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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.
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 ...
Enterprise's first test flight was on February 18, 1977, only five years after the Shuttle program was formally initiated; leading to the launch of the first space-worthy shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, on STS-1.
In 2007, NASA engineers devised a solution so Space Shuttle flights could cross the year-end boundary. [27] 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.
Shuttle program ended 12 years ago. But now the world's busiest spaceport is rewriting another record for 2023: The number of orbital rocket launches. Years after space shuttle retirement, Florida ...
The first space rendezvous was accomplished by Gemini 6A and Gemini 7 in 1965.. Records and firsts in spaceflight are broadly divided into crewed and uncrewed categories. Records involving animal spaceflight have also been noted in earlier experimental flights, typically to establish the feasibility of sending humans to outer space.
But like all good things, this era came to an end 30 years later when Space Shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth on July 21, 2011, marking the end of the final flight of the space shuttle program ...
These were atmospheric only, non-spaceflight tests from a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, both with the orbiter attached and for a series of drop-test flights. ** Note 2: The durations listed count only the orbiter free-flight time, and not total time aloft along with airborne time atop of the 747 SCA.