Space Center Houston

Shuttle

In the late 1960’s, NASA conducted a series of projects on reusable spacecrafts, and officially launched the shuttle program twelve years later.  Enterprise, the first orbiter built, was rolled out in 1976 and completed a successful series of landing tests.  Columbia was the first fully functional orbiter, and was first launched in 1981.  Other orbiters followed: Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor.

The Space Shuttle launches like a rocket, maneuvers in Earth orbit like a spacecraft and lands like an airplane and is designed to fly at least 100 missions.  It consists of four main components: the reusable orbiter, and expendable external fuel tank, and a pair of reusable solid-fuel rocket boosters.  The shuttle is launched in a vertical position, with thrust provided by two solid rocket boosters and three main engines.  To achieve orbit, the shuttle must accelerate from zero to almost 18,000 miles per hour.  The main engines of the shuttle burn liquid hydrogen and exhaust is primarily water vapor.

Challenger and her crew of seven astronauts were lost during an explosion during launch in January 1986.  Columbia and her crew of seven, were lost during re-entry on February 1, 2003