NASA's Space Shuttle , officially called Space Transportation System ( STS ), is the United States government's current manned launch vehicle. The winged Space Shuttle orbiter is launched vertically, usually carrying five to seven astronauts (although eight have been carried) and up to 50,000 lb (22 700 kg) of payload into low earth orbit. When its mission is complete, the shuttle can independently move itself out of orbit using its Orbital Maneuvering System (it orients itself appropriately and fires its main OMS engines, thus slowing it down) and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. During descent and landing the orbiter acts as a re-entry vehicle and a glider, using its OMS system and flight surfaces to make adjustments.
The shuttle is the only winged manned spacecraft to achieve orbit and land, and the only reusable space vehicle that has ever made multiple flights into orbit. Its missions involve carrying large payloads to various orbits (including segments to be added to the International Space Station), providing crew rotation for the International Space Station, and performing service missions. The orbiter can also recover satellites and other payloads from orbit and return them to Earth, but its use in this capacity is rare. However, the shuttle has previously been used to return large payloads from the ISS to Earth, as the Russian Soyuz spacecraft has limited capacity for return payloads. Each vehicle was designed with a projected lifespan of 100 launches, or 10 years' operational life.
The program started in the late 1960s and has dominated NASA's manned operations since the mid-1970s. According to the Vision for Space Exploration, use of the space shuttle will be focused on completing assembly of the ISS by 2010, after which it will be retired from service, and eventually replaced by the new Orion spacecraft (now expected to be ready in about 2014).
Conception (1960s-1970s)
Main article: Space Shuttle design processEven before the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, NASA began early studies of space shuttle designs. In 1969 President Richard Nixon formed the Space Task Group, chaired by vice president Spiro T. Agnew. This group evaluated the shuttle studies to date, and recommended a national space strategy including building a space shuttle. The goal, as presented by NASA to Congress, was to provide a much less-expensive means of access to space that would be used by NASA, the Department of Defense, and other commercial and scientific users.
Development
During early shuttle development there was great debate about the optimal shuttle design that best balanced capability, development cost and operating cost. Ultimately the current design was chosen, using a reusable winged orbiter, solid rocket boosters, and an expendable external tank.
The shuttle program was formally launched on January 5, 1972, when President Nixon announced that NASA would proceed with the development of a reusable space shuttle system. The final design was less costly to build and less technically ambitious than earlier fully reusable designs. The initial design parameters included a larger external fuel tank, which would have been carried to orbit, where it could be used as a section of a space station, but this idea was killed due to budgetary and political considerations.
The prime contractor for the program was North American Aviation (later Rockwell International, now Boeing), the same company responsible for building the Apollo Command/Service Module. The contractor for the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters was Morton Thiokol (now part of Alliant Techsystems), for the external tank, Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin), and for the Space shuttle main engines, Rocketdyne (now Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, part of United Technologies).
The first complete orbiter was originally planned to be named Constitution , but a massive write-in campaign from fans of the Star Trek television series convinced the White House to change the name to Enterprise . Amid great fanfare, the Enterprise (designated OV-101) was rolled out on September 17, 1976, and later conducted a successful series of glide-approach and landing tests that were the first real validation of the design.
The first fully functional orbiter was the Columbia (designated OV-102), built in Palmdale, California. It was delivered to Kennedy Space Center on March 25, 1979, and was first launched on April 12, 1981—the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's space flight—with a crew of two. Challenger (OV-099) was delivered to KSC in July 1982, Discovery (OV-103) in November 1983, and Atlantis (OV-104) in April 1985. Challenger was originally built and used as Structural Test Article (STA-099) but was converted to a complete shuttle when this was found to be less expensive than converting Enterprise from its Approach and Landing Test configuration, according to NASA. Challenger was destroyed during ascent due to O-Ring failure on the right solid rocket booster (SRB) on January 28, 1986, with the loss of all seven astronauts on board. Endeavour (OV-105) was built to replace Challenger (using structural spare parts originally intended for the other orbiters) and delivered in May 1991; it was first launched a year later. Seventeen years after Challenger , Columbia was lost, with all seven crew members, during reentry on February 1, 2003, and it has not been replaced. Out of the five fully functional shuttle orbiters built, three remain. Enterprise , which was used for sub-orbital test flights but not intended for orbital flight, had many parts taken out for use on the other orbiters. It was later visually restored and is on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. (NASA also maintains warehoused extensive catalogs of recovered pieces from the two destroyed orbiters.)
Shuttle applications
Current and past space shuttle applications include:
- Crew rotation and servicing of Mir and the International Space Station (ISS)
- Manned servicing missions, such as to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
- Manned experiments in Low Earth orbit (LEO)
- Carried to LEO:
- Large satellites — including the HST
- Components for the construction of the ISS
- Supplies in Spacehab modules or Multi-Purpose Logistics Modules
- Carried satellites with a booster, the Payload Assist Module (PAM-D) or the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), to the point where the booster sends the satellite to:
- A higher Earth orbit; these have included:
- Chandra X-ray Observatory
- Many TDRS satellites
- Two DSCS-III (Defense Satellite Communications System) communications satellites in one mission
- A Defense Support Program satellite
- An interplanetary orbit; these have included:
- Magellan probe
- Galileo spacecraft
- Ulysses probe
Flight statistics
† No longer in service (destroyed)
Disasters (1986, 2003)
Two shuttles have been destroyed in 131 missions, both with the loss of the entire crew (14 astronauts total):
- Challenger — lost 73 seconds after liftoff, STS-51-L, January 28, 1986Further information: Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
- Columbia — lost approximately 16 minutes before its expected landing, STS-107, February 1, 2003Further information: Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
This gives a 2% death rate per astronaut-flight, and an average failure rate of nearly 1 in every 60 missions. The original disaster potential, though disaster is not defined as fatal or non-fatal, was estimated during shuttle development at one every 75 missions. 87 successful missions were flown between STS-51-L and STS-107.
Status (2000-2010)
From September 2005 until early 2008, the manager of the space shuttle program was Wayne Hale. Hale then became NASA's deputy associate administrator for strategic partnerships. John Shannon, who had been Hale's deputy since November 2005, succeeded him as the Space Shuttle Program Manager.
After the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, the International Space Station operated on a skeleton crew of two for more than two years and was serviced primarily by Russian spacecraft. While the "Return to Flight
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