The year 2015 saw 87 orbital launch attempts from spaceports across the globe – 84 missions reached orbit in a year that saw 82 successful orbital launches. Here are photos of all of 2015’s space launches.
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NASA announced on Tuesday that the Mars InSight mission is forced to suspend its plans of a March 2016 launch after the key instrument of the stationary Mars lander suffered a series of leaks that can not be repaired in time to meet the planetary launch window.
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NASA’s Dawn mission, currently in the midst of studying Dwarf Planet Ceres, released new findings on some of the curious features discovered on Ceres after the craft’s arrival back in March, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit two celestial bodies in the solar system.
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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced earlier this week that the agency’s Akatsuki Venus Orbiter successfully completed its last-chance orbital insertion maneuver and was tracked close to the expected orbit around Venus, saving a mission that had been feared lost after the spacecraft had missed its first opportunity of entering orbit around Earth’s neighbor planet.
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ESA’s LISA Pathfinder spacecraft has wrapped up its three-day checkout sequence and began a series of six propulsive maneuvers to depart Earth and head towards the Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1 where it is expected to arrive in late January to begin its demonstration mission of a highly precise distance measurement system and Micro-Propulsion Systems for extremely accurate spacecraft control.
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Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft, also known as the Venus Climate Orbiter, is gearing up for its second and final chance to enter orbit around Venus after missing the planet in 2010 due to a problem with the craft’s propulsion system.
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Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft zipped past Earth on Thursday, one year after the probe’s launch atop an H-IIA rocket.
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ESA’s LISA Pathfinder was provided with an on-target orbital delivery by its Vega launch vehicle, enabling the craft to depart Low Earth Orbit in the coming days in order to begin its departure of Earth to head towards the L1 Earth-Sun Lagrange Point where the spacecraft is expected to arrive in late January.
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A Vega rocket blasts off from the Guiana Space Center on December 3, 2015, carrying ESA’s LISA Pathfinder into orbit for a demonstration mission that will proof the technologies for the detection of gravitational waves hypothesized by Einstein 100 years ago.
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ESA’s LISA Pathfinder embarked on a critical demonstration mission on Thursday, making a thundering blastoff atop a Vega rocket launching from the ZLV launch site at the Guiana Space Center for a trip to Low Earth Orbit.
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A Vega rocket blasts off from the Guiana Space Center on December 3, 2015, carrying ESA’s LISA Pathfinder into orbit for a demonstration mission that will proof the technologies for the detection of gravitational waves hypothesized by Einstein 100 years ago.
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The launch of ESA’s LISA Pathfinder Mission atop a Vega rocket has been re-aligned for Thursday morning at 4:04:00 UTC.
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Japan’s Hayabusa 2 Asteroid Explorer is inbound for a flyby of Earth on Thursday after the first year of its three-and-a-half-year journey to asteroid Ryugu where the spacecraft will complete an 18-month that will include the deployment of four small landers and an explosive penetrator as well as a series of ambitious brief touchdowns for sample collection.
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India’s Mars Orbiter Mission recently celebrated the two-year anniversary of its launch after the mission was already able to mark its first anniversary in orbit around the Red Planet.
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NASA’s MAVEN mission presented in its initial science findings a key factor that played a role in the loss of most of the Martian atmosphere and the transition of Mars from a warm and wet environment capable of supporting life to the cold, deserted world we see today.
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The Curiosity rover on Mars is in the midst of its ninth drilling campaign since landing on the Red Planet a little over three years ago. The drilling operation is part of the rover’s ascent of the slopes of Mount Sharp to present scientists with a look at the different periods of ancient Martian environments that – even for extended periods – provided all ingredients needed for harboring life.
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New Horizons has finished delivering new photos of the spacecraft’s encounter with the Pluto System until September, but apparently saved the most impressive pictures for last. Mission scientists provided another update on their preliminary findings from First-Look and High-Priority Data downlink sessions that were completed in the week following the July 14 encounter.
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