{"id":521,"date":"2010-11-26T14:39:15","date_gmt":"2010-11-26T14:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=521"},"modified":"2010-11-26T14:39:15","modified_gmt":"2010-11-26T14:39:15","slug":"four-international-space-launches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/four-international-space-launches\/","title":{"rendered":"Four International Space Launches"},"content":{"rendered":"

This day in space history — November 26 — has a very international flair, with space activities involving countries around the world.<\/p>\n

Forty-five years ago today, in 1965, France joined the “space launch club” by launching its first satellite, Asterix-1<\/a>, on a Diamant-A launch vehicle out of Hammaguir, Algeria. (According to this Wikipedia article<\/a>, the satellite was originally designated simply “A-1,” and later renamed after the famous French cartoon.) With this launch, France became the only nation other than the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. to launch a satellite with its own rocket.<\/p>\n

On the same day, the U.S.S.R. launched Cosmos-97<\/a>, a DS-type (Dnepropetrovsk Sputnik) military satellite, on a Kosmos-2 rocket out of Kapustin Yar.<\/p>\n

And 35 years ago today, in 1975, the Peoples Republic of China launched the military photoreconnaissance satellite China-4<\/a> on a Long March CZ-2 launch vehicle out of Shuang Cheng-Tzu. China-4 was the PRC’s first retrievable satellite; its photo canister returned to earth ten days after launch and was recovered successfully.<\/p>\n

And 25 years ago today — November 26, 1985* — the Space Shuttle Atlantis<\/em> launched from the Kennedy Space Center on an international mission of its own.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(During STS-61B, astronaut Jerry Ross, on the Remote Manipulator System, works on the ACCESS [Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structure] truss. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nSTS-61B<\/a> included U.S. astronauts Brewster H. Shaw, Bryan D. O’Connor, Mary L. Cleave, Sherwood C. Spring, Jerry L. Ross, and Charles D. Walter, along with the first Mexican-citizen astronaut, Rudolfo Neri Vela. The crew launched three international communications satellites: Morelos-B<\/a> for Mexico, Aussat-2<\/a> for Australia, and Satcom KU-2<\/a> for the U.S.<\/p>\n

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\n* The National Space Science Data Center<\/a> lists the launch on November 27th, because the Zulu data had already changed when the shuttle lifted off at 7:29 p.m. EST on the 26th.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This day in space history — November 26 — has a very international flair, with space activities involving countries around the world. Forty-five years ago today, in 1965, France joined the “space launch club” by launching its first satellite, Asterix-1, on a Diamant-A launch vehicle out of Hammaguir, Algeria. (According \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,11,12],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-space-history","tag-space-shuttle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}