sic itur ad astra

Cray 2 Supercomputer for the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator at the NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View California.

The Apollo Soyuz Test Project Saturn IB launch vehicle thundered away from KSC’s Launch Complex 39B at 3:50 p.m. today. Aboard the Apollo Command Module were ASTP Astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Donald Slayton. The astronauts will rendezvous and dock with a Soyuz spacecraft, launched this morning from the Baikonur launch facility in the Soviet Union, carrying Soviet cosmonauts Aleksey Leonov and Valeriy Kubasov. The first international crewed spaceflight was a joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. rendezvous and docking mission. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, or ASTP, took its name from the spacecraft employed: the American Apollo and the Soviet Soyuz. The three-man Apollo crew lifted off from Kennedy Space Center aboard a Saturn IB rocket on July 15, 1975, to link up with the Soyuz that had launched a few hours earlier. A cylindrical docking module served as an airlock between the two spacecraft for transfer of the crew members.

The replacement of fins on the Apollo Soyuz Test Project S1B launch vehicle continued at KSC today. The decision to replace all of the fins was made when small hairline stress corrosion cracks were discovered in holddown fittings. Replacement of the fins is not expected to delay move of the launch vehicle to the launch pad on March 24. ASTP, the joint U.S./USSR space mission is scheduled for mid-July.

The stacking of the launch vehicle for the Apollo Soyuz Test Project was completed today with the addition of the Command and Service Modules. The vehicle for the mid-July joint U.S./USSR space mission is scheduled to be moved to the launch pad on March 24 [1975 - ed].

Saturn 501 - Apollo Saturn V liftoff from Complex 39A at 7 a.m. 9 November 1967 at Kennedy Space Center, Florida

Marine helicopter has astronaut Virgil I. Grissom in harness and is bringing him up out of the water. The Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft has just sunk below the water. His Mercury-Redstone 4 launch was the second in the U.S. manned space effort.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower visits Cape Kennedy.

Soviet Space Station and Shuttle In the mid-1980s,

Moscow announced plans to have a large, permanently manned space station orbiting the Earth in the 1990s. They launched MIR, the core vehicle of a modular space station, in February 1986. The Soviets planned to use the space shuttle orbiter, then in development, to carry payloads and assist in the assembly of the space station.

HOTOL in flight

Like a proud peacock displaying its tail, Enceladus shows off its beautiful plume to the Cassini spacecraft’s cameras.

Enceladus (313 miles, or 504 kilometers across) is seen here illuminated by light reflected off Saturn.

This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Enceladus. North on Enceladus is up and rotated 45 degrees to the right. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 18, 2013.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 483,000 miles (777,000 kilometers) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 173 degrees. Image scale is 3 miles (5 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Dramatically reflected by the waters of the extensive lagoonal sysem adjacent to Launch Pad A, the Space Shuttle, the world’s first reusable space vehicle, is lighted by spotlights and the setting sun on the evening prior to Flight Readiness Firing of the orbiter Columbia’s main engines. The 20-second firing was a milestone procedure in flight preparation of the world’s first reusable space vehicle.

NASA/Mercury capsule No. 13 atop MA-6 with egress facility extended to capsule on Pad 14 on the Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex.

After arrival at Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex, (Skid Strip), President John F. Kennedy (left) is welcomed by a Color Guard. Dr. Kurt Debus is at right. The President is touring Complex 37, CCMTA.