The Vehicle that revolutionized Space Travel
The Space
Shuttle retired in July 2011 after thirty years of service; during its service
time, it carried 355 astronauts and completed 133 missions.
To be clear,
the term "space shuttle" refers to the entire structure, which
consisted of two solid rocket boosters, a massive orange external fuel tank for
the main engines, and a space shuttle orbiter that carried crew.
A year after
the first manned moon landing, in 1969, work on the shuttle's architecture
began. The construction of the space shuttle started in 1974, and the first
test orbiter, the "Enterprise," which was used for training and test
flights, rolled out in 1977. The Columbia, the first fully operational orbiter,
was finished in 1979 and delivered to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Four more
shuttle orbiters were delivered over the course of the next twelve years:
Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour, and Challenger.
All of the
shuttle missions were launched from launch pads 39A and 39B at KSC, Florida.
During the launch many things happen simultaneously. Before ten seconds to
takeoff there was a hydrogen buroff test to ensure that no hydrogen is leaking,
Now the two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) power up, and after two minutes they
detach from the main body. After detachment, they splash down into the ocean,
where they are recovered for future missions. At this time, the shuttle uses
the fuel from the large external tank continuously for eight minutes; after
this, the external tank also detaches and burns up in the atmosphere due to
high resistance. Now the shuttle orbiter is controlled by the two OMS motors
(each with separate fuel tanks) to give it the last push into the orbit. When
the mission is completed the orbiter re-enters into the earth's atmosphere with
tremendous amount of heat generated due to resistance, to avoid any burn-up the
orbiter's base is shielded by numerous silica tiles, when the shuttle is near
the runway the landing gears are opened and the mission is finished
successfully.
During the
span of thirty years 135 missions were flown, but two of them (Challenger and
Columbia) suffered accident resulting in death of all crew members.
Currently,
the only spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to and from space is the
Russian Soyuz. In addition, the new space giant SpaceX is developing its Crew
Dragon spacecraft to reduce NASA's reliance on Roscosmos for astronaut
transportation.
Last but not
the least, the Space Shuttle is considered one of most complicated vehicle with
over 2.5 million moving parts.
Thank You,
Sarthak P.
Khode ЁЯШК
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