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STS-7 began on June 18, 1983, with an on-time liftoff at 7:33:00 a.m. EDT. It was the first spaceflight of an American woman (Ride), the largest crew to fly in a single spacecraft up to that time (five people), and the first flight that included members of NASA's Group 8 astronaut class, which had been selected in 1978 to fly the Space Shuttle.
It was the first shuttle mission to carry a crew of seven, including the first crew with two women (Sally K. Ride and Kathryn D. Sullivan), the first American Extravehicular activity (EVA) involving a woman (Sullivan), the first Australian-born person to journey into space as well as the first astronaut with a beard [2] [3] (Paul D. Scully ...
The mission used Space Shuttle Challenger, which lifted off from launch pad 39B (LC-39B) on January 28, 1986, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The mission ended in disaster following the destruction of Challenger 73 seconds after lift-off, because of the failure of an O-ring seals on Challenger ' s right solid rocket booster, which led to ...
The shuttle program was marked by triumphs and failures, including the 2003 Columbia disaster. The tragedies left a lasting mark on the perception of risks in space.
Eileen Collins became the first female shuttle Commander on this flight. Its primary mission was to launch the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the heaviest payload ever carried by the Space Shuttle system, at 22,780 kilograms (50,222 lb). [4] [5] STS-93 would be Columbia's last mission until March 2002.
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.
[3] [4] Each Space Shuttle SRB provided a maximum 14.7 MN (3,300,000 lbf) thrust, [5] roughly double the most powerful single-combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever flown, the Rocketdyne F-1. With a combined mass of about 1,180 t (1,160 long tons; 1,300 short tons), they comprised over half the mass of the Shuttle stack at liftoff.
Known as the 'Near-Mir' mission, the flight used Space Shuttle Discovery, which lifted off from launch pad 39B on February 3, 1995, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. A night launch and the 20th mission for Discovery, it marked the first time a Space Shuttle mission had a female pilot, Eileen Collins, and the first EVAs for both a UK born ...