50 Fun Facts About Space Shuttle

After the Shuttle retired in 2011, which company next launched NASA astronauts into orbit from US soil?

SpaceX: in 2020 its crew collected a small US flag the last Shuttle crew had left on the space station, a flag first flown on the very first Shuttle mission.

What did STS, the Shuttle's official abbreviation, stand for?

Space Transportation System: a 1969 plan led by Vice President Spiro Agnew proposed a family of reusable spacecraft, but only the Shuttle was funded.

The first Shuttle launch, on April 12, 1981, came exactly 20 years after what?

Gagarin's flight: he orbited Earth on April 12, 1961, and a computer fault scrubbed the Shuttle's first attempt on April 10, pushing liftoff onto the anniversary.

Which two astronauts flew STS-1, the first Space Shuttle mission?

John Young and Robert Crippen flew through a booster overpressure wave that damaged tiles, so NASA later modified the pad's water sound suppression system.

Which US president approved development of the Space Shuttle?

Richard Nixon approved it in January 1972, saying the Shuttle would 'take the astronomical costs out of astronautics'.

Which company built the Space Shuttle orbiters?

North American Rockwell: NASA hauled its first space-worthy orbiter out of the firm's Palmdale plant in 1979 with thousands of heat-shield tiles still missing.

The first orbiter, Enterprise, was originally going to be given what name?

Constitution: NASA once meant to refit this orbiter for spaceflight, but found it easier to convert a test airframe into Challenger instead.

Why was the prototype orbiter named Enterprise?

A letter campaign by Star Trek fans worked: a White House memo cited 'hundreds of thousands of letters', and President Ford had NASA change the name.

Enterprise never flew in space; what was it used for in 1977?

Approach and Landing Tests: its last two free flights were flown without the tail cone, so it had the shape of an orbiter returning from space.

Which orbiter was the first to fly in space?

Columbia was the heaviest orbiter, so heavy that it was never used to help assemble the International Space Station.

Which orbiter replacing Challenger was named after the ship of Captain Cook's first voyage?

Endeavour was named by schoolchildren: after the Challenger tragedy NASA ran a national contest, and winning classes proposed Cook's ship.

Challenger was named after HMS Challenger, a British corvette that led what kind of voyage in the 1870s?

Global marