Get Ready for Liftoff! A Comprehensive List of All NASA Rocket Launches

If you’re an American, chances are you’ve heard of NASA at least once in your life. Even if you aren’t one of those people who runs around telling everybody how amazing our space program is, you may have watched the moon landing in 1969 or been mesmerized by the images sent back from the Mars rovers that are currently exploring the Red Planet.

In either case, we owe it to ourselves to know more about this incredible space agency and its history of rocket launches here on Earth and beyond our atmosphere.

Related Article : best managed WordPress hosting

Introduction

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a government agency that has been around since 1958. The agency was created to pursue scientific research and educate the public in the peaceful use of outer space. The mission has evolved over time, but NASA's goals have never changed. 

They continue to explore space through rocket launches, testing new technology, launching spacecrafts and developing new ways to observe Earth. This blog post will focus on the NAsA rocket launches that have already taken place. 

The first thing you'll notice about this list is that it includes all NASA rocket launches from 1958-2017. You might also notice that each launch number corresponds to the year of when it took place. That being said, there are two types of NASA rocket launches: suborbital and orbital.

Orbital means the object leaves Earth's orbit while suborbital means it only goes up into space before falling back down to earth after reaching a maximum altitude. It can be confusing because NASA rockets often fall under both categories depending on what type they are designed for (suborbital or orbital). So when NASA decides which category their rockets belong in, they base it off their height and whether or not they reenter earth's atmosphere once launched.

Rockets

Nasa (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is an independent agency in the United States government charged with exploring space. It conducts space exploration, Earth observations, and aeronautical research. Over the course of its 60-year history, it has made great strides in advancing aeronautics and aerospace technology.

If you're interested in following or being a part of nasa's progress, here is a comprehensive list of all nasa rocket launches to date. There have been over 150 NASA rocket launches since 1957 when the organization was established. Some are big like the Saturn V that launched the Apollo 11 crew to make man's first landing on the moon. 

The launch schedule for each year can be found on their website. You'll notice that there are many different rockets for different purposes, such as smaller rockets for launching satellites into orbit and bigger rockets used for carrying astronauts into space. You can also find details about NASA rocket launches such as who, what, where and why via this blog post. Happy reading! 

(New) Another very important part of Nasa is JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). They have a great history in spacecraft development and its success. Their successful missions include Voyager's grand tour to outer solar system, Galileo Jupiter orbiter & probe, Magellan Venus- Mercury radar mapper, Mariner 9 Mars orbital mission etc.

Many other missions were also cancelled in process like Pluto Express, Comet Nucleus Sample Return mission etc. Scientists at JPL are working day and night to send humans to Mars by 2030s at least once before Earth’s Sun becomes a Red Giant star in 5 billion years time frame which will make Earth uninhabitable due to strong UV radiation from Red Giant star which causes DNA mutation & life extinction.

Launches

NASA has successfully launched space missions since 1958. The first rocket mission, in fact, was the Mercury-Redstone 3 flight on November 21st, 1959. Here is a list of all NASA rocket launches, including current and future flights.

The countdown to liftoff begins... As of December 12th, 2018, there have been 858 successful NASA rocket launches. And this number doesn't include satellites, probes, or manned spaceflight. Pretty cool! Now that we know how many rockets were launched, let's take a closer look at the most common types of rockets used by NASA. 

Another Article : VGA RTX 4080

The two types most commonly used are liquid fuel rockets and solid fuel rockets. Liquid fuel rockets use an engine that generates thrust through propellants (a type of fuel) that are stored in tanks at high pressure until they are forced into a combustion chamber where they mix with oxygen from the atmosphere to generate thrust.

Solid fuel rockets use reactive chemicals such as aluminum powder, ammonium perchlorate composite propellant, polystyrene resin, iron oxide (rust), dextrin binder with epoxy curing agent for structural integrity. Solid fuel rockets can be single stage, or multistage. Multistage rockets require only one propulsion system because their stages provide additional acceleration when exhausted.

However, these also add complexity to the design and create more potential points of failure because each stage must be ignited before moving on to the next stage. A good example of this is SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket which includes nine Merlin engines in its first stage. NASA uses both types of rockets, but liquid fuel rockets seem to be favored over solid fuel rockets. In fact, nearly 96% of NASA rocket launches involve liquid fuel instead of solid fuels.

One major reason for this is that it costs less money to launch a liquid fueled rocket than it does to launch a solider fueled rocket; while soliders may cost around $10 million dollars each, according to some estimates the average cost per gallon of kerosene (the substance needed for most modern day liquid fuels) is about $1 dollar.

Conclusion

NASA has been launching a rocket every year since the 1960s, and they're still going strong. From the massive Saturn V rockets to the tiny sounding rockets, NASA's track record is second to none. Here's a list of every NASA rocket launch from December 20, 1957 to February 8, 2016. 

The New Horizons is set to take off next month on an historic journey through space - so keep your eyes peeled for more launches in the near future. We'll update this post as soon as we have new information. In the meantime, be sure to check out our recent blog posts about how exactly SpaceX plans to colonize Mars and how NASA can predict when solar flares will hit Earth. And don't forget to share with your friends if you enjoyed it!