Second Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle, delivering equipment and supplies to the International Space Station. Detached from the station by the station's robot arm and released into space on 28 March at 15:46 GMT. Following retrofire burned up over the Pacific Ocean on 30 March at 03:09 GMT on 30 March.

Final flight of the space shuttle Discovery. The spaceplane docked with the International Space Station at 19:14 GMT on 26 February. The ELC-4 Express Logistics Carrier 4 was transferred from the Shuttle to the S3 station truss on 27 February. The station's SSRMS robot arm moved the Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module from the shuttle to the nadir port of the Unity module between 13:46 and 15:05 UTC on 1 March. Following cargo unloading and three spacewalks devoted to station repair and assembly, Discovery undocked from the station for the last time at 12:00 GMT on 7 March, landing at the Kennedy Space Center at 16:57 GMT on 9 March.

Orbital Patriot Target Vehicle (PTV); served as an intercept target for the Lower Tier Project Office Patriot missile defense system. The PTV was launched from Fort Wingate Launch Complex-96 into White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It flew a southerly trajectory over New Mexicoand was intercepted by the Patriot Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) interceptor system during reentry.

Second unmanned Orbital Test Vehicle X-37B reusable spaceplane. Possibly placed in a 400 x 420 km x 40 deg orbit like that used by OTV-1; mission expected to last 9 months with automatic landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base. The Centaur AV-026 upper stage was deorbited over the Indian Ocean on the first orbit.

ISS EO-27 crew. The Soyuz docked at the Poisk module of the ISS at 23:09 GMT on 6 April, and undocked at 00:38 GMT on 16 September 2011, eight days later than planned due to the Progress M-11M launch failure. A dropout of communications after the reentry burn caused concern, but the crew landed safely in Kazakhstan at 03:59 GMT.

Surveillance satellite. Carried the LISS-4 camera, a 6-meter-resolution imager, which was to be used for both military reconnaissance and civilian remote sensing. It also carried the lower resolution LISS-3 (23 m resolution) and AWIFS (56 m resolution), and an AIS Automatic Identification System payload for Comdev of Canada for tracking ships at sea.

Communications satellite with C/Ku hybrid payload, and, to have been stationed at 32.8 deg E for coverage of Africa. New Dawn Satellite Co. Ltd. was a joint venture of Intelsat and Convergence Partners, Johannesburg, South Africa. Couldn't deploy its C-band antenna, although the Ku-band deployed and was functional.

First geosynchronous element of the Space-Based Infrared System, an expensive new multispectral early warning and tracking system that forms part of the American missile defense system. The system also include payloads installed on Molniya-orbit signals intelligence satellite (USA 184 and USA 200). The spacecraft carry an infrared telescope with a large focal plane infrared array to monitor large areas of the Earth at once. An internal moving mirror scans the visible disk of the Earth to detect and track possible missile launches. It also has capabilites to track high-altitude aircraft and thermal events on the surface. The new SBIRS network will succeed 23 DSP satellites launched from 1970 to 2007. GEO-1 was inserted into geostationary transfer orbit by the booster and used its own on Leros-1 apogee motor to maneuver into geosynchronous orbit.

Final space station assembly mission. Also delivered spare parts. Endeavour docked with the Station at 10:14 GMT on 18 May. The ELC-3 carrier was unberthed from the shuttle at 13:27 GMT and installed on the Station's truss at 16:09 GMT. The AMS-02 Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was unberthed at 06:59 GMT on 19 May and bolted to the Station's S3 truss at 09:46 GMT. Cargo Bay Manifest:

• External Airlock/ODS: 1800 kg
• EMU spacesuits 3004, 3018: 260
• RMS arm 201: 410 kg
• Orbiter Boom Sensor System: 382 kg
• Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (particle detector to search for antimatter): 6917
• STORRM (lidar to test rendezvous and docking technology for the Orion spacecraft): 17 kg
• PPSU-2 electronics box: 17 kg
• SPDU: 17 kg kg
• ROEU 755 umbilical for ELC-3: 90 kg
• ROEU 751 umbilical for AMS-02: 78 kg
• MISSE carriers (3): 171 kg
• MISSE 8 experiment (studies the effect of exposing various materials to space): 45 kg
• Express Logistics Carrier:
  • ELC-3 plus support hardware: 3207 kg
  • Cargo Transport Container: 476 kg
  • SASA-2R S-band antenna: 116 kg
  • SASA-3R S-band antenna: 116 kg
  • SPDM Arm 3/OCTM: 342 kg
  • SPDM support hardware: 269 kg
  • HPGA oxygen tank: 552 kg
  • ATA-2 ammonia tank: 772 kg
  • STP-H3 experiment package (set of US DoD Space Test Program experiments, including thermal control systems and space environment sensors): 500 kg
• Total Payload: 16,554 kg

Argentinian 'Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-D' satellite. Carried NASA Aquarius L-band radiometer/scatterometer map sea salinity; a Ka-band microwave radiometer; a an infrared scanner to measure sea surface temperature; a high sensitivity camera to study light sources at night; and an Italian experiment which measured atmospheric deflection of GPS signals to determine air temperature and humidity.

