3.5 Entering the Age of Space Flight
161
in orbit and a series of shuttle missions to the orbiting Russian Mir; participating in
construction and servicing of the ISS. On February 1, 2003, the Columbia broke up
catastrophically over north-central Texas at an altitude of about 60 km as it was return
from an orbital mission, resulting in all seven crew members killed. The shuttle fleet
was immediately grounded until July 2005 the flights resumed with the Discovery’s
launch. On July 8, 2011, the Atlantis was launched to conduct the last flight mission,
which is also the 135th flight of the American Space Shuttle fleet. Since then, the
NASA announced that subsequent crewed missions would use the Russian Soyuz
spacecrafts as well as the spacecrafts built by the American companies.
The ISS program is a joint project between five participating space agencies from
Russia, America, Europe, Japan and Canada. On 20 November 1998, as the initial
module Zarya, developed by Russia to provide attitude control and solar power
arrays, was successfully launched into orbit by a Proton rocket, the nascent station
began to be under assembly and construction for the following decade. A month
later, the Space Shuttle astronauts ferried up and attached the first American-built
module Unity, a connecting node with multiple docking systems. In the middle of
2000, the Russian-built module Zvezda (a habitat and control centre) was added,
and on November 2 of that year, the ISS received its first resident crew, comprising
two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut. The ISS has been continuously
occupied since then. In the wake of the catastrophic explosion of the Columbia in
2003 and the consequent temporary grounding of the space shuttles, the activity
aboard the ISS was reduced virtually to a caretaker level, until 2005 other modules
built by Europe, Japan and Canada began to be gradually mounted on the ISS. In May
2009, the ISS became fully operational and began hosting a six-person crew. Just
after completion of the ISS, the shuttle fleet was retired from service. Thereafter, the
supplies for the ISS are delivered by the Russian Progress spacecraft, the European
Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) and Japanese H-2 Transfer Vehicle,
as well as two kinds of cargo vehicles which were made in the American commercial
companies, SpaceX’s Dragon and the Orbital Science Corporation’s Cygnus, while
until the American companies develop crewed spacecraft, the astronauts to and from
the ISS can only be ferried by the Soyuz spacecrafts. The space agencies that are
partners in the ISS have not definitively decided when the program will end, but in
2014 President Barack H. Obama administration indicated that the program would
receive the U.S. support until “at least 2024”.
In 1992, the Chinese government decided to initiate a manned space engineering
project and implement a three-step development plan: the first step is to launch
a manned spacecraft, build a preliminary supporting experimental manned spaceflight engineering system and carry out space application experiments; the second
step is to break through the rendezvous and docking technology between a manned
spacecraft and a space vehicle, and built a space laboratory with a certain scale
and short-term caretakers to solve the problem of its space applications; the third
step is to build a space station, to solve the problem of large-scale and long-term
attended space applications. On November 20, 1999, the Chinese first unmanned
spacecraft, Shenzhou-1, was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center of
China for the orbital flight test, and then three flight tests were conducted sequentially
161
in orbit and a series of shuttle missions to the orbiting Russian Mir; participating in
construction and servicing of the ISS. On February 1, 2003, the Columbia broke up
catastrophically over north-central Texas at an altitude of about 60 km as it was return
from an orbital mission, resulting in all seven crew members killed. The shuttle fleet
was immediately grounded until July 2005 the flights resumed with the Discovery’s
launch. On July 8, 2011, the Atlantis was launched to conduct the last flight mission,
which is also the 135th flight of the American Space Shuttle fleet. Since then, the
NASA announced that subsequent crewed missions would use the Russian Soyuz
spacecrafts as well as the spacecrafts built by the American companies.
The ISS program is a joint project between five participating space agencies from
Russia, America, Europe, Japan and Canada. On 20 November 1998, as the initial
module Zarya, developed by Russia to provide attitude control and solar power
arrays, was successfully launched into orbit by a Proton rocket, the nascent station
began to be under assembly and construction for the following decade. A month
later, the Space Shuttle astronauts ferried up and attached the first American-built
module Unity, a connecting node with multiple docking systems. In the middle of
2000, the Russian-built module Zvezda (a habitat and control centre) was added,
and on November 2 of that year, the ISS received its first resident crew, comprising
two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut. The ISS has been continuously
occupied since then. In the wake of the catastrophic explosion of the Columbia in
2003 and the consequent temporary grounding of the space shuttles, the activity
aboard the ISS was reduced virtually to a caretaker level, until 2005 other modules
built by Europe, Japan and Canada began to be gradually mounted on the ISS. In May
2009, the ISS became fully operational and began hosting a six-person crew. Just
after completion of the ISS, the shuttle fleet was retired from service. Thereafter, the
supplies for the ISS are delivered by the Russian Progress spacecraft, the European
Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) and Japanese H-2 Transfer Vehicle,
as well as two kinds of cargo vehicles which were made in the American commercial
companies, SpaceX’s Dragon and the Orbital Science Corporation’s Cygnus, while
until the American companies develop crewed spacecraft, the astronauts to and from
the ISS can only be ferried by the Soyuz spacecrafts. The space agencies that are
partners in the ISS have not definitively decided when the program will end, but in
2014 President Barack H. Obama administration indicated that the program would
receive the U.S. support until “at least 2024”.
In 1992, the Chinese government decided to initiate a manned space engineering
project and implement a three-step development plan: the first step is to launch
a manned spacecraft, build a preliminary supporting experimental manned spaceflight engineering system and carry out space application experiments; the second
step is to break through the rendezvous and docking technology between a manned
spacecraft and a space vehicle, and built a space laboratory with a certain scale
and short-term caretakers to solve the problem of its space applications; the third
step is to build a space station, to solve the problem of large-scale and long-term
attended space applications. On November 20, 1999, the Chinese first unmanned
spacecraft, Shenzhou-1, was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center of
China for the orbital flight test, and then three flight tests were conducted sequentially