The story, rust-colored external tank was the only shuttle component that was not reused. It fed more than , gallons of fuel — liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen — to the shuttle's main engines during launch. The tank was also the "backbone" of the space shuttle structure. It provided support for the rocket boosters and orbiter. After the solid rocket boosters separated, the orbiter carried the external tank to about 70 miles km above the Earth.
With its fuel spent, the tank separated and fell along a planned trajectory. Most of it burned up in the atmosphere, and the rest fell into the ocean. The orbiter is the component most people think of as "the shuttle. 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.
Hubble was deployed by the Discovery Space Shuttle on 24th April , the spacecraft leaving the 11,kg telescope in orbit km from Earth. Its modules were mainly delivered thanks to the Shuttle programme, which sent 27 missions to the ISS from to This arm was so useful for the Shuttle missions that a second one was designed and built for the ISS. The Space Shuttle is probably the coolest-looking spacecraft ever made. Others, like Sputnik and Curiosity, are close rivals, but the Shuttle puts its distinctive nose-cone ahead of the crowd by virtue of its winged and aerodynamic shape.
At launch in , this looked a lot like the future you had read about science fiction magazines. This is the spacecraft that children pinned on their bedroom walls, the spacecraft that you tried to build from Lego, the spacecraft that populated the skies of your colourful alien planet drawings at school.
If someone told you that NASA had secretly smuggled an alien back to Earth in its payload bay, you might have believed them. A massive development program culminated in the first launch of space shuttle Columbia in In the early years of shuttle operations, every successful mission showed that the shuttle was indeed a very versatile spacecraft.
However, some systems had to be modified in response to problems and anomalies experienced during the initial flights. Initial upgrades included improvements to the external tank insulation, the replacement of several thousand insulation tiles with insulation blankets, and modifications to the wheel brakes and auxiliary power units APUs.
Despite these and many other improvements, it became clear that the shuttle's extensive requirements for refurbishment and maintenance would make it difficult for the program to achieve high flight rates and low launch costs. After 24 successful shuttle flights, the Challenger accident stunned the nation and caused the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA to reevaluate many fundamental design features of the shuttle vehicle, as well as its entire operations support system, in order to reduce risk.
During the nearly two-and-one-half year recovery period following the accident, more than changes were made to the shuttle system, including a major redesign of the solid rocket motor joints and the addition of a limited crew escape capability. Maintenance and flight procedures were also significantly modified, and substantial structural improvements were made to the launch pad, the external tank, and the solid rocket booster.
More than a billion dollars was spent on these changes before the shuttle returned to flight, and funding in subsequent budgets was allocated for several major follow-up improvements. Upgrades planned for incorporation after the shuttle's return to flight included the advanced solid rocket motor ASRM , a inch diameter disconnect valve for the main engine propellant line, high-performance carbon wheel brakes, redundant high-speed nose wheel steering, and modifications to the shuttle's software to increase the chances that aborts during ascent will be successful.
Virtually all changes were approved based on their capability to improve system reliability or operational safety. At the same time, the role of the shuttle in the nation's space endeavors was being reassessed at the national policy level. By continuing to operate the Shuttle conservatively, by taking steps to increase the reliability and lifetime of existing orbiters, and by developing a new launch system, the operational life of the existing orbiter fleet will be extended White House, In compliance with these policy statements, NASA phased out shuttle launches of most commercial and defense payloads and initiated steps to improve the reliability of the shuttle and cut its operating costs to help fund new launch technologies with NASA's shrinking budget.
In , NASA undertook a new initiative to assess and improve the safety and reliability of the shuttle. Based on the results of a limited quantitative risk assessment of the shuttle launch phase for the Galileo mission General Electric, and building on the space shuttle main engine SSME project's attempts to improve the engine's safety margins, the program prioritized potential upgrades according to their ability to address the perceived predominant risk contributors.
High on the list of proposed upgrades were new high-pressure fuel and oxidizer turbopumps, a two-duct powerhead main injector , and a redesigned main combustion chamber. A new, more reliable, main engine heat exchanger, an upgraded APU, a health monitoring system for the main engines, and an upgrade to the orbiter cockpit displays were also given high priorities.
Total funding. While these safety and reliability improvements were under development, the shuttle program was undergoing substantial cuts in contractors and civil service personnel and was implementing many changes to reduce the program's operational budget. Three events in resulted in additional upgrades to the space shuttle system.
The space shuttle isn't just a mode of transport: It's a laboratory, too. There have been 22 Spacelab missions, or missions where science, astronomy, and physics have been studied inside a special module carried on the space shuttle. Spacelab, a reusable laboratory built for use on space shuttle flights, allowed scientists to perform experiments in microgravity.
Starting in 's Challenger missions, animals became a prime component of space science. On the STS-7 mission, the social activities of ant colonies in zero gravity were examined, and during STS-8, six rats were flown in the Animal Enclosure module to study animal behavior in space.
The space shuttle's Thermal Protection System, or heat shield, contains more than 30, tiles that are constructed essentially of sand. All of the tiles are thoroughly inspected before liftoff — they are a crucial tool that allows the space shuttle to endure the intense heat endured when the shuttle re-enters Earth's atmosphere to land.
0コメント