History Of Space Shuttles

---

Remembering the fleet of U.S. space planes – 1981-2011

---

Space shuttle Challenger in orbit above Earth in 1983

In the beginning. The U.S. Air Force came up with the first concept for a winged spacecraft – a space shuttle – in 1962.

The Air Force had its B-52 bomber and an experimental rocket plane known as X-15. The idea was to bolt an unmanned X-15 to the top of a B-52 and fly it as high as the plane could go.

From that altitude, near space, the pilot would launch the unmanned rocket plane. The X-15 would continue on to space, drop off a satellite in orbit and fly back down to Earth.

While the X-15 didn't fly to space, didn't drop a satellite, and the Air Force shelved the plan in 1965, the idea of a reusable space shuttle hung around.

Forerunners. A number of experimental prototypes were flown before the American shuttle fleet was built, including the X-15 which was tested from 1959-1968.

• X-15 was a 50-ft. rocket aircraft launched 199 times from under the wing of a converted B-52. It flew at speeds up to Mach 6.7, reaching an altitude of 67 miles in 1963. Fastest was 4,534 mph in 1967. Among a dozen X-15 pilots was Neil Armstrong who later became the first man on the Moon and Joe Engle who flew an actual space shuttle.
  
  
• The X-20, flown from 1960-1963, was a design for a small military suborbital and orbital shuttlecraft called Dynasoar. It was to be launched by Titan 1 rocket, but never was flown. It was cancelled in 1963 as too expensive.
  
  
• Asset was the name for half a dozen launches in 1963-1965 of small Dynasoar models testing aerodynamics and thermal protection.
  
  
• M2 was a lifting body testing shuttle handling at trans-sonic speeds from 1966-1967. It flew in 1966, crashed in 1967, and was rebuilt for more tests.
  
  
• Prime was the name for three launches of maneuverable lifting bodies in 1966-1967 to near-orbital speeds.
  
  
• HL-10 was a manned lifting body testing shuttle handling at trans-sonic speeds in the 1960's.
  
  
• X-24a was a manned lifting body testing shuttle handling at trans-sonic speeds in the 1970's.
  
  
• X-24b was manned lifting body tests of handling at trans-sonic speeds. It flew 36 times in 1973-1975 with some landings simulating shuttle landings on concrete runways at Edwards Air Force Base.

Apollo. Meanwhile, NASA had enjoyed large budgets during the 1960's space race and wanted to continue into the 1970's, expanding Project Apollo into an Apollo Applications Program. AAP would have built a space station in Earth orbit as a pit stop for astronauts on their way to the Moon and Mars.

But, after six spectacular manned Apollo landings on the Moon, much of NASA's money dried up. Many politicians said space spectaculars were unnecessary since the U.S. had won the race.

Forced to choose, NASA cancelled three Moon landing flights and built one space station. The name AAP was changed to Skylab and the station was launched to Earth orbit in 1973. Astronauts were shipped to the station separately in 1973, in three groups of three each in left-over Apollo Moon capsules.

NASA drew up plans for a larger space station, but sharply reduced space budgets again forced tough decisions. The first Skylab was not used after just three visits and plans for the second Skylab were dumped.

Shuttle. NASA decided a reusable space transportation system was needed to carry men and equipment to orbit, so the limited amount of money available was switched to designing and building space shuttles. Eventually, six shuttles were built, starting with Enterprise in 1974, and dozens of week-long spaceflights have been made since 1981 (all flights are listed below).

NASA never again enjoyed the powerful budgets it commanded in the 1960's. In 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced a NASA project to build a permanently-manned space station in Earth orbit within 10 years. The station was to be named Freedom and Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency were to build major parts of the project. But, like AAP back around 1970, Freedom station was opposed vigorously by some scientists and politicians.

After the 1986 Challenger disaster killed seven astronauts on their way to orbit, an outpouring of national emotion supported the allocation of federal funds to build one replacement orbiter. The shuttle Endeavour was constructed and was expected to make its maiden voyage in 1992.

Some scientists and politicians continue today to argue against manned spaceflights, forcing NASA to choose between shuttles and space stations vs. unmanned interplanetary probes and orbiting astronomy observatories.

Space station Freedom configurations and construction dates repeatedly have grown smaller and less elaborate. NASA still hopes to construct Freedom station from 1995-2000, but federal funding has not been certain. If another shuttle orbiter were to go out of service, federal funding for a replacement might not be assured.

Enterprise. A U.S. space shuttle is a winged spaceplane with wheeled landing gear and large cargo-carrying capacity. It is launched to Earth orbit by rocket, then leaves orbit to glide to a runway landing.

Space shuttle Enterprise was the first orbiter, but it never orbited, never shuttled, never went to space.

Enterprise was known as OV-101 when work was started on it in June 1974. After 100,000 Star Trek TV fans wrote in, former U.S. President Gerald Ford named the orbiter Enterprise on September 8, 1976. NASA didn't like the name, wanting to call the shuttle Constitution.

Enterprise had no engines. The 130-ton orbiter only flew glide tests, bolted to the back of a Boeing 747 jet. The airplane-shuttle combo did not go to space, but was to drop Enterprise to test its gliding ability. The combo took off briefly February 18, 1977, to see if they could fly together. For the first free flight August 12, 1977, astronauts Fred Haise Jr and Charles Gordon Fullerton were at the controls when the 747 dropped Enterprise from an altitude of 4.5 miles over California. They glided 5.5 minutes to land on a strip at Edwards Air Force Base.

Five test flights were made over two years. Haise and Fullerton piloted flights one, three and five. Astronauts Joe Engle and Richard Truly piloted flights two and four. Engle and Truly later flew shuttle Columbia on the second actual spaceflight. Truly went on to head the space agency from 1989 as NASA Administrator.

Challenger. Originally, after the glide tests, Enterprise was to go back to the workshop for engines. But, it became cheaper to convert a structure-test orbiter into a ready-to-fly orbiter, so the plan to fly Enterprise was abandoned. The structure-test orbiter, numbered OV-099, became Challenger, the shuttle which exploded in 1986 after nine successful spaceflights.

Smithsonian. Enterprise also was used for so-called fit tests to get launch pads ready for real shuttles. Then the vehicle was flown city to city, piggyback on its 747 jumbo jet, as a NASA publicity stunt—a big hit with the public. After the tour, Enterprise was stripped of instruments and other gear and displayed at Kennedy Space Center for a time, then flown to Washington, D.C. for the Smithsonian Institution to build a museum around it. The museum has not been built and, today, Enterprise sits among weeds in the outback of Washington's Dulles International Airport, paint peeling, out of sight, out of mind.

Columbia. Another orbiter was numbered OV-101, later to be named Columbia. It was the first shuttle to fly in space. That first spaceflight was in 1981. Challenger's first flight was in 1983.

Discovery. Vehicle number OV-102 was named Discovery and made its first spaceflight in 1984.

Atlantis. Vehicle number OV-103 became Atlantis and went to space in 1984. NASA named its orbiters for historic sea vessels used in research and exploration.

g. The USSR participated in the Space Race in the 1960's, including developing capsules to carry a man to the Moon and a space station. While the U.S. won the Moon race in 1969, the USSR won the competition for first space station when Salyut 1 was launched in 1971. Replacement space stations were launched in 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1982 and 1986.

Space station activities have given the USSR the lead in man-hours in orbit. Cosmonauts have been launched in small Soyuz capsules on scores of flights to space stations. They return to Earth in the capsules which parachute to land. Supplies have been sent to the stations in unmanned Progress cargo-freighter capsules which then are jettisoned to burn in the atmosphere.

As the U.S. aggressively pursued development of reusable space shuttles in the 1970's, the USSR designed its own shuttle. The first was named Buran—Russian for snowstorm or blizzard. The first unmanned flight test of Buran No. 1 was a success November 15, 1988. Buran No. 2 was expected to make an unmanned flight to Mir space station in 1992-93.

Space station visits by USSR shuttles carrying men and supplies may increase in the 1990's, although it probably will remain less expensive to ferry men and supplies in time-tested Soyuz and Progress capsules.

Challenger. In nine distinguished spaceflights, the old U.S. orbiter Challenger compiled an extraordinary record: first American women in space Sally Ride, first black man in space Guion S. Bluford Jr., first shuttle spacewalk, first American female spacewalk by Kathryn Sullivan, first untethered spacewalk using a manned maneuvering unit (MMU), first satellite repair in orbit on Solar Max, even the first Coke and Pepsi in orbit.

Challenger's tenth flight, on January 28, 1986, set a tragic record: first Americans to die during a spaceflight, the first persons to die enroute to space.

The seven U.S. astronauts aboard Challenger shuttle flight STS-51L, later renumbered STS-25, were Francis R. "Dick" Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ellison S. Onizuka, Ronald E. McNair, Gregory B. Jarvis and Concord, New Hampshire, high school social studies teacher Sharon Christa McAuliffe.

They were killed when a solid-fuel booster rocket leak led to an explosion during lift off from a Cape Canaveral launch pad. People around the world watched the accident on NASA videotape as mission control announced at one minute thirteen seconds into lift off, "Obviously a major malfunction. We have no downlink. The vehicle has exploded."

Millions of American students were watching television in classrooms as Challenger exploded. They had been planning to participate in lessons teacher Christa McAuliffe was to have taught by TV from orbit.

After Challenger. Work was started immediately on an orbiter to replace Challenger. Designated OV-105, the space agency needed a name for the new shuttle. The name Challenger was retired in honor of the seven dead astronauts. NASA wanted to continue the tradition of naming orbiters for famous explorers' ships.

Directed by Congress to do so, the space agency let American school students choose the name of the new shuttle. Students in public and private schools in the United States and territories, Department of Defense overseas dependents schools and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools entered the national competition in two divisions—kindergarten through the 6th grade, and 7th through 12th grades. Elementary and secondary students formed teams to research names. Each team prepared a classroom project to justify its name. More than 6,100 teams, including 71,650 students, completed research projects justifying their name choices. Each state, territory and agency announced a winner in each division. NASA decided the final winner in each division and announced the name of the new shuttle in 1989.

Endeavour. Sailing ships of Capt. James Cook, the 18th-century British explorer, turned out to be most popular among American children. Thirty-one of 111 state winners wanted the new shuttle to be named Endeavour, although some used the American spelling Endeavor.

Cook had chosen the name Endeavour for a 98-ft. ship in which he explored the South Pacific from 1768 to 1772. Cook circumnavigated the globe in Endeavour by sailing southwest from Plymouth, England, around South America, exploring coasts of New Zealand, Australia and New Guinea, and returning to England by way of Africa's Cape of Good Hope.

Twelve students chose the name Resolution. Cook had used the name Resolution for a ship for his second and third voyages exploring the Pacific Ocean. Cook sailed Resolution north to the Arctic Ocean and south to the Antarctic Circle. During those voyages, he found and named Sandwich Islands—now known as Hawaii. Cook was killed in the Sandwich Islands in 1779.

Eleven students selected Victoria, the name of the ship used by Ferdinand Magellan, a 16th century Portuguese navigator. Magellan sailed Victoria from 1519 to 1522. Victoria was the first to sail around the world. Unfortunately, Magellan was killed in the Philippines before the voyage was completed.

The American students also nominated the names Adventure, Blake, Calypso, Deepstar, Desire, Dove, Eagle, Endurance, Godspeed, Griffin, H.M.S. Chatham, Hokule'a, Horizon, Investigato, Meteor, Nautilus, North Star, Pathfinder, Phoenix, Polar Star, Rising Star, Royal Tern, Trieste and Victory. Discovery, already the name of a U.S. shuttle, was the second ship in Cook's company on his final sail.

The orbiter built to replace Challenger, first designated OV-105, officially was named Endeavour in 1989. Its maiden spaceflight was to be in 1992.

Flight numbers. NASA shuttle flight numbers can be confusing. All flights are given STS (space transportation system) numbers. The first nine flights were easy, numbered STS-1 through STS-9. Then the flight numbering system was changed. STS-9 also was known as STS-41A. What would have been STS-10 became STS 41B.

The new numbers were supposed to convey more information:

The first numeral was the last digit of the government's fiscal year in which the launch was to take place. For example, the 4 in STS-41B stood for the 4 in 1984.

The second numeral indicated the launch site. The number l meant Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Number 2 was Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. No shuttles ever were launched from Vandenberg.

