As a result, the project's motto is "any orbit, any time, " and a big selling point is that the carrier aircraft can relocate more than 1, 300 miles without refueling to search for a suitable launch location.
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The watch was used to time the duration of the Descent Orbit Insertion maneuver and to time the rendezvous maneuvers after launch from the lunar surface.
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Whereas the orbiter could carry seven people at a time into orbit, the Russian Soyuz capsules being used at the moment will only ferry three individuals per flight.
Mars Express went into an initial orbit around Mars at about the time that Beagle 2 was landing, and it is now being manoeuvred into an operational orbit that will take it over both poles.
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Thousands of photographs of Earth were taken, and records for human time spent in orbit were extended.
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Also uncommented upon, yet tantalizing, are the military's intentions for the unmanned vehicle, which can remain in orbit 270 days at a time.
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This is the first shuttle flight for Fincke and Vittori, although they are both very experienced astronauts having flown a number of Soyuz missions to the ISS. Indeed, on his return, Finke's cumulative time spent in orbit will be 381 days - a record for an American.
By the time it crosses the orbit of Saturn, a few months later, the probe will be moving at around 80km a second.
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And it turns out that when the Earth is close to and zipping by the sun, when we are moving fastest in our annual orbit, that's the time of year we in the Northern Hemisphere call fall and winter.
But part of the problem with the definition - I mean, as an example - is that if you look at Mars - if Mars - if we discovered a Mars-sized object out beyond the orbit of Pluto, it couldn't be a planet, because over the age of the solar system it wouldn't have time to clear its orbit.
This is not the first time Williams has competed in orbit in a major athletic event.
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The first is to attempt to mine a large NEA in its existing orbit, dropping off a payload every time it passes by.
Bigelow predicted that the primary customers will be upwardly mobile countries including Brazil, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates that "have a difficult time getting their astronauts into orbit" and could use a private space station to barter and build up prestige.
As of 12:00 PM Eastern time, the vehicle was in orbit and presumably on track to meet up with the International Space Station.
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In previous missions in Earth orbit, you lost a lot of the mission time because you could not observe when the Earth itself was shining in the telescope.
"We need to get NASA out of the business of getting crew" to low-earth orbit, she told The Wall Street Journal at the time.
Florida time to put the unmanned capsule into the correct orbit for a historic linkup 240 miles above the Earth.
Planets, on the other hand, will be richer in heavy elements than the star they orbit, since there were fewer light elements left over by the time they formed.
Mr Shima recalled that, during his time at the agency, seven satellites were put successfully into orbit.
Three days later (42 years ago yesterday), at 12:27 Eastern Daylight Time, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins went into lunar orbit.
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The report also examines the possibility that it could have been space junk burning up on re-entry -- citing the Satview website, which notes that an object from orbit was due to burn through Earth's atmosphere at around that time.
This time, a Soyuz-2 vehicle failed to put a communications satellite into orbit after lifting away from the country's Plesetsk spaceport.
While it hibernates, the Orbit will continue to serve as a landmark, illuminated by coloured spotlights, and from time to time there will be a 15-minute light show.
The Landsat satellite was boosted into orbit by an Atlas V rocket shortly before 11:30 a.m. local time, more than an hour after lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base under mostly clear skies.
They not only had to wait until the space station steered into the proper lane for the Soyuz, but they had to pick a time when the distance between the station and the Soyuz once the Soyuz reached orbit was at a minimum.
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The vehicle left the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana at 23:06 local time on Monday (02:06 GMT, Tuesday), placing three satellites in orbit.
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This is a best-practice time-limit adopted by the world's space agencies for the removal of their equipment from orbit once it has completed its mission.
This was actually launched in 1998, but it followed a complicated fuel-saving orbit that sent it around the sun and back to Earth, to be slung towards Mars at the same time as the other missions took off.
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So it's a little bit of a joyous, giddy moment, at the same time that you're disoriented as you deal with the first couple of hours of actually being on orbit.
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