Jonathan's Space Pages

List of spaceflight missions

The file missions.html lists each human spaceflight mission. The columns in the table are described below:

To fully describe a human spaceflight mission we need to consider its different segments, allowing for transfer of astronauts from one ship to another and for stays aboard space stations.

A stay aboard a space station is called an expedition. Expeditions are also assigned mission tags; they are kept in a separate file to make the task of counting `number of human space mission launches' simpler. The expeditions file is expeditions.html

In the simple case, the space station mission has three segments: the ferry ship from launch to docking, the expedition from docking to undocking, and the ferry ship from undocking to landing. However more complicated situations exist, where a ferry ship docks to add crew to an existing expedition, or where the expedtion ends with cremembers remaining on board and reassigned to a new expedition.

Therefore, the start and end times of the expedition are not necessarily the start and end times of a particular crew member's stay on the station.

The third set of mission tags are called the list. This is for spacecraft which are launched without anyone aboard but are later occupied. A particular case of interest here is that of the Apollo lunar modules. The auxlilary missions are listed in auxmissions.html

All these mission tag file have the same format. The columns are:

Column Descriptions

• HSFID: Catalog number for the spaceflight.

  
  Human spaceflights (flights which carried one or more humans above 80 km) are given IDs with a 5-digit running number prefixed by 'H'.

  
  Human spaceflight aborts and failures which did not reach 80 km are given a 4-digit running number prefixed by 'HA'. These aborts do not include countdowns scrubbed (cancelled) on the ground prior to rocket ignition. They do include pad aborts (where ignition occurred but no liftoff) and airplane-launch drop aborts (where carrier plane takeoff occurred but no drop happened) as well as launches which took off but failed to reach 80 km (notably, Shuttle mission 51-L).

  
  Spaceflights by primate nonhumans are indexed with prefix 'HB'. For now, only chimpanzee flights are included in this category.

• HSFTAG - Mission tag: a short (max 8 chars, usually less) mnemonic tag to identify the spaceflight. Equivalent to the HSFID but easier for the reader to remember. Used in the Rides list to tie an individual's ride (seat) to a specific mission. See also the Role Tags page for a discussion of mission tags and role tags.
• DESIG Launch designation for the mission, as in the General Catalog of Space Objects.
• JTAG General Catalog ID for the space object in which the humans were launched. See the General Catalog of Space Objects.
• Spaceship Name of the spaceship
• Launch Launch date (UTC), for missions. For expeditions, this is the start time of the expedition (This is not always officially defined, so I have exercised my best judgement as needed).
• Landing Landing date (UTC), for missions. For expeditions, this is the end time of the expedition.
• Duration Flight duration (days:hours:min:sec). (Seconds are omitted when data is not available to the needed precision].
• Crew - Number of humans aboard at launch. (For space station expeditions this value is not meaningful.)
• Callsign. For Russian missions, the callsign is associated with the spacecraft commander. For some missions the values in this field are somewhat arbitrary.
• Station - Space station with which the mission docked or was intended to dock; or for expeditions the space station on which the expedition took place.
• Program. Overall program that the mission is part of. Human spaceflights to date may be allocated to one of a small number of overall programs, defined in the Programs list.
• Project. Project that the mission is part of. See also the Projects list.
• OrbID. Running numbers for orbital missions (ORBnnn) and suborbital missions (SOnnn). Entry is blank for aborts/failures.
• DS. Running number for deep space missions (apogee more than 150000 km ), blank otherwise.
• SSF. Running number for space station flights, blank otherwise.