* 1989-- Venus / Earth / Moon / Gaspra / Ida / Jupiter-Success-Galileo flyby, orbiter and atmospheric probe

Columbia was the only orbiter launched with its Space Shuttle external tank | external tank painted white, which was later discontinued to save weight.

The winged Space Shuttle orbiter was launched vertically, usually carrying four to seven astronauts ( although eight have been carried ) and up to 50, 000 lb ( 22, 700 kg ) of payload into low Earth orbit ( LEO ).

To resolve this problem, two landers were launched with orbiter type buses, but without fuel to enter orbit.

The Lunar Orbiter program was a series of five unmanned lunar orbiter missions launched by the United States from 1966 through 1967.

Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions consisted of identical spacecraft, each with an orbiter and an attached lander, they were launched by Proton K heavy launch vehicle with a Blok D upper stage.

The Indian Space Research Organisation ( ISRO ) launched India's first Moon orbiter, Chandrayaan-1, in October 2008.

Space orbiter Buran ( spacecraft ) | Buran launched, orbited Earth, and landed as an unmanned spacecraft in 1988 ( shown here at an airshow )

* NEAR Shoemaker — US — asteroid 433 Eros orbiter, which later landed on the asteroid's surface, launched 1996

* Hayabusa — Japanese — asteroid orbiter, lander and sample return, launched 2003, returned June 13, 2010

* Rosetta — European — comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko orbiter and lander ( Philae ); launched 2004

* MESSENGER — US Mercury orbiter, launched 2004

Viking 1 and 2 were launched respectively in August and September 1975, each comprising an orbiter vehicle and a lander.

Despite being cheaper and simpler than the Voyager Mars program ( using the same Mariner 8 / 9 design for the orbiter, but with an automobile-sized lander with a very expensive microbiology lab ), the Viking 1 and Viking 2 probes were launched to Mars on separate Titan IIIE / Centaur rockets in 1975 and reached Mars in 1976.

STS-46 was a NASA space shuttle mission using orbiter Atlantis and launched on 31 July 1992 at 9: 56: 48 am EDT.

STS-52 was a Space Transportation System ( NASA Space Shuttle ) mission using orbiter Columbia, and launched 22 October 1992.

STS-72, the 74th flight of the Space Shuttle program and the 10th of the orbiter Endeavour was launched at 4: 41AM EST January 11, 1996 after a brief delay due to communication issues.

** Chang ' e 1-the first CLEP lunar orbiter, launched on 24 October 2007

** Chang ' e 2-the second CLEP orbiter, launched on 1 October 2010

On October 24, 2007, Chang ' e 1, an un-manned Moon orbiter of the Chang ' e program, was successfully launched from the facility, marking the beginning of China ’ s lunar exploration program.

* Dawn ( spacecraft ), a space orbiter launched in 2007 to the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres

Flight 13, which launched the lunar orbiter SELENE, was the first H-IIA launched after this privatization.

The Chinese Yinghuo-1 orbiter was launched together with Fobos-Grunt.

It was the first night launch of a Space Shuttle orbiter since STS-113, which launched on 23 November 2002.

The orbiter helped analyze potential landing sites for the rovers and performed the same task for NASA's Phoenix mission, which landed on Mars in May, 2008.

Odyssey aided NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached Mars in March 2006, by monitoring atmospheric conditions during months when the newly arrived orbiter used aerobraking to alter its orbit into the desired shape.

The orbiter was lifted up on a sling very similar to the one used at Kennedy Space Center and placed inside the Dynamic Test Stand building, and there mated to the Vertical Mate Ground Vibration Test tank ( VMGVT-ET ), which in turn was attached to a set of inert Solid Rocket Boosters ( SRB ) to form a complete shuttle launch stack, and marked the first time in the program's history that all Space Shuttle elements, an Orbiter, an External Tank ( ET ), and two SRBs, were mated together.

In 2003 after the breakup of Columbia during re-entry, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board conducted tests at Southwest Research Institute, which used an air gun to shoot foam blocks of similar size, mass and speed to that which struck Columbia at a test structure which mechanically replicated the orbiter wing leading edge.

As the second orbiter to be constructed, yet the first able to fly into space, Columbia was roughly heavier than subsequent orbiters such as Endeavour, which were of a slightly different design, and had benefited from advances in materials technology.

Atlantis was the only orbiter which lacked the ability to draw power from the International Space Station while docked there ; it had to continue to provide its own power through fuel cells.

The orbiter is named after the British HMS Endeavour, the ship which took Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery ( 1768 – 1771 ).

* The Station-to-Shuttle Power Transfer System ( SSPTS ), which converted 8 kilowatts of DC power from the ISS main voltage of 120VDC to the orbiter bus voltage of 28VDC.

The Buran orbiter which flew the test flight was crushed in the Buran hangar collapse on May 12, 2002 in Kazakhstan.

After separation and landing, the lander had a mass of about and the orbiter The total launch mass was of which were propellant and attitude control gas.

* A 36-wheeled transport trailer, the Orbiter Transfer System, originally built for the U. S. Air Force's launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California ( since then converted for Delta IV rockets ) would transport the orbiter from the landing facility to the launch pad, which allowed both " stacking " and launch without utilizing a separate VAB-style building and crawler-transporter roadway.

The Mars 4M spacecraft ; Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions consisted of identical spacecraft, each with an orbiter and an attached lander, which became the first spacecraft to reach the surface of Mars.

Valles Marineris ( Latin for Mariner Valleys, named after the Mariner 9 Mars orbiter of 1971 – 72 which discovered it ) is a system of canyons that runs along the Martian surface east of the Tharsis region.

The equipment was powered by batteries which were charged by the orbiter prior to separation.

The equipment was powered by batteries which were charged by the orbiter prior to separation.

** Earlier generation displays were more susceptible to screen burn-in and image retention, recent models have a pixel orbiter that moves the entire picture slower than is noticeable to the human eye, which reduces the effect of burn-in but does not prevent it.

In addition, in its payload bay, Columbia again carried the DFI package, and OSS-l ( named for the NASA Office of Space Science and Applications ) which consisted of a number of instruments mounted on a Spacelab pallet, intended to obtain data on the near-Earth environment and the extent of contamination caused by the orbiter itself.

Second, Huygens did not send any readable data to the Earth ; it transmitted data to the Cassini orbiter, which relayed the data received to the Earth later.

Mimas has been imaged several times by the Cassini orbiter, which entered into orbit around Saturn in 2004.

The orbiter, which includes the main engines, and the two solid rocket boosters, are reused after several months of refitting work for each launch.