Wikipedia portals: Culture · Geography · Health · History · Mathematics · Natural sciences · Philosophy · Religion · Society · Technology

The Spaceflight Portal

RocketSunIcon.svg Spaceflight is the movement of spacecraft into and through outer space, primarily using rocket technology for propulsion. Spaceflight is used in space exploration, the endeavour to reach, explore, and exploit the space outside the Earth's atmosphere, and also in commercial activities like space tourism and satellite telecommunications. It is generally based on the use of rockets to transport machines, animals, and humans to, and subsequently through, space. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites and other earth observation satellites. Objects launched into space may follow a sub-orbital trajectory and return to Earth immediately, stay in orbit around Earth, travel in the space between the planets, or aim to leave the space dominated by the Sun completely.
Space Shuttle Columbia launching.jpg

Key topics

Selected article

Please help us by selecting a spaceflight-related article for this week's selected article!
Guidelines for doing so are here.
Portal:Spaceflight/Selected article/Week 11 2010

Spaceflight news

Archive | Wikinews

Selected biography

Portal:Spaceflight/Selected biography/March 2010

Robert Donald Cabana

Robert Donald Cabana (Colonel, USMC, Ret.) is the director of NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center, a former astronaut, and a veteran of four Space Shuttle flights. He is also a former Naval Flight Officer in the United States Marine Corps. He has logged over 7,000 hours in 34 different kinds of aircraft.


Read more...

Did you know...

Portal:Spaceflight/Did you know/March 2010

New Horizons on the launchpad

New Horizons is a NASA robotic spacecraft mission that was launched on January 19, 2006 and is currently en route to the dwarf planet Pluto. It is expected to be the first spacecraft to fly by and study Pluto and its moons, Charon, Nix, and Hydra. NASA may also approve flybys of one or more other Kuiper Belt Objects. In addition to the scientific equipment, there are several cultural artifacts travelling with the spacecraft. These include a collection of 434,738 names stored on a compact disc,[1] a piece of Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne,[2] and an American flag, along with other mementos.[3] One of the trim weights on the spacecraft is a Florida state quarter, and principal investigator Alan Stern has also confirmed that some of the ashes of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh are aboard the spacecraft.[4]

Spaceflight lists

Categories

WikiProjects

Associated Wikimedia

Related portals

Selected picture

ISS15 Progress 26.jpg
Progress M-61 seen from the International Space Station prior to docking in August 2007.

Next scheduled launch

The next scheduled launch is of a Proton-M/Briz-M Enhanced with the Echostar XIV communications satellite. Launch from Site 200/39 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome is scheduled for 17:27 UTC on 20 March.
The next scheduled manned launch is of Soyuz TMA-18 with the Expedition 23 crew to the International Space Station. Launch atop a Soyuz-FG rocket from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome is scheduled for 05:10 UTC on 2 April.
For a full launch schedule see 2010 in spaceflight

On This Day

16 March

View: Today | March | All

Space Collaboration of the Week


There is no current Space Collaboration of the Week.

Help maintain this Portal

You can help maintain and improve the Spaceflight Portal!

Spaceflight portal
  • Add: Spaceflight portal boxes to "See also" sections of related articles using {{Portal | Spaceflight | RocketSunIcon.svg}}
  • Discuss: Join in here to discuss a mechanism for improving the Selected Biographies section.
  • Insert: trivia and interesting facts into upcoming did you know sections.
  • Nominate: an image to be the next selected picture, or comment on the current nominees.
  • Select: an article for an upcoming selected article.
  • Suggest: ways to improve the portal either on its discussion page or by adding an entry to this to do list
  • Propose: an article for possible inclusion in the Key topics box
  • Update: the news and next launch sections.

Things you can do

Here are some open tasks:

Spaceflight featured article candidates:

Spaceflight good article candidates:

Spaceflight articles for which peer review has been requested:

Spaceflight articles for which deletion has been requested:
  • No current requests

Purge server cache