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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 prime landing site was the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a purpose-built landing strip. Landings also occurred at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and one took place at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. No Space Shuttle landed on a dry lakebed runway after 1991.
Per-launch costs can be measured by dividing the total cost over the life of the program (including buildings, facilities, training, salaries, etc.) by the number of launches. With 135 missions, and the total cost of US$192 billion (in 2010 dollars), this gives approximately $1.5 billion per launch over the life of the Shuttle program. [20]
The primary Space Shuttle landing site was the Shuttle Landing Facility at KSC, where 78 of the 133 successful landings occurred. In the event of unfavorable landing conditions, the Shuttle could delay its landing or land at an alternate location. The primary alternate was Edwards AFB, which was used for 54 landings. [21]:
The Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), also known as Launch and Landing Facility (LLF) [1] (IATA: QQS, ICAO: KTTS, FAA LID: TTS), is an airport located on Merritt Island in Brevard County, Florida, United States. It is a part of the Kennedy Space Center and was used by Space Shuttle for landing until July 2011.
Kennedy Space Center, operated by NASA, has two launch complexes on Merritt Island comprising four pads—two active, one under lease, and one inactive.From 1967 to 1975, it was the site of 13 Saturn V launches, three crewed Skylab flights and the Apollo–Soyuz; all Space Shuttle flights from 1981 to 2011, and one Ares 1-X flight in 2009.
Again, the countdown continued according to schedule with a launch time of 3:26 p.m. At 9:30 am on July 2, the NASA launch blog reported that the "shuttle weather officer forecasts a 70-percent chance of weather prohibiting a launch this afternoon due to thunderstorms and anvil clouds. [5]
The Space Shuttle will be in a 20-story-tall display mounted on with the ET-94 tank, and solid rocket boosters, as it looks like its were about to make one more flight. Once finished, it will be the only Space Shuttle mounted vertically in launch position. Originally slated to open in 2015, construction on the new building started on June 1, 2022.