"alone. ""Discovery"" flew all three ""return to flight"" missions after the ""Challenger"" and ""Columbia"" disasters: STS-26 in 1988, STS-114 in 2005, and STS-121 in 2006. ""Discovery"" flew the ante-penultimate mission of the Space Shuttle program, STS-133, having launched on February 24, 2011. ""Endeavour"" flew STS-134 and ""Atlantis"" performed STS-135, NASA's last Space Shuttle mission. On February 24, 2011, Space Shuttle ""Discovery"" launched from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39-A to begin its final orbital flight. The Flow Director was responsible for the overall preparation of the shuttle for launch and processing it after landing, and remained permanently assigned to head"
"that took off from Kennedy Space Center at 11:38:00 EST (16:38:00 UTC) on January 28, 1986. The other ""Challenger"" crew members were commander Dick Scobee, pilot Michael J. Smith, mission specialists Ronald McNair, Judith Resnik, and payload specialists Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe. It was destroyed when a flame jet leaking from a solid rocket booster ruptured the liquid hydrogen fuel tank 73 seconds after launch. All seven crew members were killed. Following the ""Challenger"" disaster, examination of the recovered vehicle cockpit revealed that three of the crew members Personal Egress Air Packs were activated: those of Onizuka, mission specialist"
"launch vehicle fire 90 seconds before liftoff. Both cosmonauts aboard landed safely. The only crew fatality during launch occurred on 28 January 1986, when the Space Shuttle ""Challenger"" broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff, due to failure of a solid rocket booster seal which caused separation of the booster and failure of the external fuel tank, resulting in explosion of the fuel. All seven crew members were killed. The single pilot of Soyuz 1, Vladimir Komarov was killed when his capsule's parachutes failed during an emergency landing on 24 April 1967, causing the capsule to crash. The crew of seven"
"replaced McBride as the commander while Guy Gardner and Mike Lounge replaced Richards and Leestma, respectively. STS-61-E STS-61-E was a United States Space Shuttle mission planned to launch on March 6, 1986 using ""Columbia"". It was cancelled after the ""Challenger"" disaster. ""Columbia"" was to carry the ASTRO-1 observatory, which would be used to make astronomical observations including observations of Comet Halley. ASTRO-1 consisted of three ultraviolet telescopes mounted on two Spacelab pallets, controlled by the Instrument Pointing System which was first tested on STS-51-F. After the ""Challenger"" disaster, the flight was remanifested as STS-35 and several crew members were replaced."
"But that all came to an end with the tragic loss of the ""Challenger"" (STS-51-L) on January 28, 1986, taking with it seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, who was to have been the first teacher in space. In full view of the world, a faulty O-ring on the right solid rocket booster allowed hot gases to burn through the external fuel tank and cause it to explode, destroying the shuttle in the process. Extensive efforts were made to improve NASA's increasingly careless management practices, and to make the shuttle safer. Flights resumed with the launch of ""Discovery"" in September 1988."
"STS-61-E STS-61-E was a United States Space Shuttle mission planned to launch on March 6, 1986 using ""Columbia"". It was cancelled after the ""Challenger"" disaster. ""Columbia"" was to carry the ASTRO-1 observatory, which would be used to make astronomical observations including observations of Comet Halley. ASTRO-1 consisted of three ultraviolet telescopes mounted on two Spacelab pallets, controlled by the Instrument Pointing System which was first tested on STS-51-F. After the ""Challenger"" disaster, the flight was remanifested as STS-35 and several crew members were replaced. Both Richards and Leestma were reassigned to STS-28 while McBride left NASA in 1989. Vance Brand"
"in 1981, but the US Congress failed to approve sufficient funds to make ""Freedom"" a reality. A fleet of four shuttles was built: ""Columbia"", ""Challenger"", ""Discovery"", and ""Atlantis"". A fifth shuttle, ""Endeavour"", was built to replace ""Challenger"", which was destroyed in an accident during launch that killed 7 astronauts on 28 January 1986. Twenty-two Shuttle flights carried a European Space Agency sortie space station called Spacelab in the payload bay from 1983 to 1998. The USSR copied the reusable Space Shuttle orbiter, which it called ""Buran"". It was designed to be launched into orbit by the expendable Energia rocket, and"
"a result. On January 28, 1986, McAuliffe boarded ""Challenger"" with the other six crew members of STS-51-L. Just 73 seconds into its flight at an altitude of 48,000 feet, the shuttle broke apart, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members. According to NASA, it was in part because of the excitement over her presence on the shuttle that the accident had such a significant effect on the nation. Many schoolchildren were viewing the launch live, and media coverage of the accident was extensive. The Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle ""Challenger"" Accident—also known as the Rogers Commission—was formed"