The letter represented the order of launch assignment within a fiscal year. For instance, the letter B in STS-41B meant it was the second launch scheduled for fiscal year 1984.

Things changed after the 1986 Challenger tragedy. NASA returned to the original easy-to-understand numbering system based on sequential flight numbers. All launches planned from Vandenberg were switched to the Cape.

The disastrous Challenger flight, previously known as STS-51L, actually was the 25th U.S. shuttle flight. It was renamed STS-25. The first mission when flights resumed after Challenger was the 26th shuttle so it was numbered STS-26.

Unfortunately, even the simple scheme became confused when NASA was forced to move flights around in the schedule. With STS numbers assigned 19 months in advance, the agency decided each flight would keep its number through all schedule changes. Thus, STS-36 flew before STS-31 and STS-41 flew before STS-38.

The first 48 U.S. shuttle space transportation system (STS) flights:

STS     Launch                Lands                      Orbiter                    Highlight

1          1981 Apr 12          1981 Apr 14             Columbia                  maiden spaceflight

2          1981 Nov 12         1981 Nov 14            Columbia                  remote arm test

3          1982 Mar 22         1982 Mar 30            Columbia                  thermal tests

4          1982 Jun 27           1982 Jul 4                 Columbia                  9 Utah GAScans

5          1982 Nov 11         1982 Nov 15            Columbia                  EVA canceled

6          1983 Apr 4            1983 Apr 9               Challenger               maiden flt & TDRS-A

7          1983 Jun 18           1983 Jun 24              Challenger               Sally Ride

8          1983 Aug 30         1983 Sep 5               Challenger               night launch/landing

9          1983 Nov 28         1983 Dec 8              Columbia                  SpaceLab 1

10        1984 Feb 3            1984 Feb 11             Challenger               Palapa & Westar

11        1984 Apr 6            1984 Apr 13             Challenger               LDEF & Solar Max

12        1984 Aug 30         1984 Sep 5               Discovery                maiden flight

13        1984 Oct 5            1984 Oct 13             Challenger               female spacewalk

14        1984 Nov 8           1984 Nov 16            Discovery                2 sats retrieved

15        1985 Jan 24           1985 Jan 27              Discovery                first military flight

16        1985 Apr 12          1985 Apr 19             Discovery                flyswatter & Sen.Garn

17        1985 Apr 29          1985 May 6              Challenger               SpaceLab

18        1985 Jun 17           1985 Jun 24              Discovery                3 sats

19        1985 Jul 29            1985 Aug 6              Challenger               abort to orbit

20        1985 Aug 27         1985 Sep 3               Discovery                sat repair

21        1985 Oct 3            1985 Oct 7               Atlantis                     maiden flt/military

22        1985 Oct 30          1985 Nov 6              Challenger               8 in crew/German

23        1985 Nov 26         1985 Dec 3              Atlantis                     erector set

24        1986 Jan 12           1986 Jan 18              Columbia                  U.S. Rep. Nelson

25        1986 Jan 28           1986 Jan 28              Challenger               7 die in explosion

26        1988 Sep 29          1988 Oct 3               Discovery                return to space

27        1988 Dec 2           1988 Dec 6              Atlantis                     military spysat

29        1989 Mar 13         1989 Mar 18            Discovery                TDRS-D

30        1989 May 4           1989 May 8              Atlantis                     Magellan

28        1989 Aug 8           1989 Aug 13            Columbia                  military

34        1989 Oct 18          1989 Oct 25             Atlantis                     Galileo

33        1989 Nov 22         1989 Nov 27            Discovery                military

32        1990 Jan 9             1990 Jan 20              Columbia                  LDEF retrieval

36        1990 Feb 28          1990 Mar 5              Atlantis                     military

31        1990 Apr 24          1990 Apr 29             Discovery                Hubble Telescope

41        1990 Oct 6            1990 Oct 10             Discovery                Ulysses

38        1990 Nov 15         1990 Nov 20            Atlantis                     military

35        1990 Dec 2           1990 Dec 11            Columbia                  Astro-1

37        1991 Apr 5            1991 Apr 11             Atlantis                     Gamma Ray Obsrvtry

39        1991 Apr 28          1991 May 6              Discovery                military

40        1991 Jun 5             1991 Jun 14              Columbia                  SLS-1

43        1991 Aug 2           1991 Aug 11            Atlantis                     TDRS-E

48        1991 Sep 12          1991 Sep 18             Discovery                UARS

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

NASA's Shuttle Numbering System

NASA adopted a cumbersome numbering system for space shuttle flights 10 through 25. Before STS-41B, flights were numbered simply STS-1 through STS-9. After Challenger, simple numbers were returned.

STS stands for space transportation system. All shuttle flights have been given STS numbers. The first nine were easy, then the flight numbering system was changed. STS-9 also was known as STS-41A. STS-10 became STS 41B. The new numbers were supposed to convey more information:

• The first numeral was the last digit of the government's fiscal year in which the launch was to take place. For example, the 4 in STS-41B stood for the 4 in 1984.
  
  
• The second numeral indicated the launch site. The number l meant Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Number 2 was Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Of course, no shuttles ever were launched from Vandenberg.
  
  
• The letter represented the order of launch assignment within a fiscal year. For instance, the letter B in STS-41B meant it was the second launch scheduled for fiscal year 1984.

After the 1986 Challenger tragedy, NASA returned to the original easy-to-understand numbering system based on sequential flight numbers. All scheduled flights from Vandenberg were cancelled.

The disastrous Challenger flight, known as STS-51L, actually was the 25th U.S. shuttle flight—so NASA renamed it STS-25. The first mission when flights resumed after Challenger was the 26th shuttle flight so it was numbered STS-26.

Unfortunately, even the simple scheme became confused. When NASA was forced to move flights around in the schedule, the space agency decided each flight would keep its STS number assigned 19 months before flight.

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

The Challenger Disaster

It was NASA shuttle flight STS-51L, the 25th shuttle blast-off, the first firing from Launch Pad B at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39. The flight had been scheduled six times before, but delayed for bad weather and technical problems.

Finally, at 11:38 a.m. Eastern Standard Time January 28, 1986, Challenger was on its way to space with a TDRS tracking and data relay satellite and a Spartan free-flying astronomy module to study Comet Halley. One minute thirteen seconds after liftoff, a defective seal on one of two solid-fuel booster rockets spit flame, igniting an explosion which devastated the orbiter, the big fuel tank and the two boosters. All seven crew members were killed:

• Francis R. Scobee, commander
• Michael J. Smith, pilot
• Judith A. Resnik, mission specialist
• Ellison S. Onizuka, mission specialist
• Ronald E. McNair, mission specialist
• Gregory B. Jarvis, payload specialist
• S. Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire school teacher and the first space shuttle passenger in NASA's Teacher in Space program. McAuliffe had planned to teach lessons to school children on Earth during live TV transmissions from space.

After the accident, three orbiters remained in the fleet: Columbia, Discovery and Atlantis. They were grounded. Work was started on a replacement shuttle, later named Endeavour. A Presidential Commission investigated. Booster rockets were changed, as was NASA itself. Discovery took America back to space September 29, 1988. Endeavour was to make its maiden voyage in May 1992.

Cosmonauts Carry Pictures. USSR cosmonauts Vladimir Solovyev and Leonid Kizim took a photograph of the seven U.S. shuttle Challenger astronauts up to the USSR's orbiting Mir space station in 1986.

Solovyev and Kizim flew from Baikonur Cosmodrome March 15, 1986, in Soyuz T-15, just six weeks after Challenger exploded in January. The cosmonauts said they "wanted those seven brave astronauts to go to outer space."

While visiting the U.S. after returning from Mir, Kizim and Solovyev said they had paid tribute in space to the dead U.S. astronauts.

Kizim and Solovyev accompanied a teenage Young Cosmonauts group from the USSR. They toured the U.S. launch facility at Cape Canaveral, as well as Washington, Disney World, and NASA space centers at Huntsville, Alabama, and Houston, Texas. Earlier, Young Astronaut teens from the USA had toured the USSR.

Challenger Point. A 14,081-ft. mountain peak near Kit Carson Peak in the Sangre de Cristo range in south-central Colorado was named Challenger Point to honor the seven astronauts. The U.S. Board on Geographical Names voted for the name suggested by Colorado Springs electrical engineer Dennis Williams who said mountain peaks symbolize the spirit of adventure.

Some south-central Colorado residents opposed the name. County commissioners voted against it. The sheriff said residents were afraid it would encourage people to climb and fall off. In fact, statistics showed ten persons had died in eleven years from climbing accidents and small plane crashes near the point. Supporters of the commemorative name included a former state governor and the Colorado Mountain Club.

Challenger 7 Mural At Capitol. A colorful painting of the seven lost astronauts was placed in a corridor of the U.S. Senate in Washington, DC. The Challenger mural was painted by Temple University professor Charles Schmidt.

The mural is in the Capitol's Brumidi corridor, named for an Italian immigrant who decorated the Senate in a florid 19th Century style. Blank ovals, left to record future U.S. history, line the brightly-painted corridor. Across the corridor from the Challenger mural is a 1975 painting reflecting the landing of the Apollo moonship in 1969.

No Centaurs In Shuttles. A powerful rocket fueled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen was ruled out of bounds on U.S. space shuttles.

NASA decided the Centaur rocket was too dangerous to carry into space aboard a shuttle. Centaur's fuel is the same combination which destroyed shuttle Challenger.

The shuttle version of Centaur is an adaptation of a rocket which has been used for years as a final stage atop unmanned rockets. It sent Viking to Mars. Centaur was to have blasted off from outside an orbiting shuttle in May 1986, sending the Galileo probe to Jupiter. Another planned shuttle Centaur would have sent the Magellan probe to radar-map Venus. Others would have carried secret military heavyweight satellites away from shuttles. The various interplanetary missions went forward, but not with Centaur firing from a shuttle orbit. Centaur was returned for use atop unmanned rockets. The U.S. Air Force ordered unmanned Titan rockets which could carry Centaurs.

Wreckage Buried In Silos. A year after Challenger exploded on its way to orbit, workers at Cape Canaveral buried wreckage from the space shuttle Challenger in old abandoned Minuteman ICBM missile silos and underground buildings there.

The orbiter and its payload are kept in four underground buildings. Pieces of the external fuel tank and solid-fuel booster rockets are in two 78-foot-deep silos. Giant concrete caps were lowered onto the abandoned missile silos in February 1987.

Parts of the right-side booster which ruptured in the explosion were kept elsewhere for study by engineers.

The wreckage had been held in a Kennedy Space Center hangar before burial. The Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum wanted to display pieces of wreckage in Washington, but NASA didn't think it proper.

To the ocean. Did the crew aboard Challenger, after it exploded 73 seconds into flight, survive the two-and-a-half minutes it took the shuttle to crash into the ocean?

A Florida newspaper in November 1988 quoted anonymous NASA investigators who said yes, the crew survived the blast to die when the pressurized cabin slammed into the Atlantic Ocean at 200 miles per hour.

The Miami Herald newspaper's Sunday magazine, Tropic, said NASA found no evidence the crew cabin lost pressure. If pressure did drop, it was slow, without a sudden loss of air that would have knocked the astronauts out within seconds. Thus, the astronauts might have remained conscious long enough to catch a glimpse of the ocean rushing toward them. The magazine said, if Challenger had landed softly, they could have swum home.

Air pack. The wife of one of the Challenger astronauts said she wasn't surprised by the speculation. She said she had thought her husband might have been alive during the 2.5 minutes because his PEAP (personal emergency air pack) was found still attached to his seat. Three-quarters of the air in it had been breathed. She said that amount would match the amount of time to impact. The PEAP, used only on demand, was found turned on, indicating the astronaut was breathing through it to receive his air.

NASA said, in its opinion, the astronauts died the instant the spacecraft exploded. The space agency said, if the crew cabin had survived the blast intact, it would have been ripped apart by aerodynamic forces while falling.

Death certificates. The remains of seven astronauts were found entangled in the crushed cabin on the Atlantic Ocean floor six weeks after the disaster and taken to the Air Force Institute of Pathology. NASA's official report claimed no cause of death could be determined from the remains. Death certificates issued from the Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, on January 30, 1986, two days after the tragedy, certified the astronauts "died when the shuttle spacecraft ChallengerÉexploded."

Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center are located in Brevard County, Florida. The chief assistant to the medical examiner in Brevard County told Tropic magazine the Johnson Space Center death certificates were invalid because of the date, and because they were not signed by Florida authorities. He said the public may never know exactly how the astronauts died since the remains were not made available to Florida pathologists, whose records would be public.

Photos. NASA decided not to release photos of the Challenger crew cabin. Officials said it would be an invasion of privacy of the dead crew and their families.

Photos and videotapes reportedly included shots of astronaut personal effects strewn across the ocean floor. They will be shown only to NASA workers.

Photos of other parts of the wrecked shuttle are available and one photo of crew cabin debris was released in 1986 before the policy changed.

Tapes. Saying release would invade the privacy of astronaut families, NASA tried to hold back audio recordings of the crew cabin during launch, but a federal appellate court panel ruled the space agency had to release the tapes. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision that the tapes be made public under the Freedom of Information Act.

NASA After Challenger. To improve safety and performance, NASA officials revamped the space agency in 1986 and 1987 during 975 painful and fearful days after the Challenger disaster froze the U.S. man-in-space program. Some of the post-Challenger changes were:

• redesigned boosters for return to flight
• improved shuttle main engines
• checked all critical hardware and maintenance
• established a quality control and safety team
• improved weather forecasting for landing sites
• improved safety at landing sites
• added an escape hatch for a disabled shuttle
• overhauled top NASA management
• new administrator
• new deputy administrator
• new management running the shuttle program
• new directors controlling the space station program
• all three major shuttle field centers received new leadership
• several astronauts assigned to top positions
• shuttle management concentrated in Washington
• space station authority centered in Washington
• new associate administrator posts created.

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

Endeavour Space Shuttle

Sailing ships of Capt. James Cook, the 18th-century British explorer, turned out to be most popular among American children in a contest to name a new space shuttle.

Thirty-one of 111 state winners wanted the new shuttle to be named Endeavour. Many used the American spelling Endeavor. Twelve chose Resolution. Eleven selected Victoria, the name of the ship used by Ferdinand Magellan, a 16th century Portuguese navigator, NASA revealed March 21, 1989.

Challenger. Millions of American students were watching television in classrooms January 28, 1986, when the shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing teacher Christa McAuliffe and six other astronauts. Many pupils had planned to participate in lessons McAuliffe was to have taught from orbit.

A replacement shuttle being built was scheduled for its maiden flight in 1992. The replacement orbiter had the temporary name of OV-105.

NASA's orbiters still in use—Discovery, Atlantis and Columbia—were named after sea vessels used in research and exploration. NASA wanted to continue that tradition. The name Challenger was retired in honor of the seven dead astronauts. NASA, directed by Congress to do so, let American school students choose the name of the new shuttle. The new shuttle was completed in 1991.

Contest. Students in public and private schools in the United States and territories, Department of Defense overseas dependents schools and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools entered the national competition in two divisions—kindergarten through the 6th grade, and 7th through 12th grades. Elementary and secondary students formed teams to research names. Each team prepared a classroom project to justify its name. More than 6,100 teams, including 71,650 students, completed research projects justifying their name choices. Each state, territory and agency announced a winner in each division. NASA chose the final winner in each division and announced the name of the new shuttle in 1989.

Endeavour. Cook chose the name Endeavour for a 98-foot ship in which he explored the South Pacific from 1768 to 1772. Cook circumnavigated the globe in Endeavour by sailing southwest from Plymouth, England, around South America, exploring coasts of New Zealand, Australia and New Guinea, and returning to England by way of Africa's Cape of Good Hope.

Resolution. Cook chose the name Resolution for a ship for his second and third voyages exploring the Pacific Ocean. Cook sailed Resolution north to the Arctic Ocean and south to the Antarctic Circle. During those voyages, he found and named Sandwich Islands—now known as Hawaii. Cook was killed in the Sandwich Islands in 1779.

Discovery. Discovery was the second ship in Cook's company on his final sail. Discovery already is the name of a U.S. space shuttle.

Victoria. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer, sailed in the ship Victoria from 1519 to 1522. The Victoria was the first to sail around the world. Unfortunately, Magellan was killed in the Philippines before the voyage was completed.

Other names. The students also nominated these names:  Adventure, Blake, Calypso, Deepstar, Desire, Dove, Eagle, Endurance, Godspeed, Griffin, H.M.S. Chatham, Hokule'a, Horizon, Investigato, Meteor, Nautilus, North Star, Pathfinder, Phoenix, Polar Star, Rising Star, Royal Tern, Trieste and Victory.

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

Runaway Shuttle Safety Net

A nylon safety net to stop a space shuttle from rolling off a runway during an emergency landing was tested in 1987 at an airport in Virginia.

A shuttle lands at about 200 miles per hour. During a real emergency, the net would stop a fully-loaded shuttle rolling at 100 miles per hour within 1,000 feet.

The safety net would be suspended 25 feet above a runway surface on a break-away cable. The corners of the net would be attached by cable to energy-absorber drums anchored in concrete at the edges of the runway to provide the braking force for a rolling shuttle.

As a shuttle slammed into it, the net would break loose and blanket the vehicle. As the shuttle continued down the runway, it would unwind nylon tapes from the energy absorber drums and stop rolling in 1,000 feet.

The test. The old dummy Enterprise shuttle was rolled slowly through a remote field into the web of hundreds of nylon straps to see which parts of the shuttle came in contact with the net and to find what stress the net had to endure.

The 130-ton spaceship did not hurtle down a runway into the net. Rather, the non-flying Enterprise test craft, retired on a Washington Dulles International Airport back lot for years, was winched a few inches at a time to see how the net draped over it. NASA didn't want to catch and break the nosewheel, the most vulnerable part of the orbiter.

Bad brakes. The shuttle fleet is notorious for bad brakes. If one had to land on a short runway, the giant net could be erected to halt its roll, preventing the shuttle from overrunning the landing strip. NASA calls it a Shuttle Orbiter Arresting System and the space agency needs it on short runways at remote emergency landing sites in Dakar, Senegal, and  Zaragoza and Moron, Spain.

Similar systems for airplanes are on many airport runways around the world. The Naval Air Engineering Center at Lakehurst, New Jersey, helped NASA with the test since the Navy had experience snagging planes landing on aircraft carrier decks. The shuttle net is similar, but bigger.

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

Shuttle Launch Weather Rules

NASA has had weather problems over the years. The Cape Canaveral area of Florida is a thunderstorm-prone area. NASA rules for launching in wind, rain, clouds and lightning:

• wind – a launch will be put off if wind gusts peak at 32 knots or if wind is steady at 22 knots.
• rain – a launch will be postponed if there is any precipitation in a rocket's flight path.
• clouds – if the edge of a storm comes within 10 miles of the pad, launch will be held.
• lightning – if lightning is spotted within 10 miles of the pad, as much as 30 minutes before launch, firing will be postponed.

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

Shuttle Emergency Landing Strips

NASA has a worldwide maze of shuttle emergency landing strips. The network of fields strewn across the globe means a shuttle in distress would find a runway within three revolutions around Earth. One orbit takes about 90 minutes.

North Pacific landing strips are at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, and Andersen Field, Guam. A South Pacific emergency field is on Easter Island. African strips are at Ben Guerir, Morocco; Banjul, The Gambia; and Dakar, Senegal. Strips in southern Europe are at Zaragoza Air Base, Spain, and Moron Air Base, Spain.

Continental U.S. landing fields are Kennedy Space Center, Florida, Edwards Air Force Base, California, and White Sands, New Mexico.

Runways at Hickam and Andersen have giant nets to catch skidding spaceplanes, high-tech landing aids and brilliant Xenon lights for night landings. Like giant tennis nets, the barriers known to NASA as Shuttle Orbiter Arresting System, would catch a shuttle with bad brakes. Some emergency landing sites have very long runways and do not require nets. The sites are manned by 30 to 40 persons during a shuttle flight.

Regular airports. NASA also lists 20 airports around the world, such as Orlando, Florida, as backup emergency landing strips. They do not have the large shuttle nets.

All shuttles take off from Kennedy Space Center. Kennedy and Ben Guerir are launch abort sites for a shuttle with engine trouble moments after liftoff. Kennedy now is the normally-scheduled landing site for U.S. shuttles, with Edwards and White Sands secondary.

A major shuttle launching facility was built in the 1980's at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, but mothballed after the 1986 Challenger disaster. Should that facility ever be re-opened, Easter Island would be an emergency landing strip for shuttles taking off from Vandenberg.

Bad brakes. The space agency needs the Shuttle Orbiter Arresting System on short runways at emergency landing sites because the American shuttle fleet previously had weak brakes. If one had to land on a short runway, the giant net would be erected to halt its roll, preventing the shuttle from overrunning the strip.

Similar systems for airplanes are in use on many airport runways around the world. The Naval Air Engineering Center at Lakehurst, New Jersey, helped NASA with the safety net since the Navy had experience snagging planes landing on aircraft carrier decks. A shuttle net is bigger.

The net. A shuttle lands at 200 mph. During a real emergency, the net would stop a fully-loaded shuttle rolling at 100 miles per hour within 1,000 feet.

The nylon safety net would be suspended 25 feet above a runway surface on a break-away cable. The corners of the net would be attached by cable to energy-absorber drums anchored in concrete at the edges of the runway to provide the braking force for a rolling shuttle.

As a shuttle slammed into it, the net would break loose and blanket the vehicle. As the shuttle continued down the runway, it would unwind nylon tapes from the energy absorber drums and stop rolling in 1,000 feet.

Net tests. The safety net was tested in 1987 at an airport in Virginia. The old dummy shuttle Enterprise was rolled slowly through a remote field into the web of hundreds of nylon straps to see which parts of the shuttle came in contact with the net and to find what stress the net had to endure.

The 130-ton spaceship did not hurtle down a runway into the net. Rather, the non-flying Enterprise test craft, retired for years on a back lot at the Washington, D.C., Dulles International Airport, was winched a few inches at a time to see how the net draped over it. NASA didn't want to catch and break the nosewheel, the most vulnerable part of the orbiter.

African strips. NASA constructed emergency landing sites for shuttles at an abandoned Strategic Air Command base near Ben Guerir, Morocco, and at an airport in the tiny country of The Gambia in northwest Africa.

The former SAC base at Ben Guerir, 40 miles north of Marrakech, abandoned in 1963, has a 14,000 foot runway. It was resurfaced to make it usable by a shuttle which would fail during launch to reach the speed necessary to get to orbit.

The airport at Banjul, The Gambia, was upgraded to accommodate shuttles. Banjul, with an 11,800-foot runway, serves The Gambia as its international airport. Banjul airport is about 13 degrees north of the Equator on a flat plain seven miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean. The airport lies almost directly beneath the normal flight path of a U.S. shuttle launched into a standard 28.5 degree orbit.

Foundations for shuttle approach and landing aids were laid at the African sites. Operations and storage buildings were constructed. Each location received equipment, tugged across the Atlantic Ocean in an ocean-going barge from Kennedy Space Center, including ten Jeeps, a microwave landing system, lights, generators for power, portable satellite communications systems, automated weather stations and tools. Ben Guerir received fire-fighting equipment.

Easter Island. Chile owns Easter Island, 50 sq. mi. of land off the western coast of South America, 2,270 miles due west of Chile in the Pacific Ocean. Easter Island also is known as Isla de Pascua.

Easter Island, a Polynesian mote formed by volcanic action, is famous for its ancient tall carved-stone busts known as moais. The Easter Island Family Chiefs Council, composed of descendants of original Easter Island tribal chiefs, opposed the shuttle emergency landing strip project, saying it did archaeological damage to their island and made Easter Island a likely military target in a U.S. war.

Chile would like an astronaut to be selected from its country for flight in a U.S. shuttle, so a 9,612-ft. landing strip on Easter Island was lengthened to 11,000 ft. and paved. Approach lights were installed and a maintenance office built with construction materials ferried across the ocean in a barge from Chile.

After Challenger, NASA decided to launch all shuttles from Florida. Shuttles are not expected to take-off from California until 1994 at the earliest. The Easter Island strip has been used by NASA for airplane flights to 70,000 ft. for studies of the ozone hole over Antarctica.

