The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

ing any hope that the Soviets could reach the Moon
ahead of the United States.
After two years of rocket modification and pad
reconstruction, the N-1 was ready to launch again.
However, there would be only two further flights, on
nadir
For spacecraft, the arbitrarily defined “down” direction;
usually defined as the direction pointing toward the center
of the body the spacecraft is orbiting. The opposite of
nadir is zenith.
nanosat
A satellite with an on-orbit mass of 1 to 10 kg. See satellite
mass categories.
Nanosat Constellation Trailblazer (NCT)
A NASA mission involving the launch of three identical
small satellites, each weighing only 20 kg and the size
of a hatbox, to test methods of operating a constellation
of several spacecraft as a single system by autonomous
decision-making and intersatellite communication. The
spacecraft will maintain continuous contact with one
another, sharing information and reconfiguring onboard
instruments and systems to behave as a single unit.
Throughout the mission, the three satellites will measure
the effect of solar activity on Earth’s magnetosphere.
Scheduled for launch in 2003, the Trailblazer satellites are
designed to pave the way for a much larger network of
even smaller satellites that will make up MagConst in
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) 291
N-1 A complete N-1 and its launch tower on
the right, and another N-1 launch tower and a
pair of taller towers, which provided protection
from lightning strikes, on the left. The left-hand
launch tower was destroyed during a launch
failure on July 3, 1969. Energia RSC
June 27, 1971, and November 23, 1972. Both again
ended in first-stage failures, at T + 51 seconds and
T + 107 seconds, respectively. In early 1974, the N-1
project was abandoned and the six remaining rockets
185, 186, 317
of the ten originally built dismantled.
2010. The Nanosat Constellation Trailblazer is the fifth
mission in NASA’s New Millennium Program.
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space
Administration)
A civilian agency of the U.S. government, formally established
on October 1, 1958, under the National Aeronautics
and Space Act of 1958. It absorbed the former
NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics),
including its 8,000 employees and three major research
laboratories—Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames
Aeronautical Laboratory, and Lewis Flight Propulsion
Laboratory—and two small test facilities. Under its first
administrator, T. Keith Glennan, NASA also incorporated
several organizations involved in space exploration
projects from other federal agencies to ensure that a
viable scientific program of space exploration could be
reasonably conducted over the long term. Glennan
brought in part of the Naval Research Laboratory and
created for its use the Goddard Space Flight Center. He
also incorporated several disparate satellite programs,
two lunar probes, and the important research effort to
develop a million-pound-thrust, single-chamber rocket
engine from the Air Force and the Department of Defense’s
Advanced Research Projects Agency. In December