Iconic Space Vehicles Page 1

International Space Station

The ISS is the largest and most expensive man made construction in space ever.

It is an international collaboration between many countries and is used as a space platform for hundreds of science and technology experiments in the medium of space.

The ISS travels around the earth approximately once every 90 minutes at 7.66 kilometres per second (17,000 miles per hour)! This means it travels around the earth 16 times every day!

Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble space telescope is arguably one of the most important assemblies ever sent to space. A space telescope is able to look into the far reaches of space without suffering from the images being weakened or distorted by the effects of Earth's atmosphere.

Hubble has taken some of the most detailed images of the universe ever created and the science gathered from it has massively contributed to our understanding of the creation and development of the universe.

Hubble very famously very nearly didn't work as it was discovered there was a manufacturing error on the primary mirror. Astonishingly, mathematicians, scientists and engineers collaborated to find an earth bound solution to the problem by correcting the error using software.

Hubble will be succeeded by the James Webb Space Telescope when it is launched.

Saturn V Rocket, Lunar Module and Lunar Lander

The Saturn V rocket was until very recently the largest rocket ever created. It needed to be to send the heavy payload of the NASA Apollo missions fast (and far) enough that it could escape the earth's atmosphere and gravitational pull sufficiently that it could attain an earth -moon 'trajectory'.