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

Spacelab

NASA and the European Space Agency agreed in 1973 that ESA would build a pressurized science laboratory to be carried to space occasionally in the cargo bay of U.S. space shuttles. The Europeans spent $1.2 billion to build Spacelab modules and the U.S. gives free shuttle rides.

A Spacelab is a set of modules 8.9 feet long and 13 feet in diameter, placed in a shuttle's cargo bay and connected to the shuttle airlock by a tunnel.

Astronaut-scientists float back and forth through the tube between the lab and crew quarters in the shuttle. Experiments are mounted in the lab in racks.

Spacelab modules can be joined together to compose a double-size unit, carrying 4,600 lbs. of research equipment.

Experiments needing exposure to space are mounted on pallets 9.5 feet long and 13 feet wide. If a Spacelab flight does not require pressurization, then five pallets can be laid along the length of the cargo bay.

 

SPACELAB 1

Launch: November 28, 1983                         Shuttle:      Columbia

Flight:        STS-9                                            Duration: 247:47:41 (hours:minutes:seconds)

Crew: John W. Young, Brewster H. Shaw Jr., Owen K. Garriott, A. Robert Parker,

                  Ulf Merbold, Byron K. Lichtenberg

Events: First test of Spacelab concept. Carried 71 experiments in astronomy, solar physics, life sciences, atmospheric physics, Earth observation, plasma physics, and materials processing technology. Columbia was modified for the lab with new engines, a bigger antenna to transmit data, new galley forward of the hatch. Astronauts in pressurized module operated 38 instruments: 20 in lab, 16 on pallets, 2 shared. X-ray, ultraviolet, solar telescopes. Ten days in orbit. Merbold from West Germany was the first non American to go to space in a U.S. craft. He and Lichtenberg were the first payload specialists. Merbold, Lichtenberg and Garriott worked in the lab.

SPACELAB 3

Launch: April 29, 1985                                  Shuttle:      Challenger

Flight:        STS-51B                                        Duration: 168:07:55

Crew: Robert F. Overmyer, Frederick D. Gregory, Don L. Lind, Norman E. Thagard,

                  William E. Thorton, Lodewijk van den Berg, Taylor G. Wang

Events: Pressurized module like S/L 1. Biological response experiments and processing of materials. Liquid droplets levitated with sound waves. Grew bright-red mercuric-oxide crystals for 104 hours, larger and purer than possible on Earth. Carried two monkeys, 24 rats, in cages. When food and droppings floated away, astronauts had to put on surgical masks while vacuuming the air. Lodewijk van den Berg, of the European Space Agency, was the first Dutch astronaut.

SPACELAB 2

Launch: July 29, 1985                                    Shuttle:      Challenger

Flight:        STS-51F                                        Duration: 190:45:35

Crew: Charles Gordon Fullerton, Roy D. Bridges Jr., Loren W. Acton, F. S. "Story" Musgrave,

                  Anthony W. "Tony" England, Karl G. Henize, John-David F. Bartoe

Events:      Mostly astronomy. Telescopes on three pallets. No pressure module. Crew of seven cramped in Challenger cabin a week. First engine failure during shuttle flight to space. Henize was the oldest person to fly in space, age 58.

SPACELAB D-1

Launch: October 30, 1985                             Shuttle:      Challenger

Flight:        STS-61A                                       Duration: 168:45:00

Crew: Henry W. Hartsfield Jr., Steven R. Nagel, James F. Buchli, Guion S. Bluford Jr.,

                  Bonnie J. Dunbar, Reinhard Furrer, Ernst Messerschmid, Wubbo J. Ockels

Events: First German flight. Did 75 experiments, mostly materials processing in zero-gravity. Acceleration tests on track zooming length of lab. Record 8-man crew with Furrer and Messerschmid from West Germany, Ockels from Holland. Mission control shared with West German Space Operations Center at Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich. Largest crew: 8.

SPACELAB ASTRO-1

Launch: December 2, 1990                           Shuttle:      Columbia

Flight:        STS-35                                          Duration: 8 days 23 hrs 5 mins 8 secs

Crew: commander Vance D. Brand, pilot Guy S. Gardner,

                  mission specialists Jeffrey A. Hoffman, John M. "Mike" Lounge,

                  A. Robert Parker, payload specialists civilian astronomers Samuel T. Durrance,

                  Ronald A. Parise

Events: The first shuttle flight in five years dedicated entirely to science. Four of the seven astronauts were astronomers. Used Astro-1 ultraviolet light telescopes and the Broad Band X-Ray Telescope (BBXRT-1) to study quasars, binary stars, pulsars, black holes, galaxies and high-energy stars. Specific targets included Supernova 1987a, the nearby supergiant star Betelgeuse, radio-quiet quasar Q1821, spiral-poor galaxy cluster Abell 2256, NGC 1633, NGC 1399 in the constellation Fornax, Q1821+64. Despite early telescope control problems in orbit, the Spacelab astronomy instruments in the shuttle cargo bay ended up examining 135 deep space targets during 394 observations. The observations included Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope, 75 targets, 101 observations; Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope, 64 targets, 89 observations; Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo Polarimeter Experiment, 70 sources, 88 observations; and Broad Band X-ray Telescope, 76 targets, 116 observations. It was the 15th longest U.S. space mission and the third longest shuttle flight. Parise used Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX) equipment to make ham radio contact with amateur operators on Earth; his callsign WA4SIR. Hoffman wore the first dress shirt and tie in space when he dressed up to teach elementary pupils on the ground by TV from the shuttle Dec 7. NASA's idea of a Space Classroom became a reality as Durrance, Hoffman, Parise and Parker conducted space-to-ground TV lessons on the invisible and visible Universe, electromagnetic spectrum and how telescopes work in space. The astronauts answered questions from pupils on the ground. Parise and Durrance were the first non-NASA astronauts to fly in a U.S. spacecraft in five years, since the Challenger disaster.

SPACELAB SLS-1

Launch: June 5, 1991                   Shuttle: Columbia

Flight:        STS-40                                          Duration: 9 days

Crew: commander Bryan D. O'Connor, pilot Sidney M. Gutierrez,

                  mission specialists James P. Bagian, Tamara E. "Tami" Jernigan, Margaret Rhea Seddon,

                  payload specialists Francis Andrew "Drew" Gaffney, Millie Hughes-Fulford

Events: Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS-1) explored how heart, blood vessels, lungs, kidneys and hormone-secreting glands respond to microgravity, the causes of space sickness and changes in muscles, bones and cells during space flight, and readjustment to gravity upon returning to Earth, the most detailed physiological measurements in space since Skylab in 1973-74. Spacelab is a removeable pressurized science lab carried to space and back in Columbia's cargo bay. Astronauts float through a tube into Spacelab. The crew shepherded 30 rats plus 2,478 tiny jellyfish in plastic bags and bottles—the first jellyfish in orbit—for Eastern Virginia Medical School biologist Dorothy Spangenberg who wanted to see how Aurelia aurita (moon jellies) grow in weightlessness. Since moon jellies on Earth mature to free swimming in six days if iodine is added to their water, they were ideal research organisms for Columbia's nine-day spaceflight.  In orbit, Jernigan injected iodine into the water of a third of them and videotaped their behavior. The experiments were duplicated the same day in a Norfolk laboratory. After flight, Spangenberg examined them to see how much calcium they lost. Crew sleep was interrupted to fix Spacelab cooling equipment. First, a backup cooling pump had to be switched on for the Research Animal Holding Facility. Then, the Spacelab refrigerator-freezer broke down. A shortage nearly required Spacelab power to be shut down for a day to conserve liquid hydrogen and oxygen for fuel cells. It was the first shuttle with three woman in one crew. Bagian, Gaffney and Seddon were MDs. Jernigan, an astronomer. Hughes-Fulford, a biological chemist. STS-40 landed June 14.

SPACELAB IML-1

Launch: scheduled February 1992                Shuttle: Discovery

Flight:        STS-42                                          Duration: 7 days

Crew: commander Ronald J. Grabe, pilot Stephen S. Oswald,

                  payload commander Norman E. Thagard, mission specialists David C. Hilmers,

                  William F. Readdy, payload specialists Roberta L. Bondar, Ulf D. Merbold

Events: International Microgravity Laboratory (IML-1), first microgravity research in a long shuttle Spacelab module, studying effects on material processes and living organisms of very low gravity in space near Earth. With NASA in the project are 5 international organizations: European Space Agency (ESA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA), French National Center for Space Studies (CNES), West German Research and Development Institute for Air and Spacecraft (DLR), and National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). IML Spacelabs are to fly at 17-mo. to 25-mo. intervals; separation allowing scientists to study results and apply them to new research. They will carry plants and animals, and protein crystal, vapor crystal and mercury iodide crystal growth experiments. Discovery to orbit with its tail pointing down toward Earth in the "gravity gradient" position offering the least gravity during flight. Merbold from Germany. Roberta L. Bondar MD is to be the first Canadian woman in space; first non-U.S. astronaut in a U.S. spaceflight since 1985.

SPACELAB ATLAS-1

Launch: scheduled May 1992                        Shuttle: Atlantis

Flight:        STS-45                                          Duration: 8 days

Crew: commander Charles F. Bolden, Jr., pilot Brian Duffy,

                  payload commander Kathryn D. Sullivan, mission specialists C. Michael Foale,

                  David C. Leestma, payload specialists Dirk D. Frimout, Byron K. Lichtenberg

Events: Sullivan to be the first female payload commander, in charge of Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (Atlas-1) to study atmospheric phenomena, energy from the Sun and changes in the solar spectrum from a Spacelab aboard Atlantis. Atlas-1 is to be the first of several Atlas missions scheduled for orbit over a decade to study interaction of Earth's atmosphere with the Sun. Atlas is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program. STS-45 astronauts also will use the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument (SSBUV-A1) to measure ozone in Earth's atmosphere. SSBUVs were carried in U.S. shuttles before: SSBUV-1 in STS-34, SSBUV-2 STS-41, SSBUV-3 STS-43.

SPACELAB USML-1

Launch: scheduled June 1992                        Shuttle: Columbia

Flight:        STS-50                                          Duration: 13 days

Crew: commander Richard N. "Dick" Richards, pilot John H. Casper,

                  payload commander Bonnie J. Dunbar, mission specialists Kenneth D. Bowersox,

                  Carl J. Meade, payload specialists Lawrence J. DeLucas, Eugene H. Trinh

Events: U.S. Microgravity Laboratory (USML-1), materials-processing experiments in a Spacelab aboard the first extended-duration mission of the refurbished Columbia, similar to earlier International Microgravity Laboratory IML-1 aboard STS-42. Columbia's 13-day flight to be the longest shuttle trip to date. Trinh and DeLucas to conduct 30 technology and science experiments in materials, fluids, biological processes.  Trinh to be first Vietnamese in a U.S. spacecraft.

SPACELAB-J

Launch: scheduled September 1992              Shuttle: Endeavour

Flight:        STS-47                                          Duration: 7 days

Crew: commander, pilot, payload commander Mark C. Lee, mission specialists N. Jan Davis,

                  Mae C. Jemison, Jerome "Jay" Apt, payload specialist Mamoru Mohri

Events: Spacelab-J joint science research project of NASA and the Japanese National Space Development Agency (NASDA). Mohri will be the second native of Japan in orbit and the first Japanese to fly in a U.S. spacecraft. Lee and Davis the first married couple to travel in space. Jemison the first black woman in orbit.

SPACELAB D-2

Launch: scheduled March 1993                    Shuttle: Columbia

Flight:        STS-55                                          Duration: 9 days

Crew: commander, pilot, payload commander Jerry L. Ross, two mission specialists,

                  two payload specialists

Events: Spacelab-D2. Two payload specialists to be selected from four Germans: female meteorologist Renate Luise Brummer; and physicists Hans-Wilhelm Schlegel; Gerhard Thiele; and Ulrich Walter.

