spacecraft
part of speech
noun (a spacecraft, spacecraft)
meaning for a pupil
1) A spacecraft is a vehicle built to travel in space, with or without people on board, such as a rocket capsule, a space probe, a satellite or a space station. tree →
2) Spacecraft can carry astronauts, explore other planets or orbit the Earth to send back pictures and signals. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons spacecraft come up in space and forces: rockets push spacecraft up against gravity, and once in orbit they keep falling around the Earth. Pupils learn about Apollo spacecraft landing on the Moon, robot rovers on Mars, the Voyager probes leaving the Solar System, and the International Space Station. In stories, spacecraft are often called spaceships.
examples
- The spacecraft blasted off from the launch pad. tree →
- A robot spacecraft landed on Mars. tree →
- The astronauts lived on the spacecraft for six months. tree →
- Voyager is a spacecraft that has left our Solar System. tree →
- Satellites are spacecraft that orbit the Earth. tree →
- Two spacecraft docked with the space station. tree →
- The spacecraft sent back photos of Jupiter. tree →
note
Plural is the same: «one spacecraft, two spacecraft» (not «spacecrafts»). One word. «Spaceship» is the everyday or story word; «spacecraft» is the science word.
In the corpora
- In 2022 the DART spacecraft bumped into an asteroid and changed its path, a test of how to protect Earth.
- Jupiter is surrounded by belts of deadly radiation, the strongest of any planet, which can damage spacecraft electronics.
- Europe's JUICE spacecraft, launched in 2023, will reach Jupiter in 2031 and end by orbiting Ganymede.
- The Cassini spacecraft orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 and finished by diving into Saturn on purpose.
- Both are so far away that only one spacecraft has ever visited them, Voyager 2, in 1986 and 1989.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «spacecraft» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.