SpaceX

Kuiper Technology

SpaceX Will Launch Project Kuiper Internet Satellites for Amazon

SpaceX will launch satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a broadband network designed to deliver high-speed internet to remote communities worldwide.

, SpaceX launched satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a broadband network designed to deliver high-speed internet to remote communities worldwide.

Project Kuiper is Amazon’s satellite internet initiative designed to provide broadband access to regions around the world that currently lack reliable connectivity. The system will use a constellation of over 3,200 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, positioned between 590 and 630 kilometers above Earth, to deliver internet service through a network of ground antennas and user terminals. The aim is to reach unserved and underserved populations, including individuals, schools, hospitals, businesses, and government agencies operating in remote or infrastructure-limited areas.

The project began development in 2018 and received FCC approval in 2020. Its first two prototype satellites were launched in October 2023. In April 2025, Amazon launched the first operational group of 27 Kuiper satellites aboard a ULA Atlas V rocket, marking the beginning of large-scale deployment. The FCC requires that at least 50% of the constellation (over 1,600 satellites) be launched by July 2026, with full deployment completed by July 2029.

Project Kuiper is managed by Amazon’s Devices and Services division. Satellites are manufactured in Kirkland, Washington, and launch integration is handled at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Amazon has secured a total of 92 rocket launches from United Launch Alliance (ULA), ArianeGroup, and Blue Origin, representing a combined investment of over $10 billion USD. Additionally, in December 2023, Amazon purchased three launches from SpaceX, which operates Starlink, a competing satellite internet constellation. These launch agreements form one of the largest commercial satellite deployment efforts to date.

Kuiper’s ground system includes gateway antennas and global networking to route data, while user terminals combine antennas and processors to receive service. Amazon has revealed three types of customer terminals, offering download speeds ranging from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps, depending on the model and intended use. While pricing has not yet been announced, the project is being developed with an emphasis on affordability and scalability.

Image courtesy of ULA.

Project Kuiper

 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond. 

Falcon 9 is the world’s first orbital-class reusable rocket.


Payload to Low Earth Orbit (LEO): 22,800 kg / 50,265 lb


Payload to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO): 8,300 kg / 18,300 lb

On January 24, 2021, Falcon 9 launched the first ride-share mission to Sun Synchronous Orbit. It was delivering a record-setting 143 satellites to space. And while this was an important mission for SpaceX in itself, it was also the moment Falcon 9 overtook United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V for the total number of consecutive successful launches.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 had become America’s workhorse rocket, launching 31 times in 2021. It has already beaten that record this year, launching almost an average of once a week. While most of the launches deliver Starlink satellites to orbit, the company is still launching the most commercial payloads to orbit, too.

Falcon 9 is a medium-lift launch vehicle, with the capability to launch over 22.8 metric tonnes to low earth orbit. Unlike any other rocket, its first stage lands back on Earth after separating from its second stage. In part, this allows SpaceX to offer the cheapest option for most customers with payloads that need to reach orbit. 

Under its ride-share program, a kilogram can be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit for a mere 1.1 million dollars, far cheaper than all other currently operating small satellite launch vehicles.

The reusability and fast booster turnaround times have made Falcon 9 the preferred choice for private companies and government agencies. This has allowed SpaceX to capture a huge portion of the launch market.


Photo courtesy of Jenny Hautmann for Supercluster.

Falcon 9 (Block 5)

 is one of two launch sites leased by SpaceX at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida, specifically designed for preparing and launching Falcon 9 rockets. Constructed in the early 1960s, SLC-40 was initially used for 55 Titan III and Titan IV rocket launches, including the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. The pad was active from June 18, 1965, to April 30, 2005.

SpaceX began leasing SLC-40 in 2007, converting it to support Falcon 9 rockets. The pad was first upgraded to accommodate the original version of Falcon 9 and later received another upgrade in 2013 to handle the larger, reusable Falcon 9 rocket. On September 1, 2016, an explosion during a Falcon 9 fueling test caused severe damage to the pad. It was rebuilt rapidly, with construction completed in just 10 months, from mid-February to late November 2017. SLC-40 resumed operations with the successful launch of a Dragon capsule to the International Space Station on December 15, 2017.

After adding a crew access arm to the launch tower, SpaceX launched their first crewed mission from SLC-40 on Saturday, September 28th 2024 for NASA's Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station.

