10 OF HISTORY’S MOST IMPRESSIVE SPACE MACHINES

Rockets, Rovers, and Planetary Probes: History’s Most Badass Space Machines
By Adam Mann, Wired, 1 July 2013.

As any 6-year-old boy will tell you, the coolest things in life are giant machines and outer space.

Even for the rest of us, the giant machines that travel through space are fascinating if we stop to think about it. There is a certain thrill in knowing that some craft has been propelled beyond the confines of our planet. For the last 70 or so years, we've shot many machines into the vast and final frontier, carrying scientific instruments, Earth-observing satellites, and extraordinary men and women to inspect, explore, and redefine our world and the universe beyond.

Most of these machines never return home. But those that do come back always find their way to a museum to be a source of amazement and inspiration for the public.

Here, Wired takes a look at some of the biggest, farthest-traveling, and most impressive machines designed and launched during the Space Age. As usual, we can only highlight a few of the great ones and are sure you'll let us know what we missed in the comments.

1. V-2 sounding rockets

Image: Air Research and Development Command/U.S. Navy

When aliens finally show up and ask humans how we got into the whole spaceflight business, expect there to be some shoe-gazing and uncomfortable shuffling as we cough out something about the Germans. Truth is, the first man-made object to get to space, the V-2 rocket, was created by the Nazi regime and used to kill innocent civilians in Belgium, England, France and elsewhere.

The first photo of Earth taken from space. Image: U.S. Army.

Though a weapon of combat, the V-2 found a new and much better purpose after World War II: carrying scientific instruments to the upper reaches of the atmosphere to provide our first data about space. From 1946 to 1951, researchers at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico sent about 80 experiments more than 160 kilometres above the Earth. They returned valuable information about solar radiation, the ionosphere, and the upper atmosphere.

The White Sands operation accomplished some awesome firsts in spaceflight. One spacecraft recorded the first video ever taken of the Earth from space. Another carried a canister of fruit flies and various seeds that were safely parachuted back to the ground. Later rockets carried mice and rhesus monkeys to space (some of which survived but many of which, unfortunately, did not). Still, the information gained from the V-2 sounding rocket tests was incalculably valuable and set up many fields of study for later space scientists.

2. Sputnik

Image: NASA

It’s not often that a single machine is able to change the entire course of history. Yet the launch of the Soviet Sputnik 1 in 1957 catalyzed a race between two national powers that culminated in the Apollo moon landing a little more than a decade later.

The silver satellite was only 58 centimetres in diameter, barely larger than a beach ball. It broadcast a radio signal with a chirping A-flat beep-beep that could be heard by anyone with the right equipment as the object passed overhead, but had no military objectives. Yet the launch precipitated a crisis of confidence in Americans. With Sputnik, the USSR seemed to show its superior technological might over the land of the free.

In order to catch up to the Soviets, the U.S. began to pour massive amounts of money into science education. The National Science Foundation found its budget in 1959 four times greater than it had been the year previous. In the wake of Sputnik, the Department of Defense created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which later became DARPA and helped create the internet.

Though rocketry had been an area of research in the U.S., Sputnik’s launch spurred the Army Ballistic Missile Agency to put the first American satellite in space four months later. And, about a year after Sputnik, President Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA.

Because of Sputnik, the interests of spaceflight enthusiasts became dramatically aligned with the interests of the U.S. The feeling that Americans were trailing in the Space Race, which persisted for years after Sputnik, led President Kennedy to declare a bold and dramatic mission: to send a person to the moon within a decade and return him safely. Taxpayers who had been children at the time of Sputnik were far more willing to pay for the costs of the Apollo project and it has been speculated that the U.S.’s expensive moon shot might not have occurred if that small silver satellite had not flown around the Earth.

3. Saturn V

Image: Reubenbarton/Wikimedia

The Saturn V rocket is all about superlatives. To this day, it remains the largest, tallest, heaviest, and most powerful launch vehicle to ever leave the Earth’s surface. And, most importantly, it sent people to the moon, still the most impressive accomplishment in the history of manned spaceflight. The closest competition to the Saturn V’s success came from the Soviet N1 rockets, which spectacularly failed at launch four times in a row.

Apollo 11 leaving for the moon. You can’t consider yourself an American unless seeing this photo

immediately makes you start singing this song in your head. Image: NASA.

Just to build the monstrous Saturn V, NASA had to construct one of the largest buildings by volume in the world. The nearly 50-story Vertical Assembly Building has the largest doors ever made and is so big that the place has its own weather system. The VAB went on to house the next illustrious and badass American space vehicle, the Space Shuttle.

Starting with an unmanned test flight in 1967, the Saturn V had 13 successful launches. Each of the early flights brought people one stage closer to their goal of landing on the moon until Apollo 11, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin finally touched down at the Sea of Tranquillity. Subsequent Saturn V vehicles brought 10 more men to the moon while the final launch took America’s first space station, Skylab, to Earth orbit.

