A Journey Through the History of Space Missions: From 1957 to Present

Sep 4, 2024

5 min read

Analysis of Space Missions Since 1957

Since 1957, this extensive dataset covers all space missions carried out by countries and companies with different budgets. The missions are categorized according to their outcomes - success, failure, or partial failure. The concept of partial failure in space missions sparks interesting discussions on success criteria. Another data set I'd like to discuss is the budget on how some companies lack the budget criteria and most of

Data Introduction

The detailed dataset contains information on the rockets used and whether they were decommissioned after the mission. It also offers insights into the budget assigned to each program, encouraging a deeper investigation into the relationship between budget and mission success rates. Notably, programs with lower budgets seem to experience a higher rate of complete failure. Kaggle offers a thorough compilation of space missions launched globally since 1957. It covers various space missions, outlining key details such as the mission's name, launch date, responsible organization, launch location, and mission status. These details enable a comprehensive analysis of space exploration patterns, including mission frequency, different organizations' success rates, and space technology's advancement over time.

Pre-Processing

The preprocessing of the space missions dataset from 1957 onwards involved several crucial steps to ensure the data was clean, consistent, and ready for analysis. Initially, the data was loaded into a Pandas DataFrame, allowing for an overview of its structure, including column types and the presence of any missing values. Handling missing data was an essential step, where rows with significant gaps were either removed or credited with appropriate values such as the mean or median. Categorical data were then transformed into numerical formats using one-hot encoding to facilitate analysis, while unnecessary duplicates were eliminated to maintain data integrity. Additionally, outliers were detected and addressed using statistical methods like the z-score, ensuring that extreme values did not skew the results. The data was then normalized to ensure consistent scaling across numerical features, and new features, such as extracting the year from date columns, were engineered to provide additional insights. The final dataset was thoroughly reviewed to confirm that it was clean, well-structured, and ready for further analysis or modeling

Visual Representation

Findings

I've been analyzing the outcomes of various space missions, and it's intriguing to see the range of results these missions have had. While the majority of these missions have been successful, there are also cases where missions have ended in failure or partial failure. The concept of partial failure is particularly interesting. One might wonder how a multimillion-dollar mission could be classified as only a partial failure instead of a complete one. However, this classification typically indicates that, despite some setbacks or challenges, the mission still achieved some of its objectives, even if not all were met as originally planned.

In another part of my analysis, I narrowed the focus to the most active organizations and companies that have conducted 100 or more space missions from 1957 to the present day. Among these entities, the USSR (now Russia) stands out as one of the most prolific, having launched many missions over the decades. What’s particularly fascinating is the rise of relatively newer companies like SpaceX, which, despite its shorter history, has nearly caught up to these older, more established organizations regarding the sheer number of missions conducted.

Additionally, I created a pie chart to emphasize the success rates of these missions over the years, highlighting the impressive achievements and growing reliability of space exploration since its beginning in 1957. The visualization serves as a testament to the advancements and lessons learned in the field of space exploration, illustrating how each mission, whether successful, a failure, or a partial failure, contributes to the overall progress in this challenging and ever-evolving domain.

To further expand my knowledge of the data, I've gone into the understanding of what a partial failure meant thanks to NASA's website this is the conclusion I came to. A partial failure in a space mission occurs when the payload does not achieve its intended orbit. For instance, if a satellite meant to capture images of Earth experiences a malfunction in its attitude control system, the mission would be considered a partial failure. Typically, a partial failure is less severe than a complete failure, leading to a reduction in service quality rather than a total loss of functionality. Space missions are inherently risky, with lunar missions having a success rate of just over 50%, and small satellite missions to Earth's orbit ranging from 40% to 70% in success.

The USSR had a big impact on this data set as this data set includes the Space War. A little bit of background on what the Space War was: The Space Race between the USSR and the US was a Cold War-era competition for dominance in space exploration. It began with the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, the first artificial satellite, which shocked the world and marked a significant technological achievement. The United States responded with its space efforts, culminating in the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, where American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon. This competition fueled advancements in science, technology, and engineering, and symbolized the broader ideological struggle between the two superpowers. The Space Race eventually led to cooperation in space exploration, notably with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975, where the two nations docked spacecraft in orbit, signaling a thaw in Cold War tensions.

On the latest dataset, I decided to implement some code to visualize the budget, mission status, and company name. It seems like NASA has had the most missions with a very large budget and it turns out that most of their missions were successful. When I tried to find information about the company ISA, which is where my initial questions arose, it seemed like they were outperformed by all of these companies with much higher budgets. Space missions can't be something that you skimp on; it has to be something that will last and you need to know that your money will be worth it since it's space and we're not extremely well developed. We need everything that goes into space to go extremely right.

In my research on ISA and its frequent failures, I discovered that it is a non-profit organization that faced numerous setbacks due to the lack of revenue from its space explorations. The organization's focus on space exploration without a substantial budget led to many mission failures.

I've realized how important money is in determining the success of space missions. Everything must be nearly or exactly perfect because millions of dollars are at stake for companies that fail their missions. My findings may change the way people view space missions and their connection to success. Some believe that success depends on the scientists and the reputation of big companies, but smaller companies with 10-20 successful space missions prove that while money is important, success is still achievable without the massive budgets of more well-known companies.