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The Approach and Landing Test program encompassed 16 separate tests of Enterprise, covering taxi tests, uncrewed and crewed flights on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), and finally the free flight tests. The following list includes the free-flight tests, durations listed count only the orbiter free-flight time.
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 ...
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. There were three taxi tests, eight captive flight tests and five free flight tests where the Enterprise was released from the SCA during flight and glided to a landing under ...
In 2007, NASA engineers devised a solution so Space Shuttle flights could cross the year-end boundary. [30] 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 program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011.
It landed at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at Kennedy Space Center – becoming the second shuttle mission to land there – on October 13, 1984, at 12:26 p.m. EDT. [9] The STS-41-G mission was later described in detail in the book Oceans to Orbit: The Story of Australia's First Man in Space, Paul Scully-Power by space historian Colin Burgess.
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.
The year 2011 saw a number of significant events in spaceflight, including the retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle after its final flight in July 2011, and the launch of China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, in September. A total of 84 orbital launches were conducted over the course of the year, of which 78 were successful.