ISS resupply. Also carried the 40 kg Chibis satellite. Docked with the Zvezda module of the ISS on 23 June at 16:37 GMT. Undocked from Zvezda at 09:38 GMT on 23 August. After several maneuvers to carry out the Radar-4 experiment, deorbited over the Pacific at 09:34 GMT on 1 September.

Optical surveillance satellite. First launch into this inclination since 1994. Probably jettisoned two recoverable film capsules during the mission. Six reboosts during the mission maintained a 210 km x 250 km observation orbit. The main spacecraft landed at 20:48 GMT on 24 October.

Prototype optical surveillance satellite developed under the USAF Operationally Responsive Space program. Derived from Tacsat 3. Objective is to deploy small satellites to support military operations on short notice, either to provide a surge capability or to replace malfunctioning or disabled primary assets.

Final Space Shuttle flight, denoting the end of the space age. Atlantis docked with the Harmony module of the ISS on 10 June at 15:07 GMT. Primary payload was the Raffaello MultiPurpose Logistics Module delivering consumables and spare parts to the station sufficient to support the six crew members through the end of 2012 should delays occur in NASA's commercial robotic resupply program. Main crew task while docked with the station was to unload Rafaello and return of the station's failed coolant Pump Module for analysis. Atlantis undocked on 19 July at 06:28 GMT. The Picosat Solar Cell Experiment satellite was released from the cargo bay on 20 July. Atlantis made the final shuttle landing at the Kennedy Space Center on 21 July at 09:57 GMT. Payload delivered was:

• External Airlock/ODS: 1800 kg
• EMU spacesuits 3015, 3006: 260 kg
• RMS arm 301: 410 kg
• Orbiter Boom Sensor System: 382 kg
• MPLM-2 Rafaello: 11,556 kg
• SPDU: 17 kg
• ROEU 755 umbilical for MPLM: 78 kg
• Lightweight MPESS Carrier: 1050 kg
• Robotic Refuelling Mission: 300 kg
• Picosat Launcher: 22 kg
• PSSC-2/MTV Aerospace Corporation Picosat Solar Cell Experiment satellite: 4 kg
• Total payload: 15,879 kg

Test mission; GRAndes DImensiones COMpuestos (Large Size Composite propellant); the main motor, tested to 40 km on 2009 Dec 17 from Serrezuela, is 0.32m dia 2.5m long. The new vehicle appears to have a booster stage of the same diameter; it is 7.7m long 0.32m dia and has a total mass of 933 kg.

Cosmonauts Volkov and Samokutyaev, in Orlan suits, entered space from the Pirs module. They deployed the RadioSkaf-V amateur radio satellite and installed the BTLS-N lasercom terminal on the Zvezda module and the Biorisk-MSN exposure package outside the Pirs module.

Jupiter Near-polar Orbiter, accelerated by the AV-029 Centaur to a hyperbolic escape orbit at 17:15 GMT into a 1.0 AU x 2.26 AU x 0.1 deg solar orbit. A 500-km flyby of Earth on 9 October 2013 pumped this orbit towards Jupiter. It is planned to enter Jovian orbit in July 2016, and be commaned to bun up in Jupiter's atmosphere in October 2017. Payloads included magnetometers, plasma and particle instruments, UV auroral imagers and spectrometers, and the JunoCam imager. The probe has a massmof 1593 kg and carries a further 2032 kg of propellant. Its three large solar arrays span around 22 meters; it is the first spacecraft to fly to the outer solar system without radioisotope power sources.

Aprizesat 5 and 6 were built by SpaceQuest for exactEarth Ltd. Equipped with AIS (maritime Automatic Identification System) payloads for ship location tracking. The exactEarth system also included the SpaceQuest AprizeSat 3 and 4, and a payload attached to ISRO's ResourceSat-2 satellite.

