Longest space tether
Who
Young Engineers Satellite 2
Where
Netherlands (Leiden)
When
The Young Engineers Satellite 2 (YES2) was launched on board the Foton-M3 microgravity mission on 14 September 2007. On 25 September YES2 unwound an experimental package on a 0.5 mm-thick cable in order to test the principle of returning payloads to Earth without the use of retrorockets. Experimental data show that the cable successfully deployed to its full length of 31.7 km (19.7 miles) the longest manmade structure ever deployed in space.