GiGi checked the manifest twice — the payload bay is still empty.
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Fueling up…
The machine behind the mission
Orbiter, orange external tank and twin solid rocket boosters. The Shuttle was the winged spacecraft that launched like a rocket and glided home to a runway — flying from the Space Coast for 30 years and helping build the International Space Station.
For thirty years the Shuttle launched like a rocket and landed like a glider — freeing Hubble, then assembling the ISS, crewed continuously since November 2000.
The Shuttle and station made orbit a workplace — a laboratory circling the world sixteen times a day. Our collection celebrates the era that made space routine.
Fourteen feet tall and built to fly again: 65 to 109 percent on command, three per orbiter.
Space Shuttle Main Engine
Sea-level pressure and ordinary air, ten flight-deck windows, a crew of up to seven.
Crew cabin
Thirty years of the same eight and a half minutes. This printout is the Shuttle as the flight controllers saw it - a column of times and events - and the station it carried up one piece at a time.
Three decks in a pressure vessel of 2,325 cubic feet, held at sea-level pressure, 14.7 psi, with ordinary air: 79 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen. Flight deck on top, middeck below it, and under the middeck floor an equipment bay the crew could reach by lifting the panels.
Source: Shuttle Crew Operations Manual, SCOM 1.2 (OI-21), NASA Johnson Space Center, November 1992.
From orbit to wheels-stop, the returning orbiter was a 100-ton glider — one approach, no engines, no second chances.
The station circles Earth every 90 minutes — crews watch a sunrise or sunset roughly every 45.
The ISS recycles about 98% of its water — yesterday's sweat and breath become tomorrow's coffee.
The biggest piece of the stack and the only one thrown away every flight. Two tanks and an intertank: liquid oxygen forward, liquid hydrogen aft. The orbiter rode on its back and drank from it for eight and a half minutes, then let it go to break up over the Indian or Pacific Ocean.
Source: Shuttle Crew Operations Manual, SCOM 1.2 (OI-21), NASA Johnson Space Center, November 1992.
Twelve of the 135, chosen because something changed on each one.
| Flight | Date | Orbiter / Crew | Duration | Event |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| STS-1 | 12 - 14 Apr 1981 | Columbia - Young / Crippen | 2d 06h | First flight. Two men, no escape system, a vehicle that had never flown |
| STS-7 | 18 - 24 Jun 1983 | Challenger - Crippen + 4 | 6d 02h | Sally Ride, first American woman in space |
| STS-41G | 5 - 13 Oct 1984 | Challenger - crew of 7 | 8d 05h | Kathryn Sullivan, first American woman to walk in space |
| STS-51L | 28 Jan 1986 | Challenger - crew of 7 | 73 sec | Lost 73 seconds after liftoff. Scobee, Smith, Resnik, Onizuka, McNair, Jarvis, McAuliffe |
| STS-26 | 29 Sep - 3 Oct 1988 | Discovery - Hauck + 4 | 4d 01h | Return to flight |
| STS-31 | 24 - 29 Apr 1990 | Discovery - Shriver + 4 | 5d 01h | Hubble Space Telescope deployed |
| STS-71 | 27 Jun - 7 Jul 1995 | Atlantis - Gibson + 6 | 9d 19h | First docking with Mir - the first of nine |
| STS-95 | 29 Oct - 7 Nov 1998 | Discovery - Brown + 6 | 8d 21h | John Glenn flies again at 77 |
| STS-88 | 4 - 15 Dec 1998 | Endeavour - Cabana + 5 | 11d 19h | Unity joined to Zarya - the first ISS assembly flight |
| STS-107 | 16 Jan - 1 Feb 2003 | Columbia - crew of 7 | 15d 22h | Lost on re-entry. Husband, McCool, Anderson, Brown, Chawla, Clark, Ramon |
| STS-114 | 26 Jul - 9 Aug 2005 | Discovery - Collins + 6 | 13d 21h | Return to flight; the first back-flip under the station for tile inspection |
| STS-135 | 8 - 21 Jul 2011 | Atlantis - Ferguson + 3 | 12d 18h | The last flight. Wheels stop at 5:57 a.m. EDT, July 21, 2011 |
Five orbiters flew: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour. Two were lost with their crews.
Fourteen feet tall, seven and a half feet across the bell, and reusable: the first big rocket engine built to fly again and again. Three of them burned liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen at a six-to-one ratio. The crew could throttle them from 65 percent to 109 percent, and did, through the worst of the wind on the way up.
Source: Shuttle Crew Operations Manual, SCOM 1.2 (OI-21), NASA Johnson Space Center, November 1992.
Where the air, the water and the heat went. Fuel cells made the electricity and, as a by-product, the drinking water. Freon loops picked up heat from the cabin and the electronics and carried it to whichever cooler could use it: radiators on orbit, a flash evaporator on the way up and down, an ammonia boiler on the runway.
Source: Shuttle Crew Operations Manual, SCOM 1.2 (OI-21), NASA Johnson Space Center, November 1992.
Stage by stage, 1998 - 2010
Tick off the station as it was built. Each line is one piece carried up and bolted on.
Tap a box to check it off
The payload bay doors did two jobs. They closed the 60-foot cargo bay, and their inside faces carried the radiators that kept the orbiter cool. Eight panels, each 10 by 15 feet. The forward four could tilt out 35.5 degrees to see more sky. If the doors would not open, the flight came home that day.
Source: Shuttle Crew Operations Manual, SCOM 1.2 (OI-21), NASA Johnson Space Center, November 1992.
The Canadarm. Fifty feet three inches of graphite-epoxy boom with six joints, built by Spar Aerospace in Canada and first flown on STS-2 in November 1981. On orbit it could swing a 65,000-pound payload out of the bay. On the ground it could not lift its own weight.
Source: Shuttle Crew Operations Manual, SCOM 1.2 (OI-21), NASA Johnson Space Center, November 1992.
No match. Check the FDF.
