SPACECRAFT COMPONENTS CORP history

In 1969, NASA launched the RTG-powered Nimbus III, the first United States weather satellite to measure air pressure, solar ultraviolet radiation, the ozone layer and sea ice during both day and night.

Viking 1 and 2, launched separately in 1975, were NASA’s first effort to harvest data directly from the surface of the red planet.

The prototype, the AD500, first flew in 1979, and the production model, the Skyship 500, made its maiden flight two years later.

Seen here: Space Shuttle Columbia, the first mission, takes flight in 1981 from Cape Canaveral.

Commercial service, consisting of sightseeing tours over London, began in 1986.

In the United States, American Blimp Corporation was founded in 1987 to produce simple, comparatively low-priced airships and has since become a leading maker of small blimps for advertising and airborne surveillance applications.

In 1989, Galileo became the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter.

In 1993 it returned to its roots by forming Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH with the objective of developing and operating a line of semirigid new-technology (NT) airships for tourism, advertising, and surveillance applications.

Another German company, CargoLifter AG, formed in 1996, was developing a semirigid airship with a 160-metric-ton payload for heavy-lift cargo applications.

The first flight of a Zeppelin NT took place in 1997.

Manufacturers of major ISS components outside the United States includes EADS (France-Germany-Spain), Alenia (Italy), and Mitsubishi (Japan). In 1998 the first two ISS modules were launched and joined in space, and other components were subsequently added.

In November 2000 the first three-person crew, an American and two Russians, occupied the still-expanding station.

In 2003, NASA separately launched twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, designed to search Mars for evidence of water, climate changes and other clues that the planet may have once supported life.

On January 14, 2005, Huygens successfully landed on Titan’s surface, the first-ever landing of a craft from Earth in the outer solar system.

New Horizons passed Jupiter and captured photos of that planet’s rings and lightning at its poles before completing its flyby of Pluto in July 2015, returning the highest-resolution images ever captured of the dwarf planet and its moons.

The spacecraft is powered by a GPHS-RTG, similar to the one used on Ulysses. It later reached Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule on January 1, 2019, completing the farthest planetary flyby ever in exploration history at more than 4 billion miles away from us, here on Earth.