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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 Space Shuttle's operations were supported by vehicles and infrastructure that facilitated its transportation, construction, and crew access. The crawler-transporters carried the MLP and the Space Shuttle from the VAB to the launch site. [33] The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) were two modified Boeing 747s that could carry an orbiter on its ...
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
A launch status check, also known as a "go/no go poll" and several other terms, occurs at the beginning of an American spaceflight mission in which flight controllers monitoring various systems are queried for operation and readiness status before a launch can proceed. For Space Shuttle missions, in the firing room at the Launch Control Center ...
Columbia (STS-3) landing on Northrop Strip at White Sands Space Harbor, 30 March 1982, flanked by two T-38 chase planes. White Sands Space Harbor at White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico was an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle and was used as a backup when the runways at Edwards Air Force Base and the Kennedy Space Center were ...
The Approach and Landing Tests were a series of taxi and flight trials of the prototype Space Shuttle Enterprise, conducted at Edwards Air Force Base in 1977. They verified the shuttle's flight characteristics when mated to the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and when flying on its own, prior to the Shuttle system becoming operational.
STS-95 was a Space Shuttle mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on 29 October 1998, using the orbiter Discovery. It was the 25th flight of Discovery and the 92nd mission flown since the start of the Space Shuttle program in April 1981.
STS-104 was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle Atlantis. Its primary objectives were to install the Quest Joint Airlock and help perform maintenance on the International Space Station. It launched on 12 July 2001 at 09:04 UTC, and returned to Earth without incident after successful docking ...