at lunar landings were accompanied by separate vehicles dubbed lunar modules, which were designed to fly two astronauts only in space, to and from the moon's surface. Apollo's first crewed launch was meant to be Apollo 1 in , until disaster struck during a preflight test and a flash fire in the command module killed the mission's three crewmembers.
NASA stepped back to investigate the accident and improve fireproofing on the capsule, waiting nearly two years to get back to the launch pad. The command module successfully flew with humans on board in on a mission dubbed Apollo 7 , an Earth-orbital flight to test the command module and the docking maneuvers that would be necessary on later flights.
By the milestone Apollo 11 flight that landed humans on the moon for the first time, missions consisted of three separate spacecraft: the command module, a workhorse service module and the lunar module that handled the landing itself.
The lunar module , in a first for spacecraft engineering, was designed only to operate beyond Earth, so it included no aerodynamic shaping. Instead, it was often compared to a large metallic bug. But then, in April , three crewmembers on the Apollo 13 mission experienced an explosion in the service module on the third day of flight, when the spacecraft was about , miles , kilometers away from Earth. NASA scrambled into rescue mode and eventually, with the service module out of commission and the command module running low on power, the three astronauts piled into the lunar module and headed for the scenario the vehicle hadn't been designed for: returning to Earth.
The lifeboat plan worked, carrying all three astronauts safely home. The last Apollo mission, Apollo 17 , flew in December ; the Apollo capsule made its final flight in Related: Building Apollo: Photos from moonshot history.
After the Apollo program ended in , NASA took a break from human spaceflight for nearly a decade, not launching another crewed vehicle until the early s. That vehicle was the space shuttle , the first reusable crewed spacecraft. NASA built five separate shuttles that reached space on a total of crewed missions between and The shuttles technically known as the Space Transportation System also marked the first big design jump in crewed spacecraft. The main shuttle body, which looks rather like a plane, was the orbiter itself.
During launch, that orbiter was joined by three other pieces, one massive fuel tank painted a distinctive rust orange the only component not reused and two thinner white solid rocket boosters. The orbiters included two decks, an airlock and a massive cargo bay. Most crews included seven astronauts. At the end of a mission, the orbiter returned to Earth, taking the heat from the reentry process on its protective belly tiles.
Of the five shuttles, two were destroyed during fatal accidents. First, in January , Challenger suffered an anomaly during launch; then, in February , Columbia fell to pieces during reentry. Each disaster killed all seven astronauts on board and prompted internal investigations at NASA, and the legacy of these two flights has contributed to NASA's deeply rooted safety culture.
NASA decided to retire the three remaining but aging shuttles in Related: 10 amazing space shuttle photos. China joined the crewed vehicle owners with its Shenzhou vehicle line. The name translates as "divine vessel," according to NASA. The Shenzhou spacecraft are built in a rather similar manner to the Russian Soyuz vehicles, with a three-part design of orbital, reentry and service modules.
The first crewed Shenzhou to fly launched in and made China the third country with the capability to launch humans to orbit. That flight carried one taikonaut, the Chinese term for an astronaut, who orbited for nearly a day. China's next crewed flight carried two taikonauts; the third flight carried three taikonauts and included a spacewalk. Then China pivoted the vehicle's focus to rendezvous with the nation's first two independent space stations.
A total of six Shenzhou spacecraft have carried humans, with the most recent launch occurring in Related: In photos: Tiangong-1, China's space station fell to Earth. SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule , scheduled to launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on May 27, will — if all goes well — become the first commercially built vehicle to carry humans to space.
Crew Dragon is based heavily on SpaceX's long-flying cargo ship, the Dragon , which the company built under NASA's commercial cargo delivery program and which made its first full-fledged delivery run in Crew Dragon was built under the agency's commercial crew program, and made a successful uncrewed test flight to the space station in March Two key modifications for the crewed version are that the spacecraft docks itself to the International Space Station, rather than relying on being snagged by the laboratory's robotic arm, and, of course, the addition of life-support systems.
Crew Dragon can seat up to seven people, according to SpaceX. Since the Apollo lunar program ended in , human space exploration has been limited to low-Earth orbit, where many countries participate and conduct research on the International Space Station. However, unpiloted probes have traveled throughout our solar system. In recent years, probes have made a range of discoveries, including that a moon of Jupiter, called Europa, and a moon of Saturn, called Enceladus, have oceans under their surface ice that scientists think may harbor life.
Meanwhile, instruments in space, such as the Kepler Space Telescope , and instruments on the ground have discovered thousands of exoplanets, planets orbiting other stars. This era of exoplanet discovery began in , and advanced technology now allows instruments in space to characterize the atmospheres of some of these exoplanets. Also called an extrasolar planet. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.
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