Under SpaceX’s management, SLC-40 has been the site of numerous significant missions. Notable launches include the first all-commercial Dragon mission to the International Space Station, NASA’s DSCOVR mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) for NASA and MIT, the first satellite for Turkmenistan, the classified Zuma mission for Northrop Grumman and the U.S. government, the first GPS-III satellite, and the Beresheet lunar lander for Israel. Additionally, in September 2024, SLC-40 will host its first crewed launch with SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, marking a new milestone for the pad.

 is a major launch site with four currently active launch pads for Atlas V, Delta IV Heavy, Falcon 9, and Minotaur rockets. Located on Florida’s east coast, it offers extensive access to space for a variety of missions, including those targeting the Space Station, Geostationary Earth Orbit, the Moon, interplanetary destinations, and polar trajectories. The site’s location ensures that launches occur over the open Atlantic Ocean, minimizing risks to populated areas.

Cape Canaveral is often confused with or referred to alongside NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island. While they are separate installations, both play pivotal roles in the U.S. space program. Cape Canaveral has a storied history of significant space missions, including the launch of the first U.S. Earth satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958; the first U.S. astronaut, Alan Shepard, in 1961; the first U.S. astronaut in orbit, John Glenn, in 1962; the launch of the first two-person U.S. spacecraft, Gemini 3, in 1965; and the first U.S. uncrewed lunar landing mission, Surveyor 1, in 1966.

SLC-40 and Cape Canaveral continue to be integral to SpaceX’s ambitious launch schedule and the broader U.S. space program, supporting a wide range of missions and contributing to advancements in space exploration.

Photo courtesy of Jenny Hautmann for Supercluster

SLC-40 was built in the early 1960s and hosted its first launch on June 18, 1965. Since then, it has launched nearly 100 missions on the Titan III, Titan IV, and Falcon 9 rockets.

During the Titan rocket era, SLC-40 was used to launch two interplanetary missions: Mars Observer to Mars and Cassini-Huygens to Saturn.

With the Falcon 9, the pad became the first Cape Canaveral site to host a launch to the International Space Station.

The pad is located on historic Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL - the primary launch center for the United States.

The Florida launch site handles the vast majority of U.S. launches every year and has been the starting point of numerous history-making missions for the United States, including:

First three-person U.S. spacecraft in 1968

SLC-40 - Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida

Alan Shepard Park

A. Max Brewer Bridge

Apollo Saturn V Center / Banana Creek

Cherie Down Park

Cocoa Beach Pier

Jetty Park

Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

LC-39 Observation Gantry

Lori Wilson Park

Playalinda Beach

Rotary Riverfront Park

Sand Point Park

Sidney Fischer Park

Spaceview Park

A Shortfall of Gravitas" (ASOG) is one of SpaceX’s Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships, designed to recover Falcon 9 rocket boosters at sea. Operating primarily in the Atlantic Ocean from Port Canaveral, Florida, ASOG joined SpaceX’s fleet in 2021. It plays a crucial role in SpaceX's reusability program, enabling the recovery and refurbishment of rocket boosters for future missions.

The name "A Shortfall of Gravitas" is inspired by science fiction author Iain M. Banks' Culture series, known for its playful and philosophical ship names. ASOG is fully autonomous, capable of sailing to its designated landing area and maintaining position without the need for a tugboat. Equipped with advanced thrusters, it ensures precise positioning even in challenging weather conditions and features a large landing platform for booster recovery.

ASOG is essential for missions requiring high velocities or distant orbits where landing on solid ground is not feasible. By recovering boosters at sea, ASOG helps SpaceX reduce costs and enhance the sustainability of spaceflight.

Photo courtesy to Jenny Hautmann for Supercluster

A Shortfall of Gravitas

United States of America

Project Kuiper KF-01

Shoemaker–Levy 9 was a comet that broke apart in July 1992 and collided with Jupiter in July 1994, providing the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System objects. This generated a large amount of coverage in the popular media, and the comet was closely observed by astronomers worldwide.

Shoemaker-Levy 9

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Scientific investigation began shortly after the advent of radio in the early 1900s, and focused international efforts have been ongoing since the 1980s.

SETI

VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) is a major ground-based gamma-ray observatory with an array of four 12 meter optical reflectors for gamma-ray astronomy in the GeV – TeV photon energy range. VERITAS uses the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope technique to observe gamma-rays that cause particle showers in Earth's upper atmosphere.

VERITAS

The NEO Observations Program sponsors projects that make use of telescopes around the world to search for NEOs, track them across the sky to determine their orbits, and gain information on their sizes, shapes, and composition.

