Band 6+: The visuals give information about tl1e number of spacecran launched by various national governments between 1957 and 2007 and the purpose of each mission. Write a report for a university lecturer summarising the most important information in the visuals.

The pie chart illustrates the number of launched spacecraft in different countries, while the bar chart gives information about the reasons for these launches from 1957 to 2007.

Overall, the Soviet Union and USA contributed the most to the number of launched spacecraft, as opposed to the remaining countries. Additionally, the purposes for which spacecrafts were launched are diverse, with communications and surveillance satellites being the most common.

Looking first at the pie chart, Russia launched the majority of spacecrafts, at 3484 missions, which doubled those of America. In contrast, aside from 539 commercial spacecrafts launched, the numbers of launched spacecrafts from India, Japan, the European Union, China, Canada and others were less than 300, making them negligible compared to those of Russia and America.

Turning to the bar chart, communications was the most common purpose of these missions, constituting around 26%. This is followed by surveillance satellites, with around 28% of spacecraft dedicated to this, more than double the percentage of spacecraft for research. Contrarily, spacecrafts for manned space programs, weather observation and planetary exploration contributed much less, at merely around 5% each.