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Spacecraft engineering is an interdisciplinary engineering field concerned with the design, development, and operation of unmanned satellites, interplanetary probes, and manned spacecraft. Unmanned satellite missions include commercial communications and remote sensing (including meteorological satellites), scientific research, military communications, navigation, and reconnaissance. Interplanetary probes are exclusively confined to scientific and exploratory missions. Manned spacecraft missions are currently confined to long-duration assignments at the International Space Station (ISS) and to short-duration flights supporting the ISS on either the United States Space Transportation System (STS) or the Russian Federation Soyuz spacecraft. However, manned missions returning to the moon or manned flights to Mars are in the planning stages and scheduled to begin in the 2020s and 2030s.

Significance: Rutan revolutionized aircraft design with his tail-first, canard airplanes and all-composite homebuilt and commercial aircraft. His best-known design, the Voyager, was the first aircraft to fly around the world without refueling in December 1986. Mostly through his Scaled Composites firm, he has designed forty new types of aircraft, including a catamaran, a space-load launcher, a gondola, and a car body. His futuristic-looking prototypes have been used in several Hollywood motion pictures.

Spaceships, Spaceships also called “spacecraft,” are manned or automatic vehicles for flying beyond planet atmospheres. Different types of spaceships serve different purposes, including scientific or applied observations and data collection, exploration of celestial bodies, communication, and recreation.

The Orion spacecraft is a NASA space vehicle designed to carry human crews on proposed missions to the moon and, possibly, to Mars as well. Technically called the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the spacecraft was named after the constellation Orion, a well-known star pattern said to be a legendary hunter from Greek mythology. The ship consists of a crew module that can hold up to four astronauts. The crew module was built by the American aerospace company Lockheed Martin while the service module, which powers the craft, was constructed by the European Space Agency.