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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.
Enterprise's first test flight was on February 18, 1977, only five years after the Shuttle program was formally initiated; leading to the launch of the first space-worthy shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, on STS-1.
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 ...
In 2007, NASA engineers devised a solution so Space Shuttle flights could cross the year-end boundary. [27] Space Shuttle missions typically brought a portable general support computer (PGSC) that could integrate with the orbiter vehicle's computers and communication suite, as well as monitor scientific and payload data.
The Space Shuttle Columbia was lost as it returned from a two-week mission when previously detected damage to the shuttle's thermal protection system (TPS) resulted in the spacecraft breaking apart during reentry at an altitude of just under 65 km and a speed of about Mach 19. Investigation revealed that a piece of foam insulation had fallen ...
But like all good things, this era came to an end 30 years later when Space Shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth on July 21, 2011, marking the end of the final flight of the space shuttle program ...
Space Shuttle Discovery (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-103) is a retired American Space Shuttle orbiter. The spaceplane was one of the orbiters from NASA's Space Shuttle program and the third of five fully operational orbiters to be built. [2] Its first mission, STS-41-D, flew from August 30 to September 5, 1984.
These were atmospheric only, non-spaceflight tests from a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, both with the orbiter attached and for a series of drop-test flights. ** Note 2: The durations listed count only the orbiter free-flight time, and not total time aloft along with airborne time atop of the 747 SCA.