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The longest orbital flight of the Shuttle was STS-80 at 17 days 15 hours, while the shortest flight was STS-51-L at one minute 13 seconds when the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart during launch. The cold morning shrunk an O-Ring on the right Solid Rocket Booster causing the external fuel tank to explode.
The original intention was to compensate for this lower payload by lowering the per-launch costs and a high launch frequency. However, the actual costs of a Space Shuttle launch were higher than initially predicted, and the Space Shuttle did not fly the intended 24 missions per year as initially predicted by NASA. [66] [28]: III–489–490
In February 1977, Enterprise began the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) and underwent captive flights, where it remained attached to the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft for the duration of the flight. On August 12, 1977, Enterprise conducted its first glide test, where it detached from the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and landed at Edwards AFB.
It was the first time American astronauts were killed in flight, spanning 56 manned missions that began in 1961. ... The space shuttle flight program came to a close on July 21, 2011, when ...
Shuttle Carrier Aircraft ferry flights generally originated at Edwards Air Force Base in California or on one occasion White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico following missions which landed there, especially in the early days of the Space Shuttle program or when weather at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at Kennedy Space Center prevented ...
The United States launched the first reusable spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, on the 20th anniversary of Gagarin's flight, April 12, 1981. On November 15, 1988, the Soviet Union duplicated this with an uncrewed flight of the only Buran-class shuttle to fly, its first and only reusable spacecraft. It was never used again after the first flight ...
The Space Shuttle program originated in the late 1960s as an attempt to reduce the cost of spaceflight by introducing a reusable spacecraft.The final agreed design would feature a reusable spaceplane, a disposable external tank and reusable solid-fuel rocket boosters.
Nuclear Ferry and Shuttle Orbiter docked to an Orbital Propellant Depot. The Space Transportation System (STS), also known internally to NASA as the Integrated Program Plan (IPP), [1] was a proposed system of reusable crewed space vehicles envisioned in 1969 to support extended operations beyond the Apollo program (NASA appropriated the name for its Space Shuttle Program, the only component of ...