We continue to celebrate the anniversary of the Mars Launch! Just two years ago, the Rover was launched, reaching Mars on February 18, 2021–returning videos, information and photos on a continual daily basis. How nice that we are blessed to be in the USA!
I am sharing the past year’s history of important NASA flight:
Mission Summary:
| NASA Mission Summary – 2021 |
|
| First Launch |
January 8, 2021
|
|
Last Launch
|
December 30, 2021
|
|
Total Launches
|
146
|
|
Successes
|
135
|
Table Information Courtesy NASA.gov
Individual Missions:
| Major NASA Missions – 2021 – 2022 |
||||
| Launch Date | Mission | Vehicle | Launch Site | Total Launch Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | ||||
| 02/18/2021 | LANDING on Mars: Mars 2020 |
N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 12/25/2021 | MIRI One of four instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope, the id-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, studies planets, stars, and galaxies in infrared light |
Ariane 5 rocket | Arianespace’s ELA-3 launch complex at Europe’s Spaceport located near Kourou, French Guiana |
$10B |
| 2022 | ||||
| 08/01/2022 10/11/2022 |
DUE: Between Period Psyche The Psyche mission is a journey to a unique metal-rich asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter |
Psyche | SpaceX Hawthorne, CA |
$850M |
Table Information Courtesy NASA.gov
Hopefully the next year will prosper once again. We are all waiting for the next launch! Meantime, I will show a list of the major space programs flights from past days:
Mission Programs 1958 to Present:
| Mission Programs – 1958 to Present |
|||||
|
Program |
Start Date |
First Crewed Flight |
End Date |
No. of crewed missions launched |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury | 1958 |
1961 |
1963 |
6 | First U.S. Crew on a Mission |
| Gemini | 1961 |
1965 |
1966 |
10 | Practice Space Rendezvous/EVA’s |
| Apollo | 1960 |
1968 |
1972 |
11 | First Humans to Land on the Moon |
| Skylab | 1964 |
1973 |
1974 |
3 | First American Space Station |
| Apollo–Soyuz | 1971 |
1975 |
1975 |
1 |
Joint Test Project with Soviet Union |
| Space Shuttle program | 1972 |
1981 | 2011 | 135 | First Missions Where spacecraft was Reused |
| Shuttle-Mir program | 1993 |
1995 |
1998 |
11 | Russian partnership |
| International Space Station |
1993 |
1998 |
Ongoing |
63 | Joint with Roscosmos, CSA, ESA, and JAXA; Americans flew on Russian Soyuz after 2011 retirement of Space Shuttle |
| Commercial Crew Program |
2011 |
2020 | Ongoing |
3 |
Current program to shuttle Americans to the ISS |
| Artemis program | 2017 |
Ongoing |
Ongoing |
0 |
Current program to bring humans to the Moon again |
Table Information Courtesy NASA.gov
Photo courtesy of LunaPic
NASA Mission Anniversary
Very helpful to have the list of NASA missions; the future of space exploration is very exciting
Great photos! Got me in the mood to re-read Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles”.