SPACELAB ATLAS-2

Launch: scheduled May 1993                        Shuttle: Endeavour

Flight:        STS-56                                          Duration: 9 days

Crew: commander, pilot, payload commander, mission and payload specialist

Events: To carry Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (Atlas-2) to study atmospheric phenomena, energy from the Sun and changes in the solar spectrum from a Spacelab carried in shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay. Atlas-2 is to be the second of several Atlas missions scheduled for orbit over a decade to study interaction of Earth's atmosphere with the Sun. Atlas-1 was carried to the same altitude and inclination in flight STS-45. Atlas is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program. STS-56 astronauts also will use the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument (SSBUV-A2) to measure ozone in Earth's atmosphere. SSBUVs were carried in U.S. shuttles before: SSBUV-1 in STS-34, SSBUV-2 STS-41, SSBUV-3 STS-43, SSBUV-A1 STS-45. Also to be aboard STS-56 is Spartan, the Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy (Sptn-201-1). Spartan is a small, retrievable, free-flying satellite for X-ray astronomy.

SPACELAB SLS-2

Launch: scheduled July 1993                         Shuttle: Columbia

Flight:        STS-58                                          Duration: 13 days

Crew: commander, pilot, payload commander, mission specialists, payload specialist,

                  possible USSR cosmonaut

Events: The second extended-duration flight, carrying Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS-2) exploring how the heart, blood vessels, lungs, kidneys and hormone-secreting glands respond to microgravity, the causes of space sickness and changes in muscles, bones and cells during space flight and in the readjustment to gravity upon returning to Earth. The first Spacelab Life Sciences test (SLS-1) was aboard Columbia STS-40 in 1991. Columbia's earlier 13-day flight was STS-50 in 1992. At a 1991 summit meeting, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and USSR President Michael Gorbachev agreed on a first-time exchange: a Soviet cosmonaut would fly aboard a U.S. shuttle and a NASA astronaut would travel to the USSR's Mir space station. The agreement called for medical research on how humans adapt to weightlessness preparing for lengthy flights to Mars after the year 2000. The cosmonaut might fly 13 days in STS-58.

SPACELAB ATLAS-3

Launch: scheduled April 1994                       Shuttle: Endeavour

Flight:        STS-64                                          Duration: 9 days

Crew: commander, pilot, payload commander, mission specialists, payload specialist

Events: To carry Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (Atlas-3) to study atmospheric phenomena, energy from the Sun and changes in the solar spectrum from a Spacelab carried in shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay. Atlas-3 is to be the third of several Atlas missions scheduled for orbit over a decade to study interaction of Earth's atmosphere with the Sun. Atlas-1 and Atlas-2 were carried in flights STS-45 and STS-56. Atlas is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program. STS-64 astronauts also will use the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument (SSBUV-A3) to measure ozone in Earth's atmosphere. SSBUVs were carried in U.S. shuttles before: SSBUV-1 in STS-34, SSBUV-2 STS-41, SSBUV-3 STS-43, SSBUV-A1 STS-45 and SSBUV-A2 STS-56. Also aboard STS-64 will be the Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometer Telescope for Atmosphere (Crista-Spas), a small U.S.-German aeronomy satellite to measure changes in Earth's atmosphere and complement the UARS satellite launched by STS-48. SPAS (Shuttle Pallet Satellite) is a German-designed payload carrier outfitted with science instruments, carried into space by shuttle, and deployed for several days in its own independent orbit to gather data. Before landing, the shuttle returns to SPAS, retrieves it, and returns it to Earth for another mission.

SPACELAB IML-2

Launch: scheduled May 1994                        Shuttle: Columbia

Flight:        STS-66                                          Duration: 13 days

Crew: commander, pilot, payload commander, mission specialists, payload specialist

Events: International Microgravity Laboratory (IML-2), second microgravity research in a long shuttle Spacelab module, studying effects on material processes and living organisms of very low gravity in space near Earth. With NASA in the project are European Space Agency (ESA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA), French National Center for Space Studies (CNES), West German Research and Development Institute for Air and Spacecraft (DLR), and National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). IML Spacelabs are to fly at 17-mo. to 25-mo. intervals; separation allowing scientists to study results and apply them to new research. They will work with plants and animals, and protein, vapor and mercury iodide crystal growth experiments. Columbia to orbit with tail toward Earth in "gravity gradient" position offering least gravity during flight.

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

Spacehab

Spacehab is a private commercial pressurized man-tended spacecraft module to be flown to orbit in U.S. space shuttles. American spacecraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas Corp. and Italy's Alitalia airline in 1984 set up a company, Spacehab Inc., to build a laboratory for experiments aboard U.S. shuttles.

Two Japanese companies, Mitsubishi Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, bought ten percent of Spacehab Inc. in 1990. The Japanese firms Mitsubishi Trust and Banking Corp. and Shimizu Corp. were considering buying in. The Mitsubishi firms would focus Spacehab research on experiments for Japanese companies. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries would supply equipment for experiments.

Shuttle Atlantis flight STS-57 is scheduled to carry the first Spacehab to Earth orbit for eight days 160 miles above the equator in July 1993. The second Spacehab will fly for seven days at the same altitude in Atlantis STS-61 in December 1993. The third Spacehab will fly in Discovery STS-67 to the same altitude for seven days in June 1994.

 

Date                   Module                Shuttle              Altitude               Inclination              Duration

1993 Jul              Spacehab 1           Atlantis               160 miles               28.5 degrees            8 days

1993 Dec           Spacehab 2           Atlantis               160 miles               28.5 degrees            7 days

1994 Jun             Spacehab 3           Discovery          160 miles               28.5 degrees            7 days

1994 Aug           Spacehab 4           tba                      160 miles               28.5 degrees            7 days

1995 Mar           Spacehab 5           tba                      160 miles               28.5 degrees            7 days

1995 Oct            Spacehab 6           tba                      160 miles               28.5 degrees            7 days

1996 Apr            Spacehab 7           tba                      160 miles               28.5 degrees            7 days

1996 Nov           Spacehab 8           tba                      160 miles               28.5 degrees            7 days

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

U.S. Shuttle Spacewalks

A spacewalk, extravehicular activity or EVA, is a trip outside a space shuttle or other spacecraft. Below is a list of trips outside by astronauts during U.S. space shuttle flights.

 

Flight                         Date                                  Spacewalkers                              Reason

STS-6                          1983 Apr                           Peterson, Musgrave                      spacewalk tests

STS-41B                      1984 Feb                           McCandless, Stewart                    free-flight tests

STS-41C                      1984 Apr                           Van Hoften, Nelson                     satellite repair

STS-41G                     1984 Oct                           Sullivan, Leetsma                         refuel satellite

STS-51A                     1984 Nov                          Allen, Gardner                             recover satellites

STS-51D                     1985 Apr                           Hoffman, Griggs                          satellite rescue

STS-51I                       1985 Aug                          Van Hoften, Fisher                       satellite repair

STS-61B                      1985 Dec                          Ross, Spring                                  construction

STS-37                        1991 Apr                           Ross, Apt                                       release GRO antenna

STS-49                        scheduled 1992 May                                                              repair Intelsat

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

Extraordinary Shuttle Landings

All U.S. shuttle flights have been launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Before 1992, most landings were at Edwards Air Force Base, California, except for one at White Sands, New Mexico, and a handful at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Prior to flight STS-43 in August 1991, Edwards Air Force Base, California, had been NASA's first choice for shuttle landings. With STS-43, NASA switched Kennedy to primary landing site and Edwards to back up. White Sands also is backup.

These primary and back up landing sites are for flights which make it to orbit. NASA has emergency landing sites for flights which must abort during or shortly after blast off from Kennedy Space Center. Those are Kennedy Space Center; Edwards Air Force Base; White Sands; Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii; Andersen Field, Guam; Easter Island; Ben Guerir, Morocco; Banjul, The Gambia; Dakar, Senegal; Zaragoza Air Base, Spain, and Moron Air Base, Spain.

First return to launch site. Challenger flight STS-7 was scheduled to make the first-ever shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center, but bad weather forced a change to Edwards where it landed June 24, 1983. The first landing at Kennedy turned out to be Challenger, but flight STS-10 which landed February 11, 1984. Challenger STS-10 was the first-ever landing of a spacecraft at its launch site.

Columbia flight STS-24 was difficult to bring back to Earth. Bad weather at Edwards stopped a landing attempt on January 16, 1986. More bad weather at Edwards forced another wave-off January 17. The flight was extended a day so Columbia could land January 18 at Kennedy in Florida. However, bad weather at Kennedy brought another wave-off. The shuttle finally landed at Edwards January 18.

The list below shows locations and causes of unusual U.S. shuttle landings. KSC is Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Edwards is Edwards Air Force Base, California. White Sands is in New Mexico.

 

Flight             Shuttle                    Landed                               Location                 Reason

STS-3              Columbia                  1982 Mar 30                        White Sands             California weather

STS-7              Challenger               1983 Jun 24                          Edwards                   Florida weather

STS-10            Challenger               1984 Feb 11                         KSC                          planned

STS-13            Challenger               1984 Oct 13                         KSC                          planned

STS-14            Discovery                1984 Nov 16                        KSC                          planned

STS-15            Discovery                1985 Jan 27                          KSC                          planned

STS-16            Discovery                April 19, 1985                      KSC                          planned

STS-24            Columbia                  1986 Jan 18                          Edwards                   weather

STS-38            Atlantis                     1990 Nov 20                        KSC                          California weather

STS-39            Discovery                1991 May 6                          KSC                          California weather

STS-43            Atlantis                     1991 Aug 11                        KSC                          planned

STS-48            Discovery                1991 Sep 18                         Edwards                   Florida weather

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

SAREX: Shuttle Amateur Radio

Amateur radio is a great hobby for men and women in space. Some American astronauts, who also are licensed amateur radio operators, have taken their ham gear along on U.S. space shuttle flights. In fact, the entire five-person crew of shuttle Atlantis flight STS-37 in 1991 was licensed and on the air from outer space.

Most cosmonauts in recent years at the USSR's orbiting Mir space station have whiled away countless hours during six-month assignments in space by chatting with fellow amateurs on the ground via ham radio. American radio amateurs are planning a ham shack for recreation aboard the U.S.-international space station Freedom after 1997.

SAREX. In U.S. space shuttle lingo, ham radio is the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX)—a joint effort of NASA, the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), and the Radio Amateurs Satellite Corporation (AMSAT).

Amateur radio clubs and individuals around the globe help out, especially the local ham groups at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, and Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. Cost of designing and building SAREX equipment for space shuttles, as well as amateur radio communications satellites, is borne by hams.

STS-9. U.S. astronaut Owen K. Garriott, whose amateur radio callsign is W5LFL, was the first to chat with his fellow hams on Earth while orbiting the globe. He flew to space aboard Columbia in flight STS-9 on November 28, 1983.

Garriott used a small handheld voice transceiver—a transmitter and receiver in one package. Transmissions to and from the spacecraft were in the FM (frequency modulation) mode on a frequency near 145 MHz in the two-meter ham band. The experiment showed that ham signals wouldn't disrupt other shuttle business.

Owen had been in space before. The first time was in 1973, when he spent two months aboard America's Skylab space station in Earth orbit. While at the space station, he took a six-hour spacewalk outside and watched the spiders Anita and Arabella spin webs in zero gravity inside. Unfortunately, he didn't have amateur equipment in Skylab.

Ten years later, STS-9 in 1983 was his second and final flight. Garriott spent 10 days in orbit in Columbia. Spacelab-1, in the cargo bay, was a removeable pressurized science lab carried to space and back in a shuttle's cargo hold. Astronauts floated through a tube between the crew cabin and Spacelab. Today, Garriott is retired from NASA.

STS-51F. The second ham in space was astronaut Anthony W. "Tony" England whose callsign is W¯ORE. (The number ¯ is pronounced "zero.")

England made his only trip to space July 29, 1985, in shuttle Challenger flight STS-51F. He not only had amateur radio voice capability, but also took along ham TV gear to transmit pictures down from the spacecraft. The pictures were sent down as single frames, in a technique known as slow-scan television (SSTV).

More than 6,000 young people, taking part in England's SAREX through school and scouting clubs, were thrilled to see the first-ever amateur pictures beamed down from space. SSTV signals beamed up to W¯ORE from the Johnson Space Center ham station, W5RRR, were the first live TV pictures ever received aboard a shuttle.

Challenger's July 1985 ride to orbit was notable for the first engine failure during flight to space. Spacelab 2 was carried in the shuttle cargo bay, outfitted for astronomy research. England spent eight days in space. Challenger was the shuttle which exploded during liftoff just 183 days later.