Yuzhnoye launch vehicle engineering payload which remained attached to the post-boost maneuvering upper stage after deployment of the other six satellites on the launch. 16 minutes after launch, at an altitude of 700 km, the upper stage dispensed the six satellites at two-minute intervals, then maneuvered into itself into a higher orbit.

Communications satellite delivered to an incorrect orbit when the Briz-M upper stage malfunctioned. The first two Briz-M burns, to a 173 km x 173 km, and then to a 270 km x 4998 km orbit, were successful. The third burn, at 00:52 GMT on 18 August, seemed to have gone wrong, with early separation of the wrap-around DTB propellant tank. A fourth burn left the payload stranded in a 694 km x 20242 km orbit. Cause was a timing error in the inertial platform, leading to incorrect orientiation of the stage during the later burns.

ISS resupply mission. The Progress M failed to reach orbit. Five minutes and 25 seconds into flight, during the burn of the booster's third stage, the engine's gas generator failed and the engine shut down. The upper stage and spacecraft crashed in the Gorno-Altai region of Russia. First ever failure of a Progress spacecraft to dock with a space station in its 135-mission history. The six crew aboard the ISS had sufficient supplies, but the mishap delayed the launch of the Expedition 29 replacement crew until the cause of the failure was understood and the Soyuz launch vehicle cleared again for manned launches. The return to Earth of the first half of the Expedition 28 crew has also delayed to mid-September, meaning the station would be reduced to a three-person crew for a time.

NASA dual-spacecraft lunar gravity mapping mission. Grail A was deployed from the Delta upper stage at 14:28 GMT and Grail B at 14:37 GMT. The spacecraft reached the Sun-Earth L1 point 1.5 million km from Earth and then fell back towards the Moon. Lunar orbit insertion was at 01:00 GMt on 1 January 2012 for Grail A, and at 02:00 GMT on 2 January for Grail B. After completing their mission, the satellites were intentionally crashed onto the lunar surface at 75.62 deg N / 26.63 deg W on 17 December 2012 at 22:29 GMT.

Naval Research Laboratory UHF communications satellite, equipped with a 3.7-meter-diameter communications antenna to support military handheld satellite telephones. Launch used an uprated Minotaur IV with an ATK Star 48V motor replacing the Orion 38 upper stage.

First Chinese manned space laboratory. Placed initially into a 198 km x 332 km x 42.8 deg orbit. Maneuvered to a 336 km x 353 km operational orbit by 30 September in preparation for arrival of the Shenzhou 8 spacecraft that would dock with it.

On Mar 21 2016 China announced the end of "data service" with the Tiangong 1. The 8500 kg lab was in a 377 x 394 km x 42.8 deg orbit; it had made reboost manuevers about twice a year, the most recent on 2015 Dec 16.

NPP Preparatory Project weather satellite, using payloads from the cancelled National Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite System. The NPP provided a stopgap between the last of the Advanced TIROS-N polar weather satellites and the first Joint Polar Satellite System satellite to be launched in a few years.

Space station resupply. Docked with the Pirs module of the ISS on 2 November. This restored resupply of the station after the Progress M-12M launch failure and two intermediate successful flights of the Soyuz booster. Also carried the Chibis-M subsatellite.

Unmanned test of Shenzhou manned spacecraft. Automatically docked with Tiangong 1 space laboratory at 17:28 GMT on 2 November. Undocked on 14 November at 11:27 GMT, backed off 140 m, and conducted a second successful automatic docking at 11:53 GMT. Undocked the final time at 10:30 GMT on 16 November and landed in China at 11:32 GMT on 17 November.

Failed soil-return mission to Martian moon Phobos. The main propulsion system, which was to have boosted the probe out of earth parking orbit to trans-Mars insertion, failed to ignite. Attempts to communicate with the spacecraft partially succeeded but it could not be commanded to conduct an engine burn at a later opportunity. Destroyed on reentry into the earth's atmosphere.

Launch delayed two months to verify booster after launch failure of Progress M-12M in August 2011. After successful launch of Progress M-13M on 30 October, Soyuz TMA-22 was cleared for launch. Delivered the EO-29 crew to the ISS, docking at the Poisk module of the station at 05:24 GMT on 16 November. Undocked on 27 April 2012 at 08:15 GMT and landed in Kazakhstan at 11:45 GMT.

Quartet of electronic intelligence satellites, which succeed Essaim as France's next space-based SIGINT demonstrator. Like Essaim, Elisa consists of four Myriade microsatellites equipped with electronic intelligence instruments to intercept radar transmissions from space. Elisa was to offer a pre-operational capability until a fully operational space-based intelligence capability would be deployed in 2016.