First Chinese civil high-resolution stereoscopic Earth mapping satellite. The mission objective was to produce 1:50,000 scale maps and data for resource mapping, environmental surveying, disaster monitoring, city planning and national security needs. Project go-ahead was March 2008. For this mission the satellite had better positioning and attitude accuracy, multispectral capabilitym and high-data-rate data transmission to the ground - 2 x 450 Mbit/s. The satellite had a swath width of 51 km with a resolution of 2.1 m. The orbit provided a revisit period of 59 days.

Laser Relativity Satellite, a 390 kg, 0.38 m diameter tungsten sphere covered with 92 laser retroreflectors. Used to probe relativistic effects in the Earth's gravitational field. The satellite had the lowest ballistic coefficient of any satellite ever launched. First launch of the ESA/Italian Vega launch vehicle.

European cargo station resupply spacecraft. Docked at the aft Zvezda port of the International Space Station on 28 March at 22:31 GMT. Its engines were used on 31 March and 5 April to reboost the ISS to a 387 km x 398 km orbit. Undocked at 21:44 GMT on 28 September and was deorbited over the Pacific at 23:42 GMT on 2 October, with loss of signal at 01:25 GMT on 3 October.

The satellite hosted an Intelsat C- and Ku-band commercial communications payload and a UHF communications payload for the Australian Defense Forces. First Proton launch to use a supersynchronous orbit to maximize use of booster propellant and conserve spacecraft fuel.

Third North Korean satellite launch attempt, conducted despite international protests (that attempted to connect it with the country's missile program). Launched from a new site on the west coast of Korea on a southwest trajectory, to achieve a polar orbit and also avoid overflying Japan. Failed at first stage separation. Unusually North Korea provided the western press access to the launch site prior to the attempt, and admitted the launch failure after the fact.

Docked at the Pirs module of the International Space Station on 22 April at 14:39 GMT. Undocked and after three weeks of independent flight involving Radar-Progress experiments using thruster burns to study the ionosphere, was deorbited over the Pacific on 20 August.

Docked at the station's Poisk module on 17 May at 04:36 GMT. On 16 September at 23:09 GMT undocked from the station to return the crew to earth. Soyuz TMA-04M flew for 2 hr 47 min in a 403 km x 426 km orbit, then fired its engines for the deorbit burn at 01:56 GMT on 17 September to enter a 13 kmx 425 km reentry orbit. The crew landed safely in Kazakhstan at 02:23 GMT.

First docking of a manned Shenzhou spacecraft with the Tiangong space laboratory. The crew was commanded by Jing Haipeng (who flew on Shenzhou 7) with rookies Liu Wang and Liu Yang, the first woman to fly in a Chinese space crew. At about 14:40 GMT on June 17 the ship maneuvered from 261 x 315 km to 315 x 326 km. On June 18 at 06:08 GMT the Shenzhou 9 spaceship docked with the Tiangong 1 spacelab. At 09:10 GMT the three astronauts opened the TG-1 hatch and entered the lab for the first time. The Shenzhou 9 crew undocked from Tiangong 1 at 030:9 GMT on June 24 and backed off to 300 m, then reapproached first to 140 m and then to a manually controlled redocking carried out by Liu Wang at 04:49 GMT. On June 28 at 01:22 GMT Shenhzhou 9 undocked again for the last time; a brief manual re-rendezvous to 140 m was carried out. Return to Earth came on June 29 with orbital module seperation at about 01:16 GMT, retrofire at 01:17 GMT, service module sep at 01:38 GMT and landing at 02:02 GMT in Siziwangqi, a district in Ulanqab prefecture in Inner Mongolia.

Arrived at the ISS on 27 July. Grappled by the station's Canadarm and berthed to the ISS Harmony module at 14:34 GMT. Unberthed by the SSRMS arm of the ISS at about 12:02 GMT on 12 September and released into space at 1550 GMT. After one of HTV-3's onboard computers failed, a planned small separation burn was replaced by a much larger abort burn which safely and rapidly separated HTV-3 from the vicinity of the ISS. HTV-3 was successfully deorbited over the Pacific on 14 September.

The crew exited from the Pirs module and ejected the Sfera-53 passive air density calibration satellite into orbit using a special handling device. Sfera-53 had been delivered to the station on Progress M-16M, and has a mass of 8.0 kg and a diameter of 0.53m. The astronauts then transferred the GsTM-2 crane from Pirs to Zarya. It and the GsTM-1 crane moved in February would remain available after the Pirs module is eventually discarded. The crew installed five space debris shields, delivered on Progress M-14M in January, on the Zvezda module. A Biorisk experiment canister was returned to the station.

Attempted replacement of a failed Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) on the S0 truss. The failed MBSU-1 was removed from S0 and stowed temporarily at the ESP-2 outside of the Quest airlock. The STS-114 spare was removed from ESP-2 and moved to S0, becoming the 'new MBSU-1'. However, a problematic bolt stopped the astronauts completing the installation. They left the new MBSU-1 partly bolted to S0 and returned to the airlock, leaving the Station with two of its eight large solar arrays out of the main station power loop.

NASA's two Radiation Belt Storm Probes deployed a series of booms include electric field antennae spanning 100 meters. The instruments studied energetic particles, thermal plasma, ionospheric composition and electromagnetic fields and waves. The principal investigator for one experiment, the relativistic proton spectrometer, was at the National Reconnaissance Office.