NEOO

The Vostok program was a Soviet human spaceflight project to put the first Soviet citizens into low Earth orbit and return them safely. Competing with the United States Project Mercury, it succeeded in placing the first human into space, Yuri Gagarin, in a single orbit in Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961.

Vostok

Blue Origin is an American spaceflight services company founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. Blue Origin is developing technologies to enable private human access to space with the goal of lowering costs and increasing reliability.

Blue Origin has a focus on rocket-powered vertical takeoff and landing vehicles for access to suborbital and orbital space.

Blue Origin

SpaceX and Axiom Launch First Entirely Private Astronaut Crew to the ISS.

Axiom Mission 1

ESA - European Space Agency. ESA is the intergovernmental space organization for 22 European nations.

Apogee is the highest altitude of an object's orbit around the Earth. Apogee is the Earth-specific word for this point in an orbit. The same location in an orbit around Earth's Moon is called apolune.

Apogee

Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union into an low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. Sputnik orbited for three weeks with power, then silently for two months before falling into the atmosphere. This surprise success triggered the Space Race, and was the beginning of a new era of political, military, technological, and scientific developments.

Sputnik

The Pioneer program was a series of US unmanned space missions designed for planetary exploration. The most notable were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which explored the outer planets and left the solar system. Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 carry a golden plaque, depicting a man and a woman and information about the origin and the creators of the probes, should any extraterrestrials find them someday.

Pioneer Program

Low Earth orbit is the closest orbital zone to Earth that extends up to 2,000 km above Earth sealevel. 

Some well-known missions in this orbital zone include:

all human spaceflights except for the Apollo lunar missions,

all Soviet, Russian, US and Chinese space stations,

a fleet of international Earth observation satellites, and

Photo: Earth seen from the International Spcae Station in low Earth orbit. Credit: NASA

low Earth orbit

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of technology for use by the military.

Darpa was created in February 1958, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite.

DARPA

United Launch Alliance (ULA) provides spacecraft launch services to the United States government. It was formed as a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space & Security in December 2006.

ULA employs two expendable launch systems – Delta IV and Atlas V. In 2015, ULA unveiled a new vehicle, the Vulcan, with a first flight scheduled for no earlier than 2022.

United Launch Alliance

Cherenkov radiation is electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle passes through a medium at a speed greater than the speed of light in that medium. The blue glow of an underwater nuclear reactor is due to Cherenkov radiation. It is named for Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov, who shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics for its discovery.

Cherenkov Radiation

Ax-1

The Kármán line is a boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space. This is important for legal and regulatory measures; aircraft and spacecraft fall under different jurisdictions and are subject to different treaties.

The US Air Force and NASA define the Karman Line to be 50 miles (80 km) above sea level, however here is no international law defining the edge of space.

Karman Line

The International Space Station (ISS) is a space station in low Earth orbit. It has been inhabited continuously since November 2000.

The ISS is the largest human-made body in space. It serves as a laboratory for microgravity experiments in biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields.

The ISS is a joint project between five space agencies: NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA, and CSA.

International Space Station

Cosmonauts have lived and trained in Star City since the 1960s. In the Soviet era the location was a highly secret and guarded military installation, access to which was severely restricted. Many Russian cosmonauts, past and present live in Star City with their families.

There is a statue of the "space dog" Laika, the first animal to orbit the earth, in Star City.

Star City

ISS - International Space Station. The ISS is a multi-national and supranational cooperative effort led by the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, and the European Space Agency. More than half of Earth's nations have flown at least one experiment to the station, which serves as a research laboratory to help us learn how to live in space and better our lives here on Earth.

A gamma ray is a penetrating electromagnetic radiation arising from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. Gamma rays are biologically hazardous. Due to their high penetration power, they can damage bone marrow and internal organs. Unlike alpha and beta rays, they pass easily through the body, requiring shielding made from dense materials such as lead or concrete.

Gamma Rays

Es'hail-2 is a Qatari satellite, launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on November 15, 2018. Es'hail-2 was built by Japan's Mitsubishi Electric company, and will operate at 26° East longitude along a geostationary orbit to provide direct-to-home television services in the Middle East and North Africa region

Eshail Sat-2

Eugene Merle Shoemaker (1928 – 1997) was an American geologist and one of the founders of planetary science. He is best known for co-discovering the Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994. The impact was televised around the world. Shoemaker was also known for his studies of Earth impacts, such as Meteor Crater in Arizona.

Eugene Shoemaker

CSA - Canadian Space Agency. CSA is the national space agency of Canada.

Lagrange points are positions in space where objects sent there tend to stay put. These points in space can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position.

