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Aerial view of Shuttle Landing Facility in 1999 The Mate-Demate Device at the Shuttle Landing Facility. The Shuttle Landing Facility covers 500 acres (2.0 km 2) and has a single runway, 15/33. It is one of the longest runways in the world, at 15,000 feet (4,600 m), and is 300 feet (91 m) wide. [2]
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 ...
A successful deorbit burn and re-entry ended with Discovery landing at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility for the final time on March 9, 2011, at 11:58:14 EST. The shuttle was retired at wheel-stop. It was the final shuttle landing to occur in daylight, the remaining two missions landed at night.
The Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA) is a former NASA training vehicle that duplicated the Space Shuttle's approach profile and handling qualities, allowing pilots to simulate Shuttle landings under controlled conditions before attempting the task on board the orbiter. The STA was also flown to assess weather conditions just prior to Space ...
Edwards Air Force Base in California was the site of the first Space Shuttle landing, and became a back-up site to the prime landing location, the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center. Several runways are arrayed on the dry lakebed at Rogers Dry Lake, [6] and there are also concrete runways. Space shuttle landings on the lake ...
STS-121 was the first shuttle mission to carry an 8.5-meter cable designed to connect the flight deck manual controls used during landing to an avionics bay in the middeck allowing mission controllers to land the shuttle uncrewed if required. [18]
The shuttle was equipped with a number of new cameras, and video was also taken from spotter planes. Each solid rocket booster contained three cameras - one to monitor the separation, and two focused on the leading edge. The video from these was not to be broadcast, but recorded for later retrieval from the solid rocket boosters.
STS-32 was the 33rd mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the ninth launch of Space Shuttle Columbia. Launched on January 9, 1990, it marked the first use of Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A since 1986; it also marked the first use of Mobile Launcher Platform-3 (MLP-3) in the Space Shuttle program. STS-32 was, at the time, the ...