Delays in NASA's shuttle and space station programs led Tony England to retire from the space agency in 1988 to teach electrical engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. While with NASA in Houston, he had taught at Rice University. A geophysicist from North Dakota, England also did research at Michigan on satellite remote-sensing technology. England is known as a leading authority on remote sensing, having worked on the shuttle imaging radar (SIR) experiment.

STS-35. The 1986 shuttle Challenger disaster delayed plans for a third SAREX until Columbia flight STS-35 launched December 2, 1990. Payload specialist and civilian astronomer Ronald A. Parise, callsign WA4SIR, used upgraded SAREX-2 FM-voice and packet-radio gear on the two-meter band to contact amateurs on the ground.

Parise added the new packet radio technology to SAREX. The advanced digital communications technique known as packet radio is the latest computer-to-computer method employed by amateur radio operators. Parise also had ham TV gear, upgraded from SSTV to fast-scan television (FSTV). It could receive pictures from Earth, the first live fast-scan pictures received by a shuttle.

Parise, of Silver Spring, Maryland,  and the flight's other payload specialist, civilian astronomer Samuel T. Durrance, were the first non-NASA astronauts to fly in a U.S. spacecraft in five years, since the Challenger disaster. With them in space were crew commander Vance D. Brand, pilot Guy S. Gardner, and mission specialists Jeffrey A. Hoffman, John M. "Mike" Lounge and A. Robert Parker.

Flying at an altitude of 190 nautical miles and an inclination of 28.5 degrees, the nine-day mission was the first shuttle flight in five years dedicated entirely to science. Four of the seven astronauts were astronomers. They used the Astro-1 collection of ultraviolet-light telescopes and the Broad Band X-Ray Telescope (BBXRT-1) to study quasars, binary stars, pulsars, black holes, galaxies and high-energy stars. NASA's Space Classroom became reality as Parise, Durrance, Hoffman and Parker conducted space-to-ground TV lessons and answered questions from pupils on the ground.

Parise plans to return to space to use SAREX gear again, in Columbia flight STS-69 in September 1994.

STS-37. Atlantis flight STS-37, launched April 5, 1991, was the first shuttle voyage in which the entire crew was composed entirely of licensed amateur radio operators. The five astronauts in space together for six days were crew commander Steven R. Nagel, pilot Kenneth D. Cameron, and mission specialists Jerome "Jay" Apt, Linda M. Godwin and Jerry L. Ross. Their ham radio call letters were: Cameron KB5AWP, Apt N5QWL, Godwin N5RAX, Nagel N5RAW, Ross N5SCW.

Cameron had upgraded the SAREX-2 radio gear to include fast-scan amateur television (ATV) on a ham radio ultra-high frequency (UHF) band, as well as FM voice, packet radio and SSTV on 2 meters. He reported good UHF fast-scan ATV reception from the ground, recording the TV pictures on a VCR in the shuttle while busy with other work. Most were black-and-white, but a few were color pictures. It was the first full-motion video ever received by any orbiting manned spacecraft. Tony England in 1985 in STS-51F had received slow-scan ATV from the ground. After STS-37 NASA was looking into fast-scan ATV as a cheap way to send information to orbiting astronauts.

While the astronaut slept, the packet radio amateur equipment was left on, to operate itself, making robot contacts with live hams on the ground.

As Atlantis revolved around the globe 243 nautical miles overhead, at an inclination of 28.5 degrees, the STS-37 astronauts used  SAREX equipment to contact amateur operators on the ground and to chat from space with school children at nine sites in seven states with pupils listening in from 20 other schools.

As Atlantis passed overhead, students had 20 minutes to ask questions: what is blast off like, how hard is it to eat up there, can you see Oklahoma, and what do you think when you look down on Earth? "When you float up here above the Earth in a little spacecraft and look down at the big spacecraft that we all fly on, it makes us all think about what our priorities are," Cameron replied, while Nagel told the students to "take school seriously. Worry about your grades right now no matter how young you are. Study hard and get good grades, go to college, study science or engineering, then get into the space program after that."

Mir contact. The USSR's Mir space station was orbiting nearby in space and the STS-37 crew heard cosmonaut-hams on the air. The Mir amateur radio operators called across space to Atlantis, but when the astronauts were unable to be heard in reply, two-way contact was not established.

STS-37 was the first shuttle flight of 1991. It ferried to orbit Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO), the second of NASA's four Great Observatories. The 17-ton spacecraft was the largest science satellite ever carried by a shuttle. The 31-ft. GRO filled half of Atlantis' cargo bay. On April 7, Linda Godwin reached into the cargo bay with the 50-foot robot arm, grasped GRO, lifted the observatory out of the hold and dropped it overboard into its own orbit 280 statute miles above Earth. Ross and Apt stood by in spacesuits, prepared to spacewalk to unfold GRO's high-gain antenna or solar panels if needed—and an antenna boom did jam. A thermal blanket on the boom had become hung up. Apt and Ross spacewalked in the cargo bay April 8 to shake loose a jammed 16.5-ft. antenna boom. Later, they spacewalked again to test space station construction gear in the cargo hold. While outside STS-37, Apt punctured an outer layer of his spacesuit glove and scraped the skin of his hand until it bled lightly, but was able to return inside safely.

STS-45. Pilot Brian Duffy and mission specialist David C. Leestma were to use SAREX equipment to make amateur radio contact with ham operators on Earth during shuttle Atlantis flight STS-45 in May 1992. Busy Spacelab operations on the shuttle mission allows little extra room or electrical power, so Duffy and Leestma planned to use a battery-powered FM voice radio on the amateur two-meter band. Atlantis was to travel the same high-inclination orbit as those flown by Garriott and England, so Duffy and Leestma would pass above most of the world's population. They were to issue the general ham radio call of CQ to contact as many amateurs on the ground as possible. They also were to contact some students in schools.

Flying at an altitude of 160 nautical miles and an inclination of 57.0 degrees, the eight-day Spacelab mission is known as Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (Atlas-1). It will study atmospheric phenomena, energy from the Sun and changes in the solar spectrum. Part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program, Atlas-1 would be the first of several Atlas missions scheduled for orbit over a decade to study interaction between Earth's atmosphere and the Sun.

STS-45 astronauts also will use the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument (SSBUV-A1) to measure ozone in Earth's atmosphere.

Seven astronauts will be on the flight. Kathryn D. Sullivan is to be the first female payload commander. Crew commander will be Charles F. Bolden, Jr. Another mission specialist will be C. Michael Foale. Payload specialists will be Dirk D. Frimout and Byron K. Lichtenberg.

STS-47. Mission specialist Jerome "Jay" Apt, N5QWL, would use SAREX equipment to make ham radio contact with amateur operators on Earth during shuttle Endeavour flight STS-47 in September 1992.

Flying at an altitude of 160 nautical miles and an inclination of 57.0 degrees, the seven-day Spacelab-J mission will be a joint science research project of NASA and the Japanese National Space Development Agency (NASDA). Seven astronauts will be on the flight. Payload specialist Mamoru Mohri will be the first Japanese to fly in a U.S. spacecraft. Payload commander Mark C. Lee and mission specialist N. Jan Davis will be the first married couple to travel in space. Jemison will be the first black woman in orbit.

STS-55. Payload commander Jerry L. Ross, N5SCW, would use SAREX equipment to make ham radio contact with amateur operators on Earth during shuttle Columbia flight STS-55 in March 1993.

Flying at an altitude of 160 nautical miles and an inclination of 28.5 degrees, the nine-day Spacelab-D2 mission will be a joint science research project of NASA and Germany. Seven astronauts will be on the flight. Two payload specialists would be selected for flight STS-55 from among four Germans in training: female meteorologist Renate Luise Brummer; and physicists Hans-Wilhelm Schlegel; Gerhard Thiele; and Ulrich Walter.

STS-60. Payload commander Linda M. Godwin, N5RAX, would use SAREX to make contact with amateur operators on Earth during shuttle Endeavour flight STS-60 in October 1993.

Flying at an altitude of 130 nautical miles and an inclination of 57.0 degrees, the nine-day Space Radar Laboratory (SRL-1) mission would record radar images of Earth's surface, to be used to make maps, interpret geological features and locate natural resources. Six astronauts will be on the flight.

STS-69. Payload commander and civilian astronomer Ronald A. Parise, WA4SIR, is to return to space in September 1994. He again would use SAREX equipment to make ham radio contact with amateur operators on Earth during Columbia flight STS-69.

Flying at an altitude of 190 nautical miles and an inclination of 28.5 degrees, the nine-day Columbia mission is to carry Astro-2 telescopes to study quasars, pulsars, black holes, galaxies, high-energy stars. Parise used Astro-1 at same altitude and inclination in STS-35 in 1990. Seven astronauts will be on the flight.

A small satellite referred to as a free-flying platform and known as Office of Aeronautics, Exploration and Technology-Flyer (OAET-Flyer), to be deployed from Columbia STS-69, will contain technology experiments.

Ham radio. Amateur radio is the fraternity of licensed non-commercial communicators advancing the radio art and promoting experimentation. Hams are well known for their networks of stations which handle messages in disasters, emergencies and public-service events.

Amateurs have been pioneers in space communications over the last three decades with two dozen amateur radio satellites working in orbit, as well as years of other exotic communications such as the Earth-to-Moon-to-Earth signals known as Moonbounce, meteor scatter propagation, and studies of this planet's ionosphere.

Just four years after Sputnik launched the Space Age, a 10-lb. Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio, or OSCAR for short, was launched December 12, 1961, as ballast on a Thor-Agena rocket which carried a government satellite to orbit. The first satellite ever built by amateur radio operators launched ham radio into space.

Over the decades, thousands have used OSCAR's two dozen successors built by hams in Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, Japan, the U.S., the USSR, Germany and elsewhere. Russian ham satellites have been known as RS for Radiosputnik.

Information on SAREX, ham satellites and amateur radio is available from the American Radio Relay League Inc., 225 Main Street, Newington, Connecticut 06111.

 

Amateur radio operators for the first 14 SAREX missions

Date                   Flight       Shuttle           Astronaut                    Role                               Callsign

1983 Nov      STS-9        Columbia         Owen K. Garriott          mission specialist           W5LFL

1985 Jul         STS-51F    Challenger      A.W. "Tony" England   mission specialist           W0ORE

1990 Dec        STS-35      Columbia         Ronald A. Parise            payload specialist          WA4SIR

1991 Apr         STS-37      Atlantis            Steven R. Nagel             commander                    N5RAW

1991 Apr         STS-37      Atlantis            Kenneth D. Cameron    pilot                                KB5AWP

1991 Apr         STS-37      Atlantis            Jerome "Jay" Apt           mission specialist           N5QWL

1991 Apr         STS-37      Atlantis            Linda M. Godwin          mission specialist           N5RAX

1991 Apr         STS-37      Atlantis            Jerry L. Ross                  mission specialist           N5SCW

1992 May           STS-45      Atlantis            Brian Duffy                   pilot                               

1992 May           STS-45      Atlantis            David C. Leestma          mission specialist          

1992 Sep            STS-47      Endeavour      Jerome "Jay" Apt           mission specialist           N5QWL

1993 Mar           STS-55      Columbia         Jerry L. Ross                  payload commander      N5SCW

1993 Oct            STS-60      Endeavour      Linda M. Godwin          payload commander      N5RAX

1994 Sep            STS-69      Columbia         Ronald A. Parise            payload commander      WA4SIR

Return to the top of this page

Most Shuttles Were Delayed

Only some U.S. shuttle launches have blasted off on time. The others were delayed. Here are some of the early time delays:

False starts. Columbia flight STS-61C holds the record for number of false starts with six postponements for mechanical and weather problems starting December 18, 1985. It finally got off the ground on the seventh try January 12, 1986.

Other flights with many postponements included Challenger STS-51L and Atlantis STS-36 each with five delays; Discovery STS-41D and Columbia STS-32 with four; and Discovery STS-51D with three.

Time delays. Long times between scheduled date and actual launch have included the maiden flight of Challenger flight STS-6 delayed 74 days from January 20, 1983, to April 4, 1983, by an engine problem and a communications satellite payload damaged by a storm. Also, 66 days for Discovery STS-41D, 59 days Columbia STS-9, 34 days Columbia STS-2, 25 days Columbia STS-61C, 24 days Discovery STS-51D, 23 days Discovery STS-29, 22 days Columbia STS-32, and 17 days Challenger STS-51F. Massive schedule changes after the 1986 Challenger disaster forced longer delays on several flights.