The crew removed the new MBSU-1, with some difficulty unjamming the critical bolt, and then spent an hour using several techniques to clean out metal shavings and foreign matter from the bolt. The installation of the new MBSU-1 was successfully carried out, and station power was mostly restored, although in the meantime the failure of the DSCU-3A box had taken down another of the arrays. The astronauts replaced a CLPA camera on the SSRMS robot arm and returned to the airlock. The old MBSU-1 remained in its temporary stowage location on ESP-2.

First test of a new NASA high performance sounding rocket. The Talos-Terrier-Oriole carried a dummy Nihka fourth stage as part of its 775 kg payload. The all-up Oriole 12 (Talos-Terrier-Oriole-Nihka) rocket was originally planned to be flown to 777 km above Poker Flat to study the aurora as flight NASA 49.001 in February 2013.

Chinese CAST-2000 class remote sensing satellite delivered for Venezuela into a sun-synchronous orbit. Originally designated VRSS-1 (Venezuela Remote Sensing Satellite 1), it was renamed Miranda in orbit after Sebastian Francisco de Miranda Rodriguez 'El Precursor' (1750-1816).

Third GPS Block IIF satellite, spacecraft 65; replaced SVN 39 in the Navstar constellation. The upper stage and payload first entered a 163 km x 394 km x 41.6 deg parking orbit, followed by a 254 km x 20448 km x 43.3 deg transfer orbit and then a third burn into the final 20426 km x 20481 km x 55.0 deg circular orbit where the satellite was deployed. The RL-10 second stage engine operated at lower than planned thrust during the first two burns, but onboard software compensated by increasing the duration of the engine firings.

One first stage engine had an anomaly at max Q (T+1:20) with some debris observed falling away; the engine was shut down but the remaining engines and the second stage compensated to reach the initial orbit. However, extra propellant was used and stage two did not restart as planned. Nevertheless Dragon reached the ISS on 10 October and was captured by the station's SSRMS arm at 10:56 GMT and berthed to the Harmony module at 13:03 GMT. Following unloading of the cargo delivered to the ISS and loading of experimental results and failed equipment for return to earth, the SSRMS unberthed Dragon at 11:19 GMT on 28 October and released it at 13:29 GMT. At 14:22 GMT the Dragon made a burn to lower its orbit and at 18:28 GMT came the 10 minute 40 second long deorbit burn. The Dragon trunk was jettisoned at 18:41 GMT and the capsule reached entry interface at 19:02 GMT. Splashdown in the Pacific Ocean was at around 123 deg W 28 deg N at 19:22

The mission's secondary payload, the first Orbcomm Second Generation communications satellite, was sacrificed in order to allow the Dragon cargo ship to reach the ISS after a rocket engine failure in the booster during ascent to orbit. The OG2 was ejected at 01:37 GMT into a 203 km x 323 km orbit instead of its planned 350 km x 750 km insertion orbit. Orbcomm was not be able to get to the operational 750 km x 750 km orbit. Instead the satellite reentered at 06:19 GMT on 10 October after two days in space, probably over the Pacific west of Vancouver, Canada. An Orbcomm press release stated that they were able to test out the satellite's systems before the reentry.

Communications satellite to provide Ku and C band communications services for the Americas, Europe and Africa from 53 deg W. First Star-2 class satellite to be directly inserted into geosynchronous orbit by its launch vehicle rather than using spacecraft liquid apogee motor burns from a transfer orbit.

The pair of SJ-9 satellites carried technical experiments and to perform orbital rendezvous, intercept, and formation flying exercises under the control of the China Resources Satellite Applications Center. On 19 October SJ-9A began maneuvers, lowering its orbit to 619 km x 644 km and then returning to a 623 km x 650 km orbit on October 22-23.

Target mission, part of the FTI-01 missile defence experiment. A two-stage Terrier Oriole rocket launched the ARAV-B target from Wake Island towards Kwajalein. DDG-62 USS Fitzgerald off Kwajaelein launched an SM-3 Block 1A missile which failed to intercept the ARAV-B.

Target mission, part of the FTI-01 missile defence experiment. A short range target missile, possibly a Scud, was launched from the Mobile Launch Platform at northeast Kwajalein; it was intercepted by a Patriot PAC-3 missile launched from Omelek. The PAC-3 interception was at low altitude and not considered a space launch. The exercise also included some low altitude intercepts of cruise missiles by PAC-2 interceptors.

Target mission, part of the FTI-01 missile defence experiment. Air dropped from a C-17 off Wake Island; ignited and headed towards the Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein. The E-LRALT consisted of two SR-19 motors, an Orbus 1A motor and a reentry vehicle. Successfully intercepted by a THAAD interceptor launched from Meck Island at Kwajalein.

Docked with the Zvezda module of the ISS after a quick-rendezvous 5 hour 52 min flight. Undocked from Zvezda at 12:02 GMT on 15 April for independent flight to conduct Radar-Progress ionospheric tests. Retrofire on 21 April on 14:07 GMT lasted 173 seconds, producing a delta-V of 90 m/s. Impacted in the Pacific at 15:02 GMT.

Geosynchronous direct broadcast satellite leased to DISH Network for use in direct-to-Home services in the United States. Payload 32 Ku-band high-power transponders, stationed at 61.5 deg W. Carried a Ku-band television payload, had a dry mass of 3520 kg plus 3130 kg of propellant.

First successful North Korean satellite launch. Amateur observations showed the satellite to be tumbling, and no signals were picked up at the announced 470 MHZ frequency - it was assumed the spacecraft never functioned or failed shortly after orbital insertion.