Translator tool. What is the pronunciation of space shuttle? Browse space plane BETA. Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes. Image credits. Word of the Day have a heart of gold. Blog Outsets and onsets! Read More. November 08, To top. English American Examples Translations. Sign up for free and get access to exclusive content:. Free word lists and quizzes from Cambridge. Tools to create your own word lists and quizzes. Word lists shared by our community of dictionary fans.
Sign up now or Log in. Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English. Click on the arrows to change the translation direction. Follow us. Choose a dictionary. In space shuttle astronaut Sally Ride became the first U. The program was a tremendous success for NASA, but it also endured several tragedies. A string of successful missions was broken in when Challenger disintegrated seconds after liftoff, killing its seven-person crew.
The space shuttle program was suspended in the wake of the accident, and no shuttles were launched for nearly three years. The program rebounded in April with the successful mission of Discovery.
Astronauts on this momentous flight placed the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. This incredible imaging device has subsequently added much to our understanding of the cosmos while returning otherworldly images that bring the universe to life. In the space shuttle Atlantis successfully docked at the Russian space station Mir, bringing the two great space programs closer together in an era of cooperation that stood in marked contrast to the early days of the space race.
Tragedy struck again in February when the program lost its second shuttle: Columbia disintegrated over Texas just 16 minutes before its scheduled landing, and all seven crew members were lost. Despite this heartbreaking setback, the space shuttle was flying regularly again by And in February Endeavour brought up the Cupola, a robotic control station with seven windows that provides the ISS crew with a degree view.
In , U. President George W. Bush announced that the space shuttles would be retired. The final flight came to a close when Atlantis touched down at Kennedy Space Center on July 21, The three remaining orbiters and the prototype shuttle, Enterprise, are now be housed in museums in California, Florida, New York, and Virginia.
For its next phase of manned space exploration, NASA is designing and building the spacecraft needed to send humans deeper into the solar system, working toward a goal of putting people on Mars. The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, for example, is being developed to take four astronauts on day missions.
NASA is also developing the Space Launch System, an advanced heavy-lift launch vehicle designed for human exploration beyond Earth's orbit. In addition, the space agency is partnering with private companies such as Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, to launch commercial vehicles to the ISS-and perhaps beyond.
All rights reserved. Shuttle Ferry If weather conditions are favorable, returning space shuttles land at Kennedy Space Center. Program Liftoff On April 12, , John Young and Robert Crippen launched the space shuttle program by piloting Columbia to space and returning successfully two days later. The orbiter was about the same size as a DC-9 aircraft.
It was feet 37 meters long and had a wingspan of 78 feet 23 m. The crew compartment, located in the forward fuselage, normally carried crews of seven astronauts, but occasionally carried fewer people.
The largest crew size for a shuttle mission was eight astronauts. The mid-fuselage housed a foot meter payload bay and robotic arm. The bay could hold satellites, modules containing whole laboratories, and construction materials for the International Space Station. The aft fuselage held the orbital maneuvering system, main engines and vertical tail. Smaller thrusters located at the shuttle's nose and aft fuselage were used for small flight adjustments.
The space shuttle grew out of several efforts to develop reusable spacecraft. The X program in the s tested the idea of flying a space plane.
The U. Air Force also conducted studies on semi-reusable spacecraft in the s. The original vision of the space shuttle program was to develop a vehicle that would launch into space very frequently several times a month to deploy and repair satellites as required.
The military was also an active participant in the development, and the shuttle's payload bay which carried equipment into satellites into space was enlarged in the design phase to accommodate larger military satellites. Specifically, the National Reconnaissance Office asked that the payload bay be enlarged and that the shuttle eventually run polar missions, which are suitable for satellites to see the entire Earth's surface below.
The Air Force constructed a launch pad in Vandenberg, Calif. Although several shuttle military missions ran in the s, the practice dwindled down and ceased after Challenger's explosion.
In the early days of the space shuttle program, mission tasks included bringing up civilians to manage experiments, and deploying satellites — both civilian and military. Astronauts tested daring equipment such as the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a sort of jet backpack that would allow crew members to leave the shuttle untethered and pick up satellites for repair.
These activities greatly lessened and then ceased after the Challenger space shuttle explosion of , when it became clear that space shuttles could only launch a few times a year instead of many. There was a concern that the astronauts were doing risky spacewalks. As well, military satellites were gradually moved to single-use rockets, providing more frequent launch opportunities at a lower cost.
What didn't change on space shuttle missions, however, was performing experiments. Over the 30 years of the space shuttle program, some individual cosmonauts and astronauts used the space shuttle for launching, landing or both.. They collectively put in thousands upon thousands of hours of work in space investigating all sorts of science, ranging from human health to engineering to astronomy to animal studies. The space shuttle flew 11 times to the Russian space station Mir between and , with seven American astronauts doing extended stays on the space station.
This was the first major in-space cooperation between Russia and the United States since the Apollo-Soyuz mission of , when Americans and cosmonauts from the Soviet Union docked for a few brief days in space. Perhaps the most famous task that the shuttle undertook was bringing up astronauts, pieces and equipment to build the International Space Station.
Completing the space station took 13 years and dozens of shuttle missions; the number of shuttle missions total that docked at the station was 37, or more than one-third of the shuttle's total count of missions. Besides hundreds of hours of astronaut spacewalks, some of the main components that the space shuttle itself contributed included the European Columbus laboratory, the Harmony node, the Tranquility node, the Japanese Kibo laboratory, solar panels, airlocks and the Canadarm2 robotic arm used for spacecraft berthing.
The space shuttle also carried vital equipment needed for the interior, with some examples including exercise equipment, science racks, toilets and of course, fresh food.
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