"in space, Christa McAuliffe, is followed by a symbolic apple. STS-51-L STS-51-L was the 25th mission of the United States Space Shuttle program, as well as the final flight of the Space Shuttle ""Challenger"". Planned as the first Teacher in Space Project in addition to observing Halley's Comet for six days, a structural failure during its ascent phase 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986, from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 killed all seven crew members—Commander Dick Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, Mission Specialists Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik and Ronald E. McNair, and Payload Specialists Gregory"
"extremely thin atmosphere. If they are large enough, massive pieces traveling at great speed can fall to the Earth before burning up, with the potential to do damage. One of the worst human-piloted space accidents involved the Space Shuttle ""Challenger"" which disintegrated in 1986, claiming all seven lives on board. The shuttle disintegrated 73 seconds after taking off from the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Another example is the Space Shuttle ""Columbia"", which disintegrated during a landing attempt over Texas in 2003, with a loss of all seven astronauts on board. The debris field extended from New Mexico to"
"that began 30 June 1985. ""Simpson"" was homeported at Naval Station Newport until switching to Naval Station Norfolk on 31 March 1994. ""Simpson"" moved to Naval Station Mayport in July 2001. On 28 January 1986, the NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, launched space shuttle mission STS-51L utilizing the orbiter vehicle Challenger at 1138 EST. Escaping propellant combustion products cut into the craft’s solid rocket booster, however, and 73 seconds after launch a massive explosion destroyed Challenger, killing all seven astronauts on board. ""Simpson"" took part in the ensuing search and rescue effort, and subsequently received the Coast"
"Space Shuttle ""Challenger"" blew up nearly immediately above them. USS ""Guam"" recovered many floating pieces of debris from the disaster, including a nose-cone from one of the booster rockets. For her around-the-clock efforts in the recovery mission her crew earned a Coast Guard Meritorious Unit Citation. May through November 1986 she was deployed on MARG 2-86 in the Mediterranean. During this deployment, the ship was damaged while sailing through a tropical storm off the East Coast of the United States while en route to Rota, Spain. Gross command error had decided to sail directly through the storm, rather than go"
"STS-51-L STS-51-L was the 25th mission of the United States Space Shuttle program, as well as the final flight of the Space Shuttle ""Challenger"". Planned as the first Teacher in Space Project in addition to observing Halley's Comet for six days, a structural failure during its ascent phase 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986, from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 killed all seven crew members—Commander Dick Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, Mission Specialists Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik and Ronald E. McNair, and Payload Specialists Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe—and destroyed the orbiter. Immediately after the"
"the in-flight explosion of one of the shuttles in the ""Challenger"" disaster during 1986 showed that it was too complex for routine use as a satellite launch platform. Aérospatiale went on to develop more capable versions of the Ariane, which took much of the business of space launches away from the Americans during the 1990s. During 1991, the company participated in the construction of the chassis of the Bugatti EB110 Supercar. The chassis, built completely of carbon fibre, was considered to be revolutionary for the time, being very lightweight for its size and function. In 1992, German defense company DaimlerBenz"
"Soyuz 7K-ST No. 16L Soyuz 7K-ST No.16L, sometimes known as Soyuz T-10a or T-10-1, was an unsuccessful Soyuz mission intended to visit the Salyut 7 space station, which was occupied by the Soyuz T-9 crew. However, it never finished its launch countdown; the launch vehicle was destroyed on the launch pad by fire on September 26, 1983. The launch escape system of the Soyuz spacecraft fired two seconds before the launch vehicle exploded, saving the crew. It is the first case in which a launch escape system has been fired with a crew on board. The crew were sitting on"
"rocket exploded on its launch pad following a scrubbed launch attempt in December. Before this, the attitude control system of Kosmos 133 malfunctioned, resulting in rapid consumption of orientation fuel, leaving it spinning at 2 rpm. After large efforts by ground control and 5 attempts at retrofire over two days, the craft was finally coming down for a landing. Due to the inaccuracy of the reentry burn, it was determined that the capsule would land in China. The self-destruct command was given and the satellite exploded 30 November 1966 at 10:21 GMT. The fireball passed over west Japan and was"