Between flights. The longest time between flights was 975 days from the ill-fated Challenger flight STS-51L on January 28, 1986, to Discovery flight STS-26 which took off on September 29, 1988. Challenger STS-51L had suffered five postponements with mechanical, weather and scheduling problems. As it finally lifted off, a solid-fuel booster rocket exploded, killing all seven astronauts in the orbiter and sending Challenger to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

On schedule. Nine of the early U.S. shuttle flights blasted off on schedule:

Date                            Shuttle                       Flight

1982 Jun 27                 Columbia                     STS-4

1982 Nov 11               Columbia                     STS-5

1983 Jun 18                 Challenger                  STS-7

1984 Apr 6                  Challenger                  STS-41C

1984 Oct 5                  Challenger                  STS-41G

1985 Jun 17                 Discovery                   STS-51G

1985 Oct 30                Challenger                  STS-61A

1985 Nov 26               Atlantis                        STS-61B

1989 Aug 8                 Columbia                     STS-28

The scheduled and actual launch dates, and days of delay, of 25 of the earliest postponed shuttles through STS-36:

Year       Sched          Actual         Delay              Shuttle              Flight          Problem

1981       Apr 10          Apr 12          2 days              Columbia            STS-1           computer

1981       Oct 9            Nov 12         34 days            Columbia            STS-2           mechanical

1982       Mar 22         Mar 22         1 hour              Columbia            STS-3           fuel line heater

1983       Jan 20           Apr 4            74 days            Challenger         STS-6           maiden flight, engine problem then communication payload damaged in storm

1983       Aug 30         Aug 30         17 min             Challenger         STS-8           weather

1983       Sep 30          Nov 28         59 days            Columbia            STS-9           solid booster nozzle

1984       Jan 29           Feb 3            5 days              Challenger         STS-41B       auxiliary power units

1984       Jun 25           Aug 30         66 days            Discovery          STS-41D      3 different mechanical delays then a fourth postponement as a private plane flew into the launch area

1984       Nov 7           Nov 8           1 day               Discovery          STS-51A      launch site wind shear

1985       Jan 23           Jan 24           1 day               Discovery          STS-51C       weather

1985       Mar 19         Apr 12          24 days            Discovery          STS-51D      cargo bay doors, payload changes and a ship sailed into a restricted area of the Atlantic Ocean where solid-fuel boosters were to fall

1985       Apr 29          Apr 29          2 min               Challenger         STS-51B       launch-processing system

1985       Jul 12            Jul 29            17 days            Challenger         STS-51F       engine; also engine failure in flight to space caused an abort to a lower orbit

1985       Aug 24         Aug 27         3 days              Discovery          STS-51I        equipment and weather

1985       Oct 3            Oct 3            22 min             Atlantis               STS-51J        main engines

1985       Dec 18 '85    Jan 12 '86     25 days            Columbia            STS-61C       six delays; mechanical and weather

1986       Jan 22           Jan 28           6 days              Challenger         STS-51L       5 delays; mechanical, scheduling and weather; exploded during liftoff

1988       Sep 29          Sep 29          1 hour              Discovery          STS-26         975 days after Challenger; then 1 hour delay to repair 2 space suits & high winds

1988       Dec 1           Dec 2           1 day               Atlantis               STS-27         winds and clouds

1989       Feb 18          Mar 13         23 days            Discovery          STS-29         2 delays; mechanical, then 1 hour for launch day fog

1989       Apr 28          May 4           6 days              Atlantis               STS-30         fuel pump

1989       Oct 12          Oct 18          6 days              Atlantis               STS-34         2 delays; engine and bad weather

1989       Nov 20         Nov 22         2 days              Discovery          STS-33         hydraulics, electrical wiring

1989       Dec 18 '89    Jan 9 '90       22 days            Columbia            STS-32         4 delays; launch pad, holidays, weather

1990       Feb 22          Feb 28          6 days              Atlantis               STS-36         5 delays; sick astronaut, tracking computer, clouds

Read complete details in the NASA space shuttle mission archives

Return to the top of this page

The Final U.S. Space Shuttle Flight

The last U.S. space shuttle trip to space was the 12-day successful Atlantis flight STS-135 from July 8 to July 21, 2011.

It was the 135th space shuttle mission, the 33rd flight of Atlantis, and the 37th shuttle space station assembly mission.

• Atlantis STS-135 Launch » NASA video, 5:38
  
  
• Atlantis STS-135 Landing » NASA video, 2:35
  
  
• NASA space shuttle mission information, data and multimedia pages »

USSR Space Shuttle Buran

The sound of mighty rocket engines thundered through the autumn steppe of Kazakhstan. A monumental yellow flame sent huge clouds of white steam billowing away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad November 15, 1988, as the world's mightiest space rocket, Energia, shot through a cold rain into the sky, ferrying the brand-new Soviet space shuttle Buran successfully to two orbits of Earth and a picture-perfect automated landing on the center line of its runway.

Threatening weather. Buran, Russian for snowstorm, almost got caught in one. Liquid fueling of the towering Energia booster started 14 hours before flight. Then Moscow Weather Service predicted rain at Baikonur three hours before the unmanned launch. The temperature was 39 degrees.

Soviet television said the launch might be in jeopardy. Launch would be held if winds rose to a squall or shuttle and booster become encrusted with ice, officials said, as technicians continued pouring 2,000 tons of liquid hydrogen, oxygen and kerosene fuel into the 198-ft. Energia  under the glare of 670 floodlights.

Liftoff. Squall and ice crusts didn't develop. Energia's four first-stage rockets lifted the reusable shuttle slowly off the pad, lighting the dark early-morning sky on schedule at 6 a.m. Moscow time. The rocket and shuttle disappeared into the sky. Strap-on boosters were dropped in pairs at 2.75 minutes into the flight as fuel ran out at 38 miles altitude.  TV showed controllers applauding as green computer screens tracked the flight.

Buran separated properly from the liquid-fuel Energia eight minutes after liftoff from Baikonur at 99 miles altitude. The shuttle's engines fired 2.5 minutes later, for 67 seconds, finishing the flight to space. The shuttle was in a 155-mi.-high orbit. At 47 minutes into the flight, over the Pacific Ocean, the shuttle's engines fired again for 42 seconds, circularizing the orbit.

Twice around. In space, Buran was controlled entirely by computers to test launching and landing equipment and procedures. Engineers on the ground were in radio control of the craft via ground stations, four satellites in orbit and four ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Buran carried a cylindrical dummy satellite loaded with test instruments in the cargo bay. As it passed over the Pacific for the second time after two 155-mi.-high circular orbits of the globe on fully-automatic control with its left wing facing Earth, Buran automatically started to re-enter the atmosphere, turning its tail forward and switching on a retrofire engine at 8:20 a.m. After retrofire, the orbiter turned again, to face the direction of re-entry. Buran entered the top of the atmosphere at an altitude just above 75 miles. During the hottest part of re-entry, there was an expected 20-min. radio blackout. When it dropped to an altitude of 25 miles, Buran rotated to land like an airplane at Baikonur.

TV from a MiG-25 chase jet pictured the dark delta-winged silhouette against a pale blue-gray sky, approaching the landing strip just eight miles from its original Energia launch pad at the space center in the Kazakhstan Republic of Soviet Central Asia.

Robot landing. A 34 mph cross wind blew against Buran as it touched down at 9:25 A.M. Ground TV showed the  fully automated approach and touchdown of the black-and-white shuttle, landing at 204 mph like an airplane.

Dust puffed out behind the rear wheels as Buran touched down on a 2.8-mi. concrete runway on the barren, brown plain. The main landing gear was just five feet from the center line painted on the runway.

Three parachutes blossomed from the aft end as the shuttle rolled to a halt, ending a precision unmanned 3-hour 25-minute maiden flight.

The Soviets said the 205-min. flight went as planned. All on-board tests were completed. Only five of 39,000 heat-shield tiles broke off during flight.

An earlier delay. The flight had been scheduled for October 29, 1988, but that countdown had been stopped at T minus 51 seconds by a watchdog computer checking 140 elements of the launch system. A crew escape arm had failed to pull away fast enough from the rocket. Analysis during the postponement showed it would take 38 seconds, not the three seconds originally programmed in computers, to retract the access arm.

The words "automatic termination of preparations" had flashed on computer screens at Baikonur October 29 as dozens of scientists and engineers watched the abort. The sudden halt recalled a similar last-minute drama during liftoff of the world's first shuttle. The U.S. shuttle Columbia had been delayed two days in April 1981 with computer software problems.

The USSR Defense Ministry's chief specialist on multiple-use space transport systems told Baikonur workers at an outdoor ceremony for the Buran maiden flight, "Truly this is an historic task. Today's launch can compare to the launch of the first artificial satellite." The USSR began the space age in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik.

Paris Air Show. After its successful first flight in November 1988, Buran was flown piggyback on a six-jet Antonov 225, the world's largest aircraft, from Baikonur to Le Bourget, France, airport for display at the Paris Air Show.

American look-alike. The size of a passenger airliner, Buran is 119 feet long and 18.5 feet in diameter with a 79-ft. wingspan. It has a  railroad-car-sized cargo hold. It will carry 10 cosmonauts—four crew and six passengers—for a month in space.

The black-and-white Buran looks very much like an American shuttle. The two aren't the same, however. The U.S. shuttle is a system, including the familiar rust-colored jumbo fuel tank, the white orbiter spacecraft and two solid-fuel booster rockets.

By contrast, the large core of the Russian system is an Energia rocket, not just a fuel tank. Either a shuttle or an unmanned cargo pod can be strapped to an Energia rocket.

The Russians claimed Buran would be safer, more flexible and more powerful than U.S. shuttles. The USSR shuttle was said to be superior to the American orbiter because of greater payload capacity and ability to fly automatically so cosmonauts can pay more attention to science experiments.

Additional Buran landing strips were constructed, near Simferopol along the Crimean Black Sea coast and in the USSR Far East.

The name Buran. Buran, or Snowstorm in Russian, became a generic name for USSR space shuttles. The orbiter which flew the maiden voyage of all USSR shuttles in November 1988 is called Buran No. 1 and was retired from spaceflights. Buran No. 1 was destroyed when a hangar collapsed in 2002.

Next Buran flight. The USSR had built another Buran shuttle with a plan to fly unmanned to the orbiting Mir space station. It was to have been launched on an Energia rocket in 1992. After Buran arrived at a special dock on Mir's Kristall expansion module, the cosmonauts in Mir would have taken a spacewalk to enter the shuttle and check it out. The shuttle then would leave the dock and fly to Earth. After government restructuring brought about by a 1991 coup d'etat, the flight did not occur.

Pilotless Buran. Since the 100-ton Buran can be controlled remotely from the ground, it required no cosmonauts to get to space and back. Cosmonauts would travel in Buran only to accomplish science research or manufacturing tasks requiring their presence. While two to four cosmonauts might be a nominal flight crew, up to ten researchers could have gone to space for flights of seven days to a month in Buran.

Buran pilots. The chief Buran test pilot was cosmonaut Igor Volk who had gained spaceflight experience by flying  to Salyut 7 station in 1984 in Soyuz T-12.

Another Buran pilot was Ukrainian cosmonaut Anatoly Levchenko. He had gained experience in an eight-day spaceflight to Mir space station in 1987. Levchenko, 47, died of a brain tumor in 1988, eight months after returning to Earth. He had been a cosmonaut since 1981, but still a rookie pilot when he blasted off in Soyuz TM-4. The tumor turned up after he returned home from Mir. An operation by Moscow doctors in August 1988 was unsuccessful.

What's it for? Firing the Russian shuttle to space was very expensive. There were pressures to find something appropriate for it to do. Of course, the USSR already had time-tested, relatively-inexpensive Soyuz capsules to fly cosmonauts and Progress unmanned cargo freighters to ferry materials to space.

At the same time, cosmonauts reportedly had pressed for manned launches, rather than more unmanned test flights.

The American shuttle was designed to ferry satellites to orbit. The head of the USSR space agency Glavkosmos said in 1988 shuttles are not as economical as single-use rockets for firing satellites to orbit. He said shuttles are valuable, however, for servicing space stations and satellites, and recovering objects from orbit.

