By the time Discovery completed its 39th and final mission the most of any shuttle in March , it had flown million miles, made 5, orbits of Earth and spent days in space. Endeavour completed its 25th and final mission in June That mission was commanded by Capt. Mark Kelly, husband of former U. On July 8, , Atlantis was launched on its 33rd mission.
With four crew members aboard, Atlantis flew thousands of pounds of supplies and extra parts to the International Space Station; it was the 37th shuttle flight to make the trip. Christopher J. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
The influential American literary icon became known for his straightforward prose and use of understatement. Hemingway, who On July 21, , terrorists attempt to attack the London transit system by planting bombs on three subways and on one bus; none of the bombs detonate completely. The attempted attack came exactly two weeks after terrorists killed 56 people, including themselves, and wounded Three months after the Civil War erupted at Fort Sumter, Union military command still believed that the NASA's final space shuttle mission, which launched 10 years ago this week, almost didn't happen.
It was initially planned as a backup flight and not officially authorized in NASA's budget until January , just six months before launch. That tight schedule caused a bit of scrambling for Atlantis' crew of four, not to mention the ground teams, but everything worked out well in the end, as the astronauts and some of their ground-based team leaders recalled in a NASA celebration of their flight on Thursday July 8.
So imagine his disappointment when at first, the year program was slated to end one mission earlier, with STS, and he was not named to any flight manifest. But Walheim and his crewmates were ready to go when the announcement came, having been in training for three months before STS was finally officially authorized.
It still was a quick turnaround with a nine-month training cycle rather than the usual year or more, said mission pilot Doug Hurley , but the crew felt a sense of camaraderie that brought them through the intense experience. The teamwork came to a culmination during their last night in orbit, when Hurley, Walheim, mission specialist Sandy Magnus and commander Chris Ferguson all sat on the flight deck silently drinking in the view of the nighttime Earth below.
The pair spent two months at the International Space Station before returning home. NASA's space shuttle program in pictures: A tribute. STS was a major supply run for the International Space Station, an orbiting complex that relied on the space shuttle to bring up the major pieces. Among its milestones, the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Raffaello made its final trip to orbit in the shuttle's payload bay, filled to the brim with its maximum of 16 resupply racks to exchange experiments in space.
The empty middeck on the shuttle — as there were only four crew members on STS instead of the usual six or seven people — also allowed the shuttle to bring home a little bit of extra trash and unneeded supplies from the space station, ahead of expected years of flights from the three-person Russian Soyuz spacecraft and a fleet of smaller cargo ships with less capacity than the space shuttle.
The shuttle's safe nighttime landing on July 21, marked the end of American-launched crewed missions to space for almost exactly nine years, until Hurley and Behnken launched on a SpaceX Crew Dragon on May 30, Now, with the 10th anniversary of STS's mission ongoing, the crew members and flight directors are using the milestone as a moment to reflect on where the space program was 10 years ago and where it is going today.
The space age is changing rapidly, not least in terms of the types of people going to space. For example, Virgin Galactic expects to make its fourth crewed suborbital spaceflight on Sunday July 11 , with founder Richard Branson and company personnel on board.
Blue Origin plans to launch the first crewed mission of its suborbital New Shepard vehicle on July 20, with a crew including Mercury 13 female aviator Wally Funk and company founder Jeff Bezos better known for founding Amazon.
Both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin eventually plan to fly well-heeled space tourists in the coming years. The liftoff of the Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance by the crew, was aired live from Cape Canaveral on NASA TV, punctuated by the sound of cheers and applause from mission controllers.
Intermittent rain and clouds over the Cape earlier in the day had cast doubt on launch prospects, but the weather cleared by flight time, NASA said. The mission had been confounded by a string of weather delays since its original launch window on Oct. One postponement earlier this month was attributed to an astronaut's unspecified medical issue, although NASA said the problem was later resolved. Live video footage webcast by NASA showed the four crew members strapped into the pressurized cabin of their capsule and seated calmly in their helmeted white-and-black flight suits moments after a launch that appeared to go flawlessly.
Within 10 minutes of liftoff, the rocket's upper stage had delivered the crew capsule into orbit, according to launch commentators. Meanwhile, the rocket's reusable lower stage, having detached from the rest of the spacecraft, flew itself back to Earth and successfully touched down on a landing platform floating on a drone vessel in the Atlantic.
As the Dragon separated from the upper rocket stage moments later, a launch engineer on the ground radioed to the crew: "Welcome to orbit. Hope you enjoyed the ride.
0コメント