Robert Hutchings Goddard

Robert Goddard was an aerospace pioneer who

designed the liquid-propellant rocket and made
one of the first serious proposals for flight to the
moon. Goddard received limited support for his
research during his lifetime, but his work was
later recognized and used extensively in the
development of missiles and spacecraft
In the 1950s and 1960s Sergei Korolyov served
as chief designer of Soviet space vehicles,
including the first artificial orbiting Earth
satellite, Sputnik 1. Because of his role in
developing Soviet rockets during the Cold War,
many of his accomplishments remained secret
until his death in 1966.
A rocket blasts off from its launching
pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Most of the rocket is filled with liquid
fuel and a liquid oxidizing agent.
The fuel and oxidizing agent mix
and ignite in the combustion
chamber; the presence of the
oxidizing agent ensures that the fuel
burns far more efficiently than it
could if it depended on the
surrounding air for oxygen
The Soviet space station complex Mir, seen
here from an approaching spacecraft, was put
into orbit on February 19, 1986. On March 22,
1995, Valeri Polyakov completed a stay of 437
days aboard Mir
Solid-Propellant Rocket
When the fuel in a solid-propellant rocket is
ignited, the gases formed during combustion
are forced out the nozzle and the rocket moves
forward. The fuel is called the grain and is often
formed with a hollow core for longer burning
Here, at a McDonnell-Douglas aircraft assembly
line, several large passenger airliners are in
production. In the foreground, the wing
infrastructure is fastened to a body section.
Further on the assembly line, the tail section
and engine mounts are added.
In order to observe celestial X-ray sources, a
special kind of telescope must be designed
and launched into orbit, because the Earth’s
atmosphere absorbs X-rays from space. It is
not feasible to make lenses to focus X-rays,
because they cannot be refracted (bent) as
ordinary light rays can. An X-ray telescope
uses sets of nested, slightly tapering, cylinders
to focus X-rays onto a detector
A fish-eye lens took this photograph of the
flight deck of the space shuttle Columbia. The
commander and pilot are shown seated at
the instrument panel
The weightlessness of space makes it
possible to move about with ease. Here,
astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery
play in the shuttle’s mid-deck. David Hilmers
(left) uses his arms and legs to propel himself
after George Nelson (right) and John Lounge
(bottom
.
missiles are shown in this war zone. The missile
travelling towards the target helicopters is a
command-guided missile. The air-to-air guided
missile shown in the upper right corner is heat
sensitive; its guidance mechanism homes in on
the heat trail left by the target plane. Because it
has no guidance system, a ballistic missile
follows a trajectory determined by the angle at
which it is fired.
The VOR station uses a central aerial to
broadcast a continuous reference signal and
four variable signal aerials that produce a beam
rotating at 1800 rpm. The aircraft’s receiver
compares the phases of the signals to
determine the bearing of the plane and indicates
whether the plane is to the left or right of the
desired course.
An Airborne Warning and Control System
(AWACS) aircraft carries advanced search radar
systems for detecting enemy aircraft and
missiles. The AWACS transmits information to
control centres on land or on ships at sea and
can call up fighter aircraft and other forces to
deal with the threat.
V-2 Rocket First fired in 1942, the V-2 rocket was
the first successful large liquid-propellant rocket.
Developed by German engineer Wernher von
Braun, the V-2 was used by the Germans to
bombard England during World War II.
. Thrust to propel a rocket is based on
Isaac Newton's third law of motion which
states that for every action, there is an equal
and opposite reaction. The principle of a
rocket motor may be understood by
considering the example of a closed container
filled with a compressed gas. Within this
container the gas exerts equal pressure on
every point of its walls