Lagrange Point

A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing can escape from it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event horizon.

Black Hole

Azerspace-1 / Africasat-1a is Azerbaijan's first satellite. Built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, it was launched by an Ariane 5 rocket on February 7, 2013 from Kourou in French Guiana.

It offers coverage over Europe and a significant part of Asia and Africa, and is operated by the Azerbaijani company Azercosmos for TV, radio broadcasting, and the internet.

Azerspace-1

is an American private aerospace firm based in

Firefly Aerospace

Black Holes

The Constellation Program is a cancelled human spaceflight program developed by NASA from 2005 to 2009. The program was designed to help complete construction of the International Space Station and a return to the Moon no later than 2020. A crewed flight to the planet Mars was the ultimate goal.

Constellation Program

A supernova is a powerful stellar explosion, which occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star, or when a white dwarf is triggered into runaway nuclear fusion. The original object either collapses to a neutron star or black hole, or it is completely destroyed. The peak luminosity of a supernova can be comparable to an entire galaxy.

Supernovae

The Landsat program is the longest-running series of missions designed to aquire satellite images of Earth, running from July 23, 1972 until the today. The Landsat imagery archive is a unique resource for global change research with applications in agriculture, cartography, geology, forestry, regional planning, surveillance and education, and can be viewed through the 'EarthExplorer' website.

Landsat

Spaceport America is an FAA-licensed spaceport located in New Mexico. The site has been described as "the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport." The site's major tenants have experienced problems in the development of their programs, resulting in spaceport revenue far below projections, and a political controversy about what to do with the expensive government-built spaceport.

Spaceport America

A CubeSat is a miniaturized satellite designed from multiples of smaller cubic units. CubeSats have a mass of no more than 1.33 kilograms (3 pounds), and often use off-the-shelf components for their electronics and structure.

CubeSats are sometimes used to test experimental technologies or scientific experiments with unproven theory, because their low cost can justify higher risks.

CubeSats

"Air-launched" is a term used in spaceflight to refer to a rocket that is carried into the air by a plane and then dropped from underneath its wing. Notable air-launched rockets include Launcher One (pictured) from Virgin Orbit and Pegasus from Northrop Grumman.

air-launched

Supernova

Solar sails, also called light sails or photon sails, are spacecraft that use radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large mirrors. A useful analogy may be a sailing boat; the light exerting a force on the mirrors is akin to a sail blown by the wind. Solar sail craft offer low-cost operations combined with long operating lifetimes, since they require few moving parts and use no propellant.

solar sail

The Mariner program was a 10-mission series of robotic interplanetary probes, from 1962 to 1973, designed to investigate Mars, Venus and Mercury. The program included the first planetary flyby, the first planetary orbiter, and the first gravity assist maneuver.

Seven missions were successful, and the planned Mariner Jupiter-Saturn vehicles were adapted into the Voyager program.

Mariner

Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. He is a key figure in the 17th-century scientific revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion. Kepler incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work, motivated by the belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan, accessible through the natural light of reason.

Johannes Kepler

A neutron star is the collapsed core of a giant star. Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars, excluding black holes, hypothetical white holes, quark stars and strange stars. There are thought to be around 100 million neutron stars in the Milky Way, a figure obtained by estimating the number of stars that have undergone supernova explosions

Neutron Stars

The Pegasus is an air-launched rocket developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation. Capable of carrying small payloads into low Earth orbit, Pegasus first flew in 1990 and remains active as of 2019. Pegasus is released from its carrier aircraft at approximately 40,000 ft, and its first stage has a wing and a tail to provide lift and attitude control while in the atmosphere.

Pegasus rocket

The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle is an interplanetary spacecraft for a crew of four astronauts to destinations at or beyond low Earth orbit.

It is Currently under development by the European Space Agency and NASA for launch on the Space Launch System. Orion will facilitate human exploration to the moon, asteroids, and Mars, and retrieve crew or supplies from the International Space Station.

Orion Crew Vehicle

Lunar Prospector was a NASA Discovery Program mission. In polar orbit of the Moon it mapped surface composition, located lunar resources, measured magnetic and gravity fields, and studied outgassing events. Principal Investigator Alan Binder's personal account of the mission, Lunar Prospector: Against all Odds, is highly critical of the bureaucracy of NASA and of its contractors.

Lunar Prospector

Ariane 5 is a European heavy-lift rocket manufactured under the authority of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the French Spatial Agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales. Airbus Defence and Space is the primary contractor for the vehicles.

