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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 ...
In 1976, NASA selected Northrup Strip as the site for shuttle pilot training. A second runway was added crossing the original north-south landing strip, and in 1979 both lakebed runways were lengthened to 35,000 ft (10,668 m), which includes 15,000 ft (4,572 m) usable runway with 10,000 ft (3048 m) extensions on either end, to allow White Sands Space Harbor to serve as shuttle backup landing ...
In May 2017, construction on a second, smaller pad began, called Landing Zone 2. This pad is located about 1,017 feet (310 m) to the northwest of the first pad and is used for landing Falcon Heavy side boosters. [12] By June 2017, the landing pad was modified with a radar reflective paint, to aid with landing precision. [13]
Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) is the first of Launch Complex 39's three launch pads, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida.The pad, along with Launch Complex 39B, was first constructed in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V launch vehicle, and has been used to support NASA crewed space flight missions, including the historic Apollo 11 moon landing and the Space Shuttle.
The Space Shuttle recovery convoy was a fleet of ground vehicles, many of which were specially-designed for their purpose, staged at the landing site of a Space Shuttle orbiter which assist the crew in egress and safe the vehicle and its payload after landing.
In October 2014, NASA signed agreement for the use of the facility, and Boeing upgraded the OPF-1 for the X-37B program. [13] The X-37B (OTV-4 mission) first used Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility Runway 15 on May 7, 2017 at 11:47 UTC. [14] [15] Subsequently OTV-5 and 6 mission used Shuttle Landing Facility Runway 33 for landing. [16]
Splashdown is the method of landing a spacecraft or launch vehicle in a body of water, usually by parachute. This has been the primary recovery method of American capsules including NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Orion along with the private SpaceX Dragon.
Langley Research Center (LaRC), founded in 1917, is the oldest of NASA's field centers, located in Hampton, Virginia.LaRC focuses primarily on aeronautical research, though the Apollo lunar lander was flight-tested at the facility and a number of high-profile space missions have been planned and designed on-site.