The Space Sciences Laboratory is involved in a number of aircraft, rocket, balloon, and orbital flight projects in various stages of development - from early conceptual design through launch and mission operations to postflight data analysis. Mission operations and data analysis often run concurrently; in many cases, however, most of the time spent working on a project is spent in preflight design and postflight data analysis.
During the design and development phase of any flight project, scientists work closely with engineers. The scientists' role is to guide the scientific specifications by which instruments are constructed; engineers must design the instrument such that it is reliable and rugged, and performs according to scientific specifications.
The following links take you to the flight project timelines, in GIF images format, for SSL projects. Clicking on the imbedded blue boxes will take you to the home pages for those projects. Clicking on the blue-lettered STS designations for many of the orbital flight projects will take you to the mission statistics pages at Kennedy Space Center.
Aircraft and Rocket Flight Project Timelines (64KB)
Balloon Flight Project Timelines (64KB)
Orbital Flight Project Timelines (128KB)
last updated: 26-Feb-1996