Image of the day

Akatsuki on the ground
This photograph shows the Japanese Akatsuki probe during its final preparations on the ground. Currently atop its H-IIA launch vehicle, it is to blast off from Land of the Rising Sun on its way to orbit  around Venus where it will study the climate of this overheated planet (460°C on its surface!).
Credit: JAXA

Akatsuki mission (JAXA)

Bookmark and Share

 

Features

  • Soyuz in Guiana

    This is the mythical rocket par excellence, the one that launched Sputnik, the first satellite and Gagarin, the first man in space. The CSG, Guiana Space Centre, is now one of its launch bases: a historic achievement.

  • Star Trek and NASA

    The first episode of this famous science-fiction series was broadcast in September 1966. NASA has often made references to these programmes, as in the case of the space shuttle Enterprise, which had the same name as the spaceship in the series.

  • Alan Shepard, from suborbital to the Moon

    50 years ago on 5 May 1961, a few weeks after Gagarin, American Alan Shepard reached space. Several years later, he was to walk on the Moon, summarising as it were the race in which the Soviet Union and the United States were competing.