"""Challenger"" 73 seconds after lift-off, because of the failure of an O-ring seal on ""Challenger""<nowiki>'</nowiki>s right solid rocket booster, which led to the rapid disintegration of the shuttle stack from overwhelming aerodynamic pressures. The seven-member crew was killed when the crew compartment hit the Atlantic Ocean at 207 miles per hour, after two and a half minutes of freefall. Following several days of lengthy delays, ""Challenger"" finally lifted off at 16:38:00 UTC on January 28, 1986. Her three main engines were ignited at T-6.6 seconds, and at T-0 the solid rocket boosters were ignited, lifting the shuttle stack off launchpad"
"Space Shuttle ""Challenger"" in its 11th mission (1984). However, in the prime universe the ""Challenger"" exploded in its 10th mission two years later. One viewer noted this as yet another sign that the parallel universe is more technologically advanced than ours, as they began their space program earlier than ours. On its initial American broadcast on October 15, 2009, an estimated 5.78 million viewers watched ""Dream Logic"", helping it earn a 3.5/6 ratings share among all households and a 2.2/6 ratings share in the important 18–49 demographic. AOL TV writer Jane Boursaw wrote, ""The whole storyline with the creepy dual-personality"
"1986 and ""Columbia"" in 2003. In 1986 the LES would have pulled it clear of the booster explosion; and on top of its launcher it would have been safely out of the way of the falling debris that fatally damaged the thermal insulation on ""Columbia"". These considerations led the study to conclude that Team 2 had met the safety target with the HL-42: ""The improvement of crew safety (probability of crew survival) to at least 0.999 from the 0.98 of the Space Shuttle was met or exceeded by the new vehicles of Options 2 and 3."" The HL-42 drew indirectly"
"destroyed in one of the US space program's more notorious accidents. The Atlas-Centaur was launched on March 26, 1987 into a pouring Florida thunderstorm. At about 30 seconds into the flight, the Atlas was struck by lightning and the resulting static discharge sent an erroneous signal to the guidance computer, causing the rocket to pitch over and break apart from structural stress. The booster exploded and showered burning debris onto LC-36B, which was barely visible through the heavy rain. As a result of this easily preventable disaster, NASA issued strict weather guidelines for all launches. In the late 1990s, FLTSATCOM"
"killed in the ""Challenger"" accident in 1986. STS-120, launched on 23 October using , carried the ""Harmony"" node, the first pressurised ISS component to be launched since ""Pirs"" in September 2001. Attempts to launch ""Atlantis"" in December on STS-122 were scrubbed, and the launch was delayed to 2008 after ECO sensors in the External Tank failed. Three orbital launch attempts in 2007, involving a Zenit, a Falcon 1, and a Proton failed, and two others, an Atlas V and a GSLV, resulted in partial failures. On 30 January, a Sea Launch Zenit-3SL exploded on the Ocean Odyssey launch platform, seconds"
"Milton Silveira Milton Antone Silveira (4 May 1929 – 11 July 2013) was an American aerospace engineer, pilot and academic, serving as NASA's Chief Engineer between 1983 and 1986. He was involved in numerous manned spaceflight programs, including Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, and also contributed to the investigation into the 1986 Space Shuttle ""Challenger"" disaster. Milton Silveira was born in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, in 1929. His parents, Antonne and Carolinda Silveira, were immigrants from the Azores. His love of aeronautics began at age 16, when he acquired his pilot's license. Silveira attended Fairhaven High School, and gained a BSc in mechanical"
"launch complex. The first orbital launch was of a Voskhod rocket with Kosmos 313 on 3 December 1969. Both pads were damaged by explosions in the 1980s. At 16:01 GMT on 18 March 1980, 48 people were killed when a Vostok-2M exploded during fueling operations at Pad 4. The disaster injured dozens more, while damaging the pad so severely that it was not used again until 1984. On 18 June 1987, a Soyuz-U rocket exploded at liftoff on Pad 3. Both were rebuilt, and are in service as of 2009. Plesetsk Cosmodrome Site 43 Site 43, also known as SK-3"
"of which have flown in space. ""Enterprise"" was used only for approach and landing tests, launching from the back of a Boeing 747 SCA and gliding to deadstick landings at Edwards AFB, California. The first Space Shuttle to fly into space was ""Columbia"", followed by ""Challenger"", ""Discovery"", ""Atlantis"", and ""Endeavour"". ""Endeavour"" was built to replace ""Challenger"" when it was lost in January 1986. ""Columbia"" broke up during reentry in February 2003. The first automatic partially reusable spacecraft was the ""Buran""-class shuttle, launched by the USSR on November 15, 1988, although it made only one flight and this was uncrewed. This"
"on August 11, 1985. The mission insignia was designed by Houston artist Skip Bradley. Space Shuttle ""Challenger"" is depicted ascending toward the heavens in search of new knowledge in the field of solar and stellar astronomy, with its Spacelab 2 payload. The constellations Leo and Orion are shown in the positions they were in relative to the Sun during the flight. The nineteen stars indicate that the mission is the 19th shuttle flight. C. Gordon Fullerton died on August 21, 2013, aged 76. Karl Gordon Henize died October 5, 1993 on an expedition to Mount Everest studying the effects of"
