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Lagrange (spacecraft)
Lagrange, since renamed Vigil, is an ESA space weather spacecraft that will orbit the fifth Sun-Earth Lagrange point to give days of warning of dangerous solar events.
Lai Ka-ying (黎家盈)
Lai Ka-ying, also known as Li Jiaying, is a Hong Kong astronaut and payload specialist who became the first astronaut from Hong Kong, flying on Shenzhou 23 in 2026.
Laika (Лайка)
Laika, also known as Kudryavka and nicknamed Muttnik, was a Soviet space dog who became the first animal to orbit Earth on Sputnik 2 in 1957.
Lambda (ラムダ) (rocket family)
Lambda (ラムダ) was a family of Japanese all-solid-propellant rockets developed by the University of Tokyo in the 1960s; its four-stage L-4S variant launched Japan's first satellite, OHSUMI, in 1970.
Lambda-4S
Lambda-4S (L-4S) was a four-stage, all-solid-propellant Japanese rocket that launched Ohsumi, Japan's first satellite, from Kagoshima on 11 February 1970, succeeding on its fifth attempt.
Lambert's problem
Lambert's problem is the orbital mechanics problem of finding the Keplerian transfer orbit between two positions given the time of flight, posed by Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1761 and used in mission planning and orbit determination.
Lander (spacecraft)
A lander is a spacecraft designed to reach the surface of a planet or other body and survive long enough to transmit data back to Earth, unlike orbiters and rovers.
Landsat 7
Landsat 7 was an American Earth observation satellite launched in 1999 to image the land surface with its ETM+ instrument, collecting over 3.3 million images before its 2025 decommissioning.
Landsat 8
Landsat 8, also known as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, is an American Earth-observation satellite launched in 2013 to continue the Landsat program's multispectral imagery of the land surface.
Landsat 9
Landsat 9 is an Earth-observing satellite jointly managed by NASA and the USGS, launched in 2021 from Vandenberg to continue the Landsat program's global land observations since 1972.
Landsat program
The Landsat program is a joint NASA and USGS series of Earth-observing satellites that has continuously imaged Earth's land since Landsat 1 launched in 1972.
LARES-2
LARES-2 is a passive, spherical satellite of the Italian Space Agency, covered with laser retroreflectors and launched on 13 July 2022 on the maiden flight of Europe's Vega-C rocket.
Laser communication in space
Laser communication in space, also known as free-space optical communication, transmits data between spacecraft and ground stations using laser beams, offering data rates 10 to 40 times higher than radio.
Launch cost and price comparisons
Launch cost and price comparisons, also known as comparison of orbital launcher families, measure how much it costs to reach orbit, usually in dollars per kilogram to low Earth orbit.
Launch escape system
A launch escape system, or launch abort system, separates a crewed spacecraft from a failing launch vehicle on the pad or during ascent, returning the crew by parachute.
Launch pad
A launch pad, also called a launching pad, is a reinforced site where rockets are held, fueled, and fired at liftoff, with flame trenches and sound suppression.
Launch vehicle
A launch vehicle, also known as a space launch vehicle, is a rocket-powered vehicle that carries a spacecraft from Earth into orbit or onto a trajectory beyond it.
Launch window
A launch window is the span of time during which a launch may take place while satisfying safety and mission constraints, at daily and planetary scales.
Laurel Clark
Laurel Clark, born Laurel Blair Salton Clark, was an American Navy physician and NASA astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.
LCROSS
LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) was a NASA mission that crashed a Centaur rocket into a lunar polar crater in 2009, confirming water ice.
Leland D. Melvin
Leland Devon Melvin, born 1964, is an American engineer and retired NASA astronaut drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1986 who flew twice on the Space Shuttle Atlantis.
Libration point orbit insertion and maneuver design
Libration point orbit insertion and maneuver design covers the burns that place a spacecraft onto an orbit around the Sun-Earth or Earth-Moon L1 or L2 points.
Libration point station-keeping
Libration point station-keeping is the regular propulsive corrections that keep a spacecraft near an unstable Lagrange point, since uncontrolled craft drift away within weeks or months.
LICIACube
LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids) is an Italian Space Agency CubeSat that flew past the asteroid Dimorphos in 2022 and photographed NASA's DART impact.
LIFE (habitat)
LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) is an expandable space habitat by Sierra Space, planned as the primary habitat module of the Orbital Reef space station.
LightSail
LightSail is a crowdfunded solar sail project of The Planetary Society. LightSail 1 tested sail deployment in 2015, and LightSail 2 demonstrated controlled solar sailing in Earth orbit in 2019.
Lijian-1
Lijian-1 (力箭一号), also known as Kinetica-1, is a Chinese four-stage solid-propellant orbital launch vehicle developed by CAS Space, a commercial company of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Linda Ham
Linda Ham (née Hautzinger) is an American NASA manager who chaired the Mission Management Team during Columbia's 2003 STS-107 mission, which ended in the loss of the orbiter and its seven crew.
LinkSpace (翎客航天)
LinkSpace, also known as Link Space Aerospace Technology, was a Beijing-based Chinese private rocket company founded by Hu Zhenyu in January 2014 to develop a reusable rocket.
Liquid fluorine
Liquid fluorine is elemental fluorine cooled into a cryogenic liquid, used as a rocket oxidizer that outperforms oxygen but was never adopted operationally because of toxicity and corrosive exhaust.