The history of today's Space Shuttle began on January 3, 1972, when US President Richard Nixon launched a program to develop a reusable space glider.
The Space Shuttle system consisted of three components: an orbiter, an external fuel tank, and two solid rocket boosters. It is the only reusable transporter that has taken up regular flight operations, unlike its Russian counterpart Buran, which only completed one test flight.
Although not all parts of this system were reusable—the external fuel tank burned up in the Earth's atmosphere, while the solid rockets fell into the water on parachutes and were recovered by special ships—the orbiter returned to Earth as a glider.
The first space shuttle built for test purposes and never flown into space was the Enterprise. It was named after the famous spaceship from the television series of the same name. Initially, however, the name Constitution was planned, but thousands of letters from Star Trek fans changed the minds of those responsible.
The first flight of a space shuttle (STS-1) into space was on April 12, 1981, when Columbia took off from Cape Canaveral. The first mission was to check that all systems were working as planned. It returned after 2 days, 6 hours, 20 minutes, and 53 seconds.
Number
With Atlantis, Discovery, Columbia, Challenger, and Endeavour, the latter of which was only built after the Challenger accident, there have been five space shuttles that have flown into space.
Before the Launch
Before the space shuttle could be launched, the individual components first had to be assembled. First, the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) were assembled and then attached to the external fuel tank. Then the orbiter was assembled, and the space shuttle was rolled to the launch site. The final tests were carried out at the launch site, and the countdown began three days before the launch date.
Take-off
During take-off, the main engines were ignited 6 seconds (T-6) before lift-off, and when the countdown reached 0 (T=0), the solid fuel boosters were ignited. At this point, there was no turning back, and the space shuttle lifted off. Initially, it ascended at a rather leisurely pace, as the shuttle weighed 2.04 million kilograms at launch and it took 8 seconds for the boosters and engines to accelerate the shuttle to 161 km/h. After one minute, the shuttle had reached a speed of 1,609 km/h and had consumed almost half a million pounds of fuel. After two minutes, the shuttle had reached an altitude of 45 kilometers and a speed of 4,828 km/h. Since the solid fuel boosters, which had provided 5.3 million pounds of thrust up to this point, had burned out, they were jettisoned and glided back to Earth on parachutes.
From this point on, the shuttle was accelerated only by its three main engines, which generated a thrust of 1 million pounds. 8 minutes and 30 seconds after launch, the space shuttle separated from its external fuel tank, which had been filled with over half a million gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, now depleted. The shuttle was now flying at a speed of 8 kilometers per second and weighed only 117,934 kilograms. It had therefore consumed fuel weighing more than 1.59 million pounds.
Orbit
Once in orbit, the shuttle entered an elliptical orbit around the planet, where the main engines were switched off. Due to the centrifugal force counteracting the gravitational force, the shuttle remained in a stable orbit. At this point, only the maneuvering thrusters were needed, and the shuttle's actual mission could begin.
Mission
The space shuttle was used as a means of transportation to bring people, satellites, and other objects, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, into orbit around the Earth or to the International Space Station. It could also be used as a mobile research laboratory when the Spacelab or Spacehab was in the cargo bay.
Landing
The landing of the space shuttle was complicated because it did not use its engines (with the exception of the braking and maneuvering engines) on the return flight to Earth. It therefore glided from orbit to Earth.
Before entering the atmosphere, the space shuttle turned its main engines in the direction of flight and fired its brake engines. After surviving the flight through the Earth's atmosphere unscathed thanks to its heat shield and having already lost a large part of its speed, it flew a few turns to lose further speed. In orbit, it had a speed of around 28,000 km/h and now had to get below the speed of sound. Once it had lost enough speed, it began its landing approach. It normally landed at Cape Canaveral, but there were times when it had to divert to another runway if, for example, the weather did not cooperate. It then landed either at Edwards Air Force Base (California) or at White Sands (New Mexico). If it did not land at Cape Canaveral, it had to be brought back to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on a converted Boeing.
The darkest hours
Two serious disasters occurred during the shuttle program. First, on January 28, 1986, the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch due to defective sealing rings on one of the two solid rocket boosters. This accident was facilitated by unusually cold temperatures in Florida. Then, on February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere during its landing approach. This was caused by a damaged heat shield, as parts of the tank's foam insulation had come loose during take-off and damaged the heat shield on the left wing.
Note: You can find out more about this topic in my book “Space - Die Zukunft liegt im All” (2019).
Missionsseite: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html
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