Read more about the space shuttle programThe space shuttle program was retired in July 2011 after 135 missions, including the catastrophic failures of Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 that killed a total of 14 astronauts.
A. No, the Shuttle is designed to travel to low-Earth orbit (within a few hundred miles of the Earth's surface). It does not carry enough propellant to leave Earth orbit and travel to the Moon. The Shuttle also is not designed to land on the Moon since it lands like an airplane and the Moon has no atmosphere.
6 Space Shuttles were built (although only 5 of them spaceworthy): Challenger, Enterprise, Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis & Endeavour. 4 of them are still around, in various museums. Disintegrated after launch, killing all seven astronauts on board.
While reentering Earth's atmosphere, Columbia broke apart, killing the entire crew. All of these factors — high costs, slow turnaround, few customers, and a vehicle (and agency) that had major safety problems — combined to make the Bush administration realize it was time for the Space Shuttle Program to retire.
One of three space-flown shuttles displayed in the United States, Space Shuttle Atlantis® showcases the orbiter spacecraft and tells the story of NASA's 30-year Space Shuttle Program. Space shuttle Atlantis rollover to Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in 2012.
As of March 2021, in-flight accidents have killed 15 astronauts and 4 cosmonauts, in five separate incidents. Three of them had flown above the Kármán line (edge of space), and one was intended to do so.
Accidents. In the course of 135 missions flown, two orbiters were destroyed, with loss of crew totalling 14 astronauts: Challenger – lost 73 seconds after liftoff, STS-51-L, January 28, 1986. Columbia – lost approximately 16 minutes before its expected landing, STS-107, February 1, 2003.
Atlantis. Space Shuttle Atlantis is on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Astronauts are paid according to the federal government's General Schedule pay scale, and they can fall on the GS-11 through GS-14 pay grades. The pay grade is based on an astronaut's academic achievements and experience. The starting salary for GS-11 employees is $53,805.
Endeavour is currently housed in a temporary structure, the Samuel Oschin Pavilion at the California Science Center, located in Exposition Park in South Los Angeles about two miles south of Downtown Los Angeles.
A total of 18 people have lost their lives either while in space or in preparation for a space mission, in four separate incidents. In 2003 a further seven astronauts died when the shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
Bill Clinton became the second incumbent U.S. president to witness a rocket launch, joined by his wife Hillary on the roof of the Vehicle Assembly Building; and the only one to attend a Shuttle launch (President Richard Nixon witnessed the launch of Apollo 12).
Now for a bit of history: for the 1967 Apollo mission to the moon, Saturn V rocket's first stage carried 203,400 gallons of kerosene fuel and 318,000 gallons of liquid oxygen needed for, totaling over 500,000 gallons of fuel for getting out of the atmosphere alone.
The cost of a spacesuit originally was about $22 million. Building one from scratch right now can be as much as 250 million.
List of Space Shuttle missions
- The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
- From 1981 to 2011 a total of 135 missions were flown, all launched from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.
NASA's Magellan mission to Venus was one of the most successful deep space missions. It was the first spacecraft to image the entire surface of Venus and made several discoveries about the planet.
What was Magellan?
| Nation | United States of America (USA) |
|---|
| Spacecraft: | Magellan |
| Spacecraft Mass | 7,595 pounds (3,445 kilograms) |
about 17,600 miles per hour
At liftoff, the two Solid Rocket Boosters consume 11,000 pounds of fuel per second. That's two million times the rate at which fuel is burned by the average family car. The twin Solid Rocket Boosters generate a combined thrust of 5.3 million pounds.
NASA has identified the cost of sending astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket at $81 million per seat.
Answer: The time-dilation effect of Einstein's relativity has nothing to do with space. The faster you're moving, the slower time goes for you. So if you were on some planet moving extremely fast through space, like in the movie Interstellar, then you could miss 7 years on Earth every hour.
The time dilation on that planet—one hour equals 7 Earth years—seems extreme. To get that, you'd apparently need to be at the event horizon of a black hole.
Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov (Russian: Валерий Владимирович ПолÑков, born Valeri Ivanovich Korshunov on 27 April 1942) is a Russian former cosmonaut. He is the holder of the record for the longest single stay in space, staying aboard the Mir space station for more than 14 months (437 days 18 hours) during one trip.
The fastest speed at which humans have travelled is 39,937.7 km/h (24,816.1 mph). The command module of Apollo 10, carrying Col. (later Lieut Gen.) Thomas Patten Stafford, USAF (b.
Nothing can travel faster than 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second).
The most distant human-made object is the spacecraft Voyager 1, which – in late February 2018 – is over 13 billion miles (21 billion km) from Earth. Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977. Both spacecraft flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and Neptune.