4. Apollo Lunar Module

Image: NASA

OK, we’re not saying that the Apollo Command/Service spacecraft isn’t great but there’s pretty much nothing more iconic than the lunar landing vehicle when it comes to space machines. The Lunar Module is what many people think of when they picture the Apollo project and was pretty integral to that whole winning the Space Race thing.

The sleek but cramped Command/Service module that took people to the moon actually suffered some major malfunctions during Apollo - tragically on Apollo 1 when the three-man crew was killed and then again when an oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13, jeopardizing the astronauts en route to the moon.

The lunar landing vehicle, on the other hand, was incredibly reliable, never once experiencing a major failure that impacted the mission. In fact, after the Apollo 13 service module was damaged, the three astronauts holed up in their Lunar Module while they heroically worked to stave off further disaster.

In addition to being the workhorse bringing people to the moon, the Lunar Module also carried cameras, supplies, and, on the later Apollo missions, that cool moon buggy the astronauts drove around in. On their return, the crafts collectively delivered more than 380 kilograms of lunar rocks and material, which have been extremely valuable to scientists learning about the moon ever since.

Image: NASA

An adorable early model of the Lunar Module is available for you to go “Squee!” at above.

5. Venera and Vega series

Image: Roscosmos via NASA

Quick: What planet, besides Earth, have we landed more robots on than any other in the solar system? Your first inclination would probably be Mars but that’s because most of us have forgotten the enormous accomplishments of the Soviet Venera and Vega probes.

Between 1961 and 1984, the USSR sent 16 robots to Venus, eight of which successfully landed on its surface and transmitted information. In 1985, two more probes, Vega 1 and 2, touched down on our sister planet for a total of 10 landings. In contrast, there have only been seven successful robotic landings on Mars, all of them American (the Russians had probes that reached the ground, but none that survived more than a few seconds).

The Venera series achieved a number of notable firsts. Though the first few probes were crushed by Venus’ insanely high atmospheric pressure, the stubborn Soviets kept trying. Venera 7 accomplished the first soft landing ever on another planet and transmitted the first data from Venus to Earth. It survived only 23 minutes but it taught scientists that the Venusian surface is a really difficult place to operate on, with atmospheric pressure 90 times that of Earth and average temperatures of 465 degrees Celsius.

Veneras 9 and 10 delivered the first pictures from the surface of Venus, showing the rocky landscape in the immediate vicinity of the probes. Veneras 13 and 14 operated the first drilling ever done on another planet. And Veneras 15 and 16, which opted out of landing robots, mapped the planet’s surface with radar.

Colour photo from Venera 13. Image: Roscosmos via NASA.

Rarely remembered, Vegas 1 and 2 were probably some of the coolest robotic planetary missions ever. These twin probes each consisted of a spacecraft that arrived at Venus and released a lander that touched down on the surface and a balloon probe that floated 54 kilometres in the atmosphere. The balloons survived two days in the upper atmosphere, delivering data about wind speed, weather, and possibly experiencing an extraterrestrial drizzle. No other balloon crafts have ever been deployed on another world. In addition, the Vega spacecraft went on to visit Halley’s comet, returning data about its frozen surface.

6. Voyager

Image: Don Davis for NASA

Until a few decades ago, human eyes had never been able to look at the solar system from the outside in. But thanks to the Voyager probes, we finally know the beauty and starkness of our home in space and Earth’s significance as a pale blue dot.

Launched in 1977 on a grand tour of the outer planets, Voyager 1 and 2 delivered some of the most spectacular photographs the world had ever seen. The twin robots produced incredible data about the clouds of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn, as well as these two enormous planets’ menagerie of moons. And it is likely that Voyager 2 will remain the only probe to ever visit Uranus and Neptune for many years to come.

Voyager 1 has travelled farther from Earth than any man-made object, surpassing both its twin and the earlier Pioneer probes. It is currently flying out 20 billion kilometres away, or more than 120 times the distance between the Earth and the sun, where it has recently discovered an odd and unexpected region. While it has yet to actually leave the solar system, it will no doubt take a very long time before any other robots (or humans) surpass that amazing record.

7. Salyut (Almaz)

Image: Don S. Montgomery, USN (Ret.)/Wikimedia

It’s already pretty kickass that the Soviets launched the world’s first space station, Salyut 1, in 1971. It’s even more awesome that this was just the first of six stations that the USSR launched during the next 15 years (aside from the International Space Station, the U.S. has only ever had one home in space, Skylab). But likely the best part of the Salyut missions was the fact that they were really just a very secretive cover for Russia’s military Almaz space stations.

Sure, as early as 1963 the U.S. wanted a military observatory in space. But the Americans never went very far in their plans and certainly didn’t hide them under the guise of a scientific multi-station program.

The Salyut program was the first time people ever had a home in space beyond some tiny capsules. Astronauts on the different Salyut stations set records for longest durations in space, conducted important scientific and medical experiments, and, on one occasion, performed a badass resuscitation of their nearly abandoned station.

