![]() ![]() The only way for the crew to survive an emergency early in their ascent (and even then, only in some circumstances) was to turn the spaceplane around and fly back to Florida-the so-called “return-to-launch-site” abort. The space shuttle was considered reliable enough that having a bailout option was not considered a priority. Some 10,000 feet above the California desert, a Navy parachutist slides down a telescoping pole extended from a C-141 aircraft during tests of the space shuttle escape system.īefore January 1986, such a scenario had barely been contemplated. If they happened to catch a backward glance, they’d see the empty shuttle receding above them, perfectly under control and doomed. For a split second, they would feel a tug on the lanyard tethering them to the pole, their last contact with the vehicle before they slid off into the rushing air. Then, one by one, the astronauts would kneel in the hatch and jump into the equivalent of a 230-mph wind. Wearing compact, 64-pound parachute packs, the rest of the crew would leave their seats, hustle to the hatch, and hook in too. After making his or her way to the hatch, that astronaut would then yank a handle to deploy a nine-foot telescoping pole out into the rushing air, and hook one of seven lanyards attached to the pole to a metal ring on their parachute harness. Provided nothing had gone fatally wrong and the space shuttle could still be maneuvered into a stable glide, the astronauts aboard, who only minutes before had been on their way to orbit, would prepare to parachute into the ocean.Īs the orbiter descended, the commander would set its controls to autopilot and ask the astronaut sitting closest to the outer hatch, on the middeck below, to depressurize the cabin and jettison the hatch. Shuttle disintegrates after launch, killing all seven astronauts on board.The decision would be made at about 60,000 feet. Sullivan becomes first American woman to make a spacewalk.ĭeployed Earth Radiation Budget Satellite. Marc Garneau become first Canadian in space. Guion Bluford becomes first African-American in spaceįirst shuttle night launch and night landing.ĭeployed two communications satellites, unsuccessfully. Sally Ride becomes first American woman in space. Dateįirst spacewalk during a space shuttle mission. Space Shuttle Challenger flew 10 flights, spent 62.41 days in space, completed 995 orbits, and flew 25,803,940 statute miles in total, including its final mission.Ĭhallenger's rollout from Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). When this happens, they are collected and transported to the silos for storage. From time to time, further pieces of debris from the orbiter wash up on the Florida coast. The collected debris of the vessel is currently stored in decommissioned missile silos at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Had STS-51-L been successful, Challenger's next mission would have been the deployment of the Ulysses probe with the Centaur to study the polar regions of the Sun.Ĭhallenger was one of two space shuttles destroyed in an accident during a mission, the other being Columbia. It was also the first Orbiter to have a heads-up display system similar to those found in military and newer civilian aircraft to allow the commander and pilot to see important data during reentry and landing, eliminating the need to look at the instrument panel during descent and allowing them to concentrate on flying the Orbiter.Ĭhallenger, along with Discovery was modified at KSC to be able to carry the Centaur-G upper-stage in its payload bay. ![]() Most of the tiles were replaced with DuPont white nomex felt insulation on the payload bay doors, upper wing surface and rear fuselage surface, allowing Challenger to carry 2,500 lbs. ![]() Unlike Columbia, Challenger was the first Orbiter to be delivered with fewer tiles on its Thermal Protection System. The spacecraft was named after a British corvette which carried out a pioneering global marine research expedition in the 1870s. STA-099 had not been meant for spaceflight, but NASA discovered that recycling it would be less expensive than refitting the test shuttle Enterprise (OV-101) to be spaceworthy, as originally planned. (For more on the Challenger disaster, see Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.) It would be replaced by the space shuttle Endeavour, launched six years after the 51-L disaster.Ĭhallenger was constructed using a body frame ( STA-099) that had initially been built as a test article. Its maiden voyage was on April 4, 1983, and it made eight further round trips to low earth orbit before breaking up 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission, on January 28, 1986, killing all 7 crew members. Space Shuttle Challenger ( NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-099) was NASA's second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, after Columbia. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |