Unlike earlier expendable rockets, the Shuttle was designed to be launched over and over again and would serve as a system for ferrying payloads and personnel to and from Earth orbit. The Space Shuttle represented an entirely new generation of space vehicle, the world’s first reusable spacecraft. All of the components are reused except for the external fuel tank, which burns up in the atmosphere after each launch. The Space Shuttle consists of three major components: the Orbiter which houses the crew a large External Tank that holds fuel for the main engines and two Solid Rocket Boosters which provide most of the Shuttle’s lift during the first two minutes of flight. An early Space Shuttle Orbiter, the Enterprise, never flew in space but was used for approach and landing tests at the Dryden Flight Research Center and several launch pad studies in the late 1970s. Endeavour was built as a replacement following the Challenger accident and was delivered to Florida in May 1991. Discovery was delivered in November 1983. The Orbiter Challenger was delivered to KSC in July 1982 and was destroyed in an explosion during ascent in January 1986. So far, altogether they have flown a combined total of less than one-fourth of that.Ĭolumbia was the first Space Shuttle orbiter to be delivered to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla., in March 1979. Columbia and the STS-107 crew were lost Feb. Each of the three Space Shuttle orbiters now in operation-Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour-is designed to fly at least 100 missions. The Shuttle launches like a rocket, maneuvers in Earth orbit like a spacecraft and lands like an airplane. The Space Shuttle was the world’s first reusable spacecraft, and the first spacecraft in history that can carry large satellites both to and from orbit.
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