"7% more plutonium on board than ""Galileo"", and the two ""Voyager"" spacecraft each carried 80% as much plutonium as ""Galileo"". Activists remembered the messy crash of the Soviet Union's nuclear-powered Kosmos 954 satellite in Canada in 1978, and the 1986 ""Challenger"" accident, which did not involve nuclear fuel but raised public awareness about spacecraft failures. In addition, no RTGs had ever done a non-orbital swing past the Earth at close range and high speed, as ""Galileo"" Venus-Earth-Earth gravity assist trajectory required it to do. This created a novel mission failure modality that might plausibly have entailed total dispersal of ""Galileo"""
"in 2003. The accident led to a two-and-a-half-year grounding of the shuttle fleet; flights resumed in 1988, with STS-26 flown by ""Discovery"". ""Challenger"" was replaced by ""Endeavour"", which was built from structural spares ordered by NASA in the construction contracts for ""Discovery"" and ""Atlantis"". ""Challenger"" was named after HMS ""Challenger"", a British corvette that was the command ship for the ""Challenger"" Expedition, a pioneering global marine research expedition undertaken from 1872 through 1876. The Apollo 17 lunar module, which landed on the Moon in 1972, also was named ""Challenger"". Because of the low production volume of orbiters, the Space Shuttle"
"STS-26 STS-26 was the 26th NASA Space Shuttle mission and the seventh flight of the orbiter ""Discovery"". The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 29 September 1988, and landed four days later on 3 October. STS-26 was declared the ""Return to Flight"" mission, being the first mission after the Space Shuttle ""Challenger"" disaster of 28 January 1986. It was the first mission since STS-9 to use the original STS numbering system, the first to have all its crew members wear pressure suits for launch and landing since STS-4, and the first mission with bailout capacity since STS-4. STS-26"
"year and early 1984 patrolling the region. On 4 December, in response to two US F-14 aircraft having been fired upon the previous day, ten A-6 Intruders of VA-85 ""Black Falcons"" along with A-6 and A-7 Corsair aircraft from USS ""Independence"" (CV-62) took part in a bombing raid over Beirut. While on a bombing mission, the two-man crew from Attack Squadron VA-85 was hit by an infrared homing missile (SA-7 or SA-9) into the engine nozzle upon dropping its bomb-load, while still in a dive through 1,800 feet (554 m) AGL. The fuselage and a wing were immediately engulfed in"
"became STS-51-L, the disastrous final flight of Space Shuttle ""Challenger"". After ""Challenger""<nowiki>'</nowiki>s destruction, NASA recycled the mission numbering system back to STS-26, which was the 26th shuttle mission and the first to fly after the disaster. S. David Griggs, a veteran of STS 51-D, was to have been the pilot of this mission. He was killed in the crash of a vintage World War II aircraft in June 1989 while training to serve as pilot on STS-33, and is commemorated on the mission insignia with a single gold star on the blue field. He was replaced by John Blaha. Sonny"
"the ""Shenzhou 6"" mission he celebrated his 41st birthday in space. The asteroid 9517 Niehaisheng was named after him. Nie Haisheng Nie Haisheng (; born 13 October 1964) is a Chinese military pilot and CNSA astronaut. Nie was born on 13 October 1964 in Yangdang town of Zaoyang, Hubei Province. After graduating from high school he joined the People's Liberation Army Air Force and became a fighter pilot. He trained at the PLAAF's No. 7 Flying School and graduated in 1987. On 12 June 1989 while flying at 13,000 feet (4000 m) his plane suffered an explosion and he lost"
"Originally International Sun-Earth Explorer 3, the probe was renamed and freed from its Lagrangian point location in Earth's orbit to intercept comets 21P/Giacobini-Zinner and Halley. Two Space Shuttle missions—the ill-fated STS-51-L (ended by the ""Challenger"" disaster) and STS-61-E—were scheduled to observe Halley's Comet from low Earth orbit. STS-51-L carried the Shuttle-Pointed Tool for Astronomy (SPARTAN-203) satellite, also called the Halley's Comet Experiment Deployable (HCED). STS-61-E was a ""Columbia"" mission scheduled for March 1986, carrying the ASTRO-1 platform to study the comet. Due to the suspension of America's manned space program after the ""Challenger"" explosion, the mission was canceled, and ASTRO-1"
"in orbit using expendable launch vehicles rather than the shuttle. In August 1986, President Reagan also announced that the shuttle would no longer carry commercial satellite payloads. After a 32-month hiatus, the next shuttle mission, STS-26, was launched on September 29, 1988. Although changes were made by NASA after the ""Challenger"" accident, many commentators have argued that the changes in its management structure and organizational culture were neither deep nor long-lasting. After the Space Shuttle ""Columbia"" disaster in 2003, attention once again focused on the attitude of NASA management towards safety issues. The ""Columbia"" Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) concluded that"