Several visiting unmanned spacecraft are expected to deliver supplies to the space station during Expedition 32.
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Then, in a few weeks' time, China will launch another unmanned spacecraft, Shenzhou 8, and try to link the pair together.
There has been one hiccup: In August, an unmanned spacecraft veered out of control during a test flight and had to be destroyed.
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This comes as a pretty big blow to the Russian space program, which had just emerged from its failed launch in April to have successfully launched its Progress 45 unmanned spacecraft and also successfully docked it with the International Space Station.
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In 1970, the unmanned Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 landed on Venus.
The scheduled trip comes just a little over four months after the project successfully completed a docking test by the unmanned private spacecraft with the International Space Station.
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Early in the year, a Soyuz rocket carrying an unmanned Progress spacecraft suffered a launch failure, a failure that had some concerned that NASA might decide to leave the International Space Station without a crew.
The unmanned Dragon spacecraft cast off from the International Space Station early Thursday morning and survived a fiery re-entry through Earth's atmosphere to make an apparently flawless splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California.
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Astrium's plan to tackle defunct satellites is to use an unmanned chase spacecraft to get in range, fire a barbed harpoon into the body of the rogue hardware and then use a smaller propulsion unit attached to a tether to tow it back towards the atmosphere where it will burn up safely on re-entry.
In 1967, The first Saturn V rocket carrying the unmanned Apollo 4 spacecraft was successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Center.
The unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft completed a successful docking mission with the spacelab in November.
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Late on Friday, the unmanned Russian Progress 46 spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station.
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America put a man in space, put a man in orbit, put a man on the moon, created the world's first reusable spacecraft, sent unmanned probes to other planets and led the world in making important scientific discoveries outside the Earth's atmosphere.
Given a limited and fluctuating budget, the NASA administrator and his Soviet counterpart ( Sergei Korolev?) had to recruit and train astronauts, design spacecraft, and assign manned and unmanned missions.
The Progress spacecraft being delivered by the rocket is unmanned, and filled with supplies for the crew of the International Space Station.
As Gemini 8 Command Pilot, his March 16, 1966 mission with Pilot David Scott entailed complex rendezvous and docking maneuvers with an unmanned Agena target vehicle which ultimately required recovery from a harrowing, out-of-control spacecraft roll.
This ultimately built the Shenzhou series of spacecraft and put them on top of a booster modified from one of China's unmanned Long March satellite-launching rockets.
Before leaving the space station, the Progress 47 spacecraft conducted a test of an upgraded docking system that Russia intends to use on future unmanned Progress and manned Soyuz vehicles.
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