But it was the military objectives of the Salyut project that make up its one-of-a-kind awesome sauce. Under the codename Almaz, these high-flying platforms served as a place for Soviet astronauts to take high-resolution images of U.S. military bases, even developing the film right there in space.

Almaz 2, the first successful Almaz station, even had a rapid-fire cannon. It was meant for “self-defense” and, because it might shake the station, was never tested in space. Too bad the ISS doesn't have a cannon of its own, so astronauts could defend themselves against an attack - or at least pass the time by shooting space junk.

8. Space Shuttle

Image: NASA

When the Space Shuttles were retired in 2011, there were widespread lamentations and a feeling that the U.S. had lost something that once made it great. Which is strange, considering the protests from the spaceflight community in the late 1960s and early '70s when President Nixon threw his support behind building the fleet. At the time, there was a worry that the cost of building and flying these machines would take away from other post-Apollo dreams, such as returning to the moon or going to Mars and beyond.

Space Shuttle Atlantis fires her powerful engines. Image: NASA.

But over the three decades of their operation, the Space Shuttle fleet proved to be an enduring and important piece in the history of spaceflight. Often said to be the most complex machines ever built, each shuttle had more than 2.5 million parts and an impressive array of advanced technology and materials, like their well-known thermal tiles. As partially reusable vehicles, Space Shuttles Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour, and Atlantis did a lot of heavy lifting, bringing satellites to orbit and being an integral part of building the International Space Station. Perhaps their greatest payload was the Hubble Space Telescope, carried to orbit by Atlantis in 1990, which has dramatically changed astronomers’ view of the universe and brought incredible and engaging photos to the public.

The final space shuttle, Atlantis, returns to Earth after its final flight. Image: NASA.

The Space Shuttle fleet was not without its dark and tragic sides. Eleven shuttle flights between 1982 and 1992 carried classified cargoes for the U.S.'s secretive National Reconnaissance Office. On at least one occasion, deploying the NRO’s spy satellite required heroic and still-unknown manoeuvres by NASA’s astronauts. And two shuttles, Challenger and Columbia, suffered devastating disasters, killing their crews and nearly grounding the fleet forever.

In retirement, the Space Shuttles have found redemption. Despite some squabbles, each has received a hero’s welcome as it reached its final resting place in a museum.

9. Cassini-Huygens

Image: NASA

Some places in the solar system are more popular than others. The moon is well-trodden ground. NASA took people there more than 40 years ago and a good number of machines either preceded them or followed in their footsteps. We’ve sent satellites and robotic probes many times to Venus and Mars.

But the distant outer reaches of our solar system remain a mostly unvisited frontier. Considering the challenges and time it takes to get there, the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn stands at the top of the handful of missions that have gone.

Sure, Pioneer and Voyager broke ground and Galileo was a dedicated surveyor of the largest planet, Jupiter. But Cassini gets its awesomeness from the fact that Saturn is, by far, the most stunning planet in our solar system. It’s got gorgeous rings that seem to sparkle photogenically from every angle. It’s got incredible storm systems that can wrap around the planet and generate insanely hot vortexes. And, it’s got a magnificent array of mysterious moons.

Cassini also stands out because it has accomplished the only landing in the outer solar system. In 2005, a year after the mission arrived at Saturn, the Huygens descent probe journeyed down to the surface of Titan, returning amazing footage from the ground. Titan is a weird and wonderful moon, simultaneously Earth-like and alien. It’s likely that nothing will surpass this triumph until NASA approves a boat probe to float on one of Titan’s lakes.

Cassini has uncovered a trove of exciting scientific information by discovering new moons of Saturn, exploring the jetting geysers of Enceladus, and studying the bizarre polar hexagon at Saturn’s north pole. The probe will continue to collect data until at least 2017, when it is scheduled to be decommissioned.

10. Curiosity rover

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Listen, we love all of our Mars probes. Viking 1 and 2 accomplished the first successful landing on the Red Planet. Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity are awesome rovers. Phoenix is named after a sweet mythological bird. But in terms of sheer badassery, it’s hard to compete with Curiosity.

Curiosity is big, roughly the same size as a Mini Cooper and with a main mast that’s a foot taller than a Humvee. Curiosity is powerful, with a suite of state-of-the-art laboratory technologies and 17 incredible cameras. And Curiosity is rugged, powered by a live thermonuclear heart that keeps it chugging away during the frigid Martian nights, and is expected to last at least 14 years.

After surviving the series of ninja moves that comprised its landing sequence, Curiosity has been roaming around Gale Crater, uncovering incredible details of Mars’ watery past. It does all of this while sending back the most amazing pictures this side of the sun and looking like an adorably beefed-up version of Wall-E.

Curiosity has captured the public imagination and is expected to help scientists figure out whether or not Mars could have ever been a place to host life. It’s no wonder that NASA - constrained by budgets and seemingly singularly focused on Mars - opted to simply follow up its popular mission with a sequel: the Mars 2020 rover, which we hope has at least 20 lasers so we can call it Curiosity 2: The Wrath of Rover.

[Source: Wired. Edited.]