The Soviets held the record for launching satellites on single-use boosters, sending up more than 150 a year, more than any other country. The USSR also used expendable rockets to maintain the permanent manned presence at the Mir space station.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has continued to use less-expensive expendable rockets.

USSR Shuttle Launches      Landings                      Orbiter                    Highlight

1          1988 Nov 15         1988 Nov 15            Buran No. 1             maiden flight

More about Buran at Wikipedia

Return to the top of this page

Europe's Space Shuttle Hermes

The European Space Agency planned to put men in space aboard a shuttle named Hermes by 1999, despite British refusal to join the "frolic." The European Space Agency project would have built a small shuttle, Hermes, and upgrade the veteran Ariane rocket to launch it. The improved rocket would be Ariane 5.

Frolic. Great Britain called the project a "hugely expensive industrial frolic" and "rather too much smacking of me-tooism." In fact, half of the 12-year ESA budget from 1988 to 1999 was dedicated to man-in-space.

France, with Europe's largest space industry, was pitted against cost-conscious Great Britain on the Hermes question. British failure to agree with the 12 other ESA nations in the project was taken at the time as a sign of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's reluctance to commit Britain to European integration. France's support for the shuttle, on the other hand, attempted to lessen European dependence on the U.S., the only Western nation to launch manned flights.

Shuttle partners. Involved in the Hermes shuttle project were Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany. The earliest manned Hermes flight was to have been launched in 1999.

European Space Agency (ESA) is based in Paris. The project did not require unanimous adoption. Britain was the only nation to turn it down.

The shuttlecraft. Hermes was to have been a delta-wing shuttlecraft. It would have been 59 feet long, half the size of an American space shuttle, with a wingspan of 33 feet. Hermes was planned to carry 10,000 pounds of payload in a 1,236 cubic-ft. cargo bay about ten feet across.

Plans called for Hermes to be shot to orbit atop an Ariane 5 rocket. For crew safety, it would have ejection seats. Hermes then would glide back to Earth, without power, to a landing strip in southern Spain. French Guiana's main airport at Cayenne also might have been extended for use as an emergency landing strip.

Design work was underway on propulsion, electronics, fuel cells, guidance control, a manipulator arm, temperature and environment control, life support, computers, communications, and an airlock for spacewalks.

The schedule showed a 725-ton Ariane 5 rocket ferrying European astronauts aboard the Hermes spaceplane to Earth orbit before the end of the 20th century.

Station tender. Hermes would have carried two pilots and two to four other crew members to service and maintain unmanned platforms in space, manned scientific modules in space, and space stations. It was intended to replace crew members on the international space station and restock the station with food and other consumable supplies.

Europeans expected the use of large unmanned space platforms to increase. Hermes could carry maintenance men to those platforms to restock fuel and return materials produced on the platforms to Earth.

To Mir. CNES, the French national space agency, wanted to build Hermes so it could fly to, and dock with, both the USSR's Mir space station at the time and the later international space station.

Mir already was in low orbit about 200 miles above Earth. Construction on the international space station was still in the future. The french thought Hermes might get to space as early as 1996, if the European nations gave their space agency sufficient money.

Selling shuttle services. ESA had an agreement with the USSR to send Hermes to the Mir space station and wanted to sell regular shuttle flights to the Russians as a freighter service. Hermes was expected to be able to ferry three tons of men and cargo to space.

The U.S. and USSR manned space shuttles were much larger, like trucks to carry heavy cargo to space. The USSR had been using unmanned Progress cargo ships to carry food, water and supplies to Mir. The Europeans planned for Hermes to carry more than a Progress could in one trip, and be manned.

Rescue craft. Hermes was too small to make much profit launching commercial satellites, so its French manufacturer, Aerospatiale, also forsaw the Hermes shuttle being used as a crew rescue vehicle for a space station.

To Columbus. Hermes could carry men and supplies to Columbus, Europe's large manned science module to be attached later to the international space station.

Launch site.At the time, ESA was building mammoth new facility to launch men into space from French territory in South America at the ESA space center at Kourou, French Guiana.

It was the biggest European building site after the Channel Tunnel construction project between Britain and France. Thousands of tons of concrete were poured into a vast clearing of the Amazon jungle. The new launch facilities dwarfed launchpads nearby from which four generations of unmanned Ariane rockets had blasted off since 1979.

City of buildings. Kourou is an isolated outpost 4,000 miles from Paris. The new Ariane 5 facility stretched over a 20 square mile area hacked from jungle and savannah along the Atlantic Ocean. Four million cubic meters of earth were removed and one-half million cubic meters of granite were dynamited.

Engineers built what ESA called the world's largest mixing bowl, to concoct solid fuel for the Ariane 5 from two highly volatile 100-ton blocks of chemicals.

A spacious test bed, 200 feet deep and 655 feet long, was gouged out of bedrock. Thousand-ton concrete blocks would hold down the Ariane 5 during tests. Surrounding granite would vitrify during two-minute burns. Ariane 5 matched large USSR and U.S. satellite launchers.

ESA decided in 1987 to spend billions to build the factories, test beds, launch pad and control center at Kourou. France was the biggest investor with 43.5 per cent of the project. Great Britain doubted the program and put in no money.

Unfortunately, the Hermes space shuttle didn't come out well from a pre-development phase from 1988-1990. There were delays and more funding problems and Hermes finally was canceled in 1992. No Hermes shuttles were ever built.

More about Hermes at Wikipedia

Return to the top of this page

Japan's Space Shuttle Hope

Japan had a space shuttle on the drawing boards for a first flight by 1997-1999. The orbiter had been dubbed Hope, for H-2 Orbiting Plane, after the powerful new H-2 rocket Japan would have used to launch the shuttle.

Unlike, U.S., Soviet and European shuttles and plans, Japan's shuttle would have been unmanned at first. The computerized robot shuttlecraft would have been 60 feet long with 40-ft. wingspan, capable of ferrying three tons of payload to a low orbit.

At the time, Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA) planned to fly Hope to the planned international space station. Japan was a partner with the U.S., Europe and Canada in the space station project.

H-2 rocket. The powerful H-2 was planned to be the first space rocket designed entirely in Japan. Besides shuttle flights to low orbits, NASDA also wanted to use the H-2 to launch two-ton payloads to stationary orbit 22,300 miles above Earth.

That would have allowed Japan to compete commercially with rockets made in Europe, the USSR and the U.S.

The H-2 also would have been used to launch probes to the Moon and Venus, as well as Hope space shuttle missions in low Earth orbit.

The space station orbits about 280 miles above Earth. A Japanese astronaut rode a U.S. shuttle to a tour of duty at the station. The first Japanese spacewalk was be made during attachment of Japan's JEM module to the station.

Hope vs. Hermes. Hope would have been similar in size to the European Space Agency's proposed Hermes manned shuttle, which was under development for first flights in the same time period around the end of the 1990's. Hope and Hermes would have been much smaller than U.S. and USSR manned space shuttles. Unfortunately, neither Hope nor Hermes ever flew.

Spaceport. Hope was to have the shape of an airplane, with wings to land on a runway. Pacific Spaceport Group, an organization formed by Japan's seven largest companies, wanted to build a six-mile-long runway with launch towers and control buildings for the Hope spaceplane.

Australia's spaceport at Weipa in the northern state of Queensland also would have been a landing site. Australia's Cape York Space Agency developed the Queensland launch facility.

Problems. Originally planned for a 1991 maiden flight, the H-2 rocket was delayed by technical difficulties which cropped up in the high-performance first-stage rocket engine known as LE-7. The LE-7 used new combustion technology for a high-power mix of liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuels. High stress in the engine sparked fires during tests.

In addition, NASDA engineers were shocked when they discovered the LE-7 design would not generate enough thrust to heft a two-ton payload to orbit. The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported the LE-7 design would have to be changed to increase its boosting power by ten tons. Design changes delayed further the first flight.

H-1 rocket. Previously, Japan had been using an H-1 rocket , which had been a modified old Thor-Delta rocket used in the U.S. from the mid-1960's.

With the H-1 and smaller space rockets, Japan had been building a convincing space-launch record. In 1990, it had become only the third nation to send a probe to orbit the Moon.

Technology. Japan was a late entry in the aerospace field because of prohibitions imposed by the United States at the end of World War II. Today, Japan spends billions each year across several space programs.

The Hope construction project required basic research on robots capable of assembling and repairing satellites and for developing the H-2 rocket, with a two-ton capacity. The Japanese spent billions to build Hope and other rockets, satellites, interplanetary probes and ground facilities.

Despite the H-2 rocket flight failures in 1998, Japan in 2000 signed an agreement to land a returning Hope space shuttle at Christmas Island's Aeon Airstrip. But then a re-evaluation of Japan's space program brought a reduction in funding that delayed Hope to 2003. Then the H-2 rocket program was cancelled. The first-Hope flight was pushed back further to 2004, but then Japan reorganized NASDA to develop spy satellites to track North Korean nuclear efforts. A new space agency, JAXA, was formed, and the Hope project was cancelled.

More about Hope at Wikipedia

Return to the top of this page

Space Shuttle Glossary

Atlantis. The fourth U.S. space shuttle to fly to orbit.

Abort. To end the launch or flight of a space rocket.

Atlas. The name of one kind of unmanned U.S. space launch rocket.

Boosters. Helper rockets strapped to a main rocket engine.

Buran. The first orbiter of the USSR's space shuttle fleet. Buran is Russian for snowstorm or blizzard. It flew to Earth orbit in 1988.

Challenger. The second U.S. space shuttle, destroyed in 1986 launch explosion.

Columbia. The first U.S. space shuttle to fly to orbit.

Columbus. Europe's module  in development for space station Freedom.

Delta. The name of one kind of unmanned U.S. space launch rocket.

Discovery. The third U.S. space shuttle to fly to orbit.

Endeavour. The fifth U.S. shuttle to fly to orbit, it replaced shuttle Challenger.

Energia. The newest USSR super-powerful space-launch rocket. It is used to launch the shuttle Buran to Earth orbit.

Enterprise. The 1970's prototype U.S. shuttle, it was not flown to space.

EVA. Extra-vehicular activity, a spacewalk.

External tank. Large liquid-fuel tank attached to U.S. shuttle orbiter at launch.

Freedom. The U.S.-international space station in development.

Hermes. Europe's space shuttle.

Hope. Japan's space shuttle.

JEM. Japan's module attached to the international space station.

Liquid fuel. Frozen gases used as fuel in space rockets.

Liquid rocket. Space rockets using frozen-gases for liquid fuels.

Manipulator. A mechanical arm used to move freight from a shuttle's cargo hold.

Mir. The USSR's third-generation space station.

Progress. An unmanned capsule ferrying food, fuel, supplies and science equipment to the Mir space station.

Progress M. A redesigned Progress. M for modified.

Shuttle. A partly-reusable spacecraft which can land on a runway.

Shuttle-C. A proposed unmanned cargo version of a U.S. shuttle.

Solid fuel. A chemical rocket fuel with a rubbery consistency, not gas or liquid.

Solid rocket. A space rocket using a rubbery, so-called solid, fuel.

Soyuz. The long series of USSR cosmonaut-transporting spacecraft. USSR capsules ferrying cosmonauts to and from space. Soyuz is Russian for Union, symbolizing the spacecraft's rendezvous and docking capability.

Soyuz T. A redesigned Soyuz. The T symbolizes: (1) transport, (2) troika indicating a space transport capable of carrying three cosmonauts to the Mir station, and again (3) troika indicating the third generation of the Soyuz design.

Soyuz TM. A redesign of Soyuz T. The M is for modified and for Mir, its main destination. Soyuz TM is a third generation modified Soyuz.

Space station. Structure in orbit with long-duration living and working quarters.

Spacewalk. Extra-vehicular activity, a trip outside a shuttle or space station.

Titan. The name of one kind of unmanned U.S. space launch rocket.

Voskhod. A redesigned Vostok. Voskhod is Russian for Sunrise, following USSR Premier Khrushchev's observation that "the Sun rises in the East."

Vostok. The first-ever manned spacecraft. Vostok is Russian for East, symbolizing the international-relations East-West competition.

Return to the top of this page ^

NASA

• NASA's space shuttle orbiter fleet
• NASA's space shuttle mission archives
• NASA's report on the space shuttle era

STO

• Space Today Online Space Shuttles main page »
• Space Today Online cover »