Ariane 5 is operated and marketed by Arianespace as part of the Ariane programme. The rockets are launched from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.

Ariane 5

 of length used to measure large astronomical distances. One parsec is equal to about 3.26 light-years. The kilo- prefix denotes 1000 parsecs, or about 3,620 light-years.

The parsec was defined to make calculations of astronomical distances quick and easy for astronomers. For this reason it is the unit preferred in astronomy, though the light-year is prominent in common usage.

kiloparsecs

Space Launch System (SLS) is an American Space Shuttle-derived super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle. It is part of NASA's deep space exploration plans including a crewed mission to Mars.

SLS follows the cancellation of the Constellation program, and is to replace the retired Space Shuttle. The SLS is to be the most powerful rocket ever built with a total thrust greater than Saturn V.

Marvin Minsky (1927 – 2016) was an American cognitive scientist concerned largely with research in artificial intelligence. He joined the staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1958, and a year later he and John McCarthy initiated what is known now as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Marvin Minsky

Neutron Star

A neutrino is an elementary particle that interacts via the weak subatomic force and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and its mass is so small, that it was long thought to be zero. The weak force has a very short range, and the gravitational interaction is extremely weak, thus neutrinos typically pass through normal matter unimpeded and undetected.

Neutrino

The Big Bang theory is a cosmological model for the observable universe. The model describes how the universe expanded from a very high-density and high-temperature state, and offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of phenomena.

Measurements of the expansion rate of the universe place the Big Bang at around 13.8 billion years ago, which is thus considered the age of the universe.


big bang

The Kuiper belt is a region of space beyond the orbit of Neptune, consisting mainly of small remnants from the formation of the Solar System. Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as frozen methane, ammonia and water. The Kuiper belt is home to three officially recognized dwarf planets: Pluto, Haumea and Makemake.

Kuiper Belt

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center, Founded in the 1930s and based in California.

The laboratory's primary function is the construction and operation of planetary robotic spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. JPL is also responsible for operating NASA's Deep Space Network.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Arianesapce - a European company founded in 1980 as the world's first commercial launch service provider. Arianespace undertakes the operation and marketing of the European Space Agency's various rockets.

Arianespace

Hale–Bopp is a comet that was perhaps the most widely observed of the 20th century and one of the brightest seen for many decades. Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp discovered Comet Hale–Bopp separately on July 23, 1995 before it became visible to the naked eye. It was visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months.

Hale-Bopp

New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe that is part of NASA's New Frontiers program. The spacecraft was launched in 2006 with a primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015. A secondary mission to study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) included Ultima Thule (2014 MU69) in 2019. New Horizons was the fastest man-made object ever launched from Earth.

New Horizons

Jezero is a crater on Mars. Thought to have once been flooded with water, this crater contains a fan-delta deposit rich in clays. The lake in the crater was present when valley networks were forming on Mars. In several Slavic languages the word jezero means 'lake'. In November 2018, it was announced that Jezero crater had been chosen as the landing site for the planned Mars 2020 rover mission.


Jezero Crater

Baikonur Cosmodrome is the world's first and largest operational spaceport.

Leased by the Kazakh Government to Russia until 2050, Baikonur is managed jointly by the Roscosmos State Corporation and the Russian Aerospace Forces.

Originally built by the Soviet Union, currently Baikonur remains a busy spaceport, with numerous commercial, military, and scientific missions launched annually.

Baikonur

Perigee is the lowest altitude of an object's orbit around the Earth. Perigee is the Earth-specific word for this point in an orbit. The same location in an orbit around Earth's Moon is called perilune.

Perigee

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the third United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which succeeded in landing the first humans on the Moon from 1969 to 1972.

Apollo

A parking orbit is a temporary orbit used during the launch of a satellite or other space probe. A launch vehicle boosts into the parking orbit, then fires again to enter the final desired trajectory. The alternative to a parking orbit is direct injection, where the rocket fires continuously (except during staging) until its fuel is exhausted, ending with the payload on the final trajectory.

Parking Orbit

The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by NASA. The Space Shuttle retired from service on July 21, 2011.

Operational missions launched numerous satellites, interplanetary probes, the Hubble Space Telescope, and participated in the construction and servicing of the International Space Station.

Shuttle

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest, and is well known as a research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe.

Hubble Space Telescope

Project Mercury was the first American human spaceflight program, running from 1958 through 1963. The Mercury goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union.

Mercury missions were followed by millions around the world, and laid the groundwork for Project Gemini, which perfected the space docking maneuvers essential for the subsequent Apollo program.

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