The vehicle consisted of a spaceplane for orbit and re-entry, fueled from an expendable External Tank containing liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, with two reusable strap-on solid rocket boosters. Nixon's post-Apollo NASA budgeting withdrew support of all system components except the Shuttle, to which NASA applied the STS name. Air Force in the 1960s and was first proposed for development as part of an ambitious second-generation Space Transportation System (STS) of space vehicles to follow the Apollo program in a September 1969 report of a Space Task Group headed by Vice President Spiro Agnew to President Richard Nixon. It resulted from shuttle design studies conducted by NASA and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from 1981 to 2011. The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable human spaceflight vehicle capable of reaching low Earth orbit, commissioned and operated by the U.S. 5.5 Distribution of orbiters and other hardware.has since relied on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, pending the Commercial Crew Development and Space Launch System programs on schedule for first flights in 20. The Space Shuttle was retired from service upon the conclusion of Atlantis 's final flight on July 21, 2011. A fifth operational (and sixth in total) orbiter, Endeavour, was built in 1991 to replace Challenger. Of these, two were lost in mission accidents: Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, with a total of fourteen astronauts killed. Four fully operational orbiters were initially built: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis. The first orbiter, Enterprise, was built in 1976, used in Approach and Landing Tests and had no orbital capability. After landing at Edwards, the orbiter was flown back to the KSC on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a specially modified Boeing 747. The orbiter then glided as a spaceplane to a runway landing, usually to the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, Florida or Rogers Dry Lake in Edwards Air Force Base, California. At the conclusion of the mission, the orbiter fired its OMS to de-orbit and re-enter the atmosphere. The SRBs were jettisoned before the vehicle reached orbit, and the ET was jettisoned just before orbit insertion, which used the orbiter's two Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines. The Space Shuttle was launched vertically, like a conventional rocket, with the two SRBs operating in parallel with the OV's three main engines, which were fueled from the ET. Shuttle components included the Orbiter Vehicle (OV) with three clustered Rocketdyne RS-25 main engines, a pair of recoverable solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and the expendable external tank (ET) containing liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The Shuttle fleet's total mission time was 1322 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes and 23 seconds. Operational missions launched numerous satellites, interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) conducted science experiments in orbit and participated in construction and servicing of the International Space Station. In addition to the prototype whose completion was cancelled, five complete Shuttle systems were built and used on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011, launched from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by the U.S. Solid ( Ammonium perchlorate composite propellant)ĥ,250 kN (1,180,000 lbf) total, sea level liftoff US$ 450 million (2011) to 1.5 billion (2011) Ĭhallenger ( launch failure, 7 fatalities),Ĭolumbia ( re-entry failure, 7 fatalities)ġ2,500 kN (2,800,000 lbf) each, sea level liftoff Discovery lifts off at the start of STS-120.
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