![]() ![]() JFor the first time, the space shuttle docks at a space station, though not the one originally expected. Thagard joins the Russian Mir space station crew for a four-month mission. MaNASA astronaut Norm Thagard becomes the first American to fly on a Russian Soyuz rocket. The United States and Russia begin an astronaut-cosmonaut exchange program with the launch of Sergei Krikalev on the shuttle. military, a premature and ironic parting since the shuttle’s design was dictated by Air Force cargo requirements.įebruThe fall of the Soviet Union reverberates in the space program. NASA has a rule about couples flying together, but Davis and Lee married after they were assigned to the crew.ĭecemDiscovery launches on the 10th and final mission for the U.S. SeptemThe first married couple, Jan Davis and Mark Lee, fly together in space, along with the first Japanese astronaut and the first African-American woman. The tools fail to work and the astronauts hatch a new plan for an unprecedented three-man spacewalk to grab the spacecraft with their gloved hands that ultimately proves successful. The telescope is repaired by spacewalking astronauts in December 1993, the first of five service calls.Įndeavour, the replacement shuttle for Challenger, lifts off on mission to retrieve and relaunch a stranded communications satellite. Two months later, NASA finds out it has a flawed primary mirror. Magellan, a Venus radar mapper, is the first shuttle-launched planetary spacecraft.ĪpAfter years of delay, the Hubble Space Telescope is carried into orbit aboard shuttle Discovery. The backlog of satellites awaiting launch after the Challenger accident includes science probes headed beyond Earth. The military, concerned about climbing program costs and flight delays even before the accident, ramps up expendable launch vehicle production lines. Commercial satellites are booted off the manifest. SeptemA sobered and more safety-conscious NASA returns the shuttle fleet to flight. Investigators cited poor management as a contributing cause of the accident. JanuSix astronauts and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe are killed after a seal ruptures on one of the booster rockets carrying shuttle Challenger off the launch pad. Representative Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who later became a senator, flew in January 1986. A Saudi prince flies in June, and then-U.S. goal to have a space transportation system and a space station in orbit.ĪpSpacewalking astronauts repair the Solar Maximum Mission satellite, the first in-orbit satellite servicing.ĪpConvinced the shuttle is safe enough for non-professional astronauts to fly, NASA launches shuttle Discovery on the program’s 16th flight with Republican Senator Jake Garn embedded with the crew. The project, named Freedom, would fulfill the original post-Apollo U.S. JanuPresident Reagan’s State of the Union address directs NASA to start working on a space station. The next flight in August includes the first African-American astronaut, Guion Bluford. JChallenger launches on NASA’s seventh shuttle mission with a five-person crew that includes Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. Since then, shuttle astronauts have ventured out into open space another 161 times. On its fifth flight, Columbia carries two satellites into orbit.ĪpAstronauts Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson conduct the shuttle program’s first spacewalk. NovemAfter four test flights, NASA deems the shuttle an operational vehicle and doubles the crew size to four, including the first non-pilot astronaut, physicist Joe Allen. manned spaceflight since the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz docking. Apollo veteran John Young and rookie Bob Crippen are aboard for the 54.5-hour trial run. ![]() Instead, it was used for atmospheric flight, vibration and launch configuration tests.ĪpSpace shuttle Columbia lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the program’s debut flight. Without engines and a heat shield, Enterprise was never intended to fly in space. SeptemThe prototype shuttle Enterprise is unveiled, named after the spaceship in the popular TV show Star Trek. The spacecraft were to be designed to carry seven astronauts and up to 50,000 pounds (22,680 kg) of cargo into orbits a few hundred miles from Earth. JanuPresident Richard Nixon signs a bill authorizing $5.5 billion to develop a reusable winged space transportation system called the space shuttle. Here is a timeline on the shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-132) lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in this NASA handout photo dated May 14, 2010.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |