Time in space: 1,334 days, 1 hour, 36 minutes, 44 seconds It also was called on to build the International Space Station (ISS), the largest spacecraft ever, which was assembled in orbit. ![]() The shuttle fleet, which was designed to reach orbits ranging from about 115 to 400 miles high, also routinely carried whole laboratories into orbit for unique experiments. Instead, it returns by gliding back on a pair of wings to a runway on Earth.Īs the world's first reusable spacecraft to carry humans into orbit, the shuttle possesses a 60-foot-long payload bay and robotic arm that can carry several satellites into low Earth orbit on one flight, service them and even bring them back for future use. When the shuttle returns to Earth, it does not land under parachutes as NASA's Apollo capsules that preceded it. Instead, it re-enters the atmosphere about nine minutes after launch and burns up over the Pacific Ocean. The external tank is the only part of the stack not used again. Its boosters are jettisoned into the Atlantic Ocean, retrieved and reused. The orbiter, most commonly referred to as the space shuttle, is the only part of the shuttle "stack" that makes the trek into orbit. It also put to the test the teams that manufactured, processed, launched and managed the unique vehicle system, which consists of about 2 1/2 million moving parts. That first mission verified the combined performance of the orbiter vehicle (OV), its twin solid rocket boosters (SRBs), giant external fuel tank (ET) and three space shuttle main engines (SSMEs). ![]() Atlantis flew the final space mission, STS-135, in July 2011. The space shuttle, officially called the Space Transportation System (STS), began its flight career with Columbia roaring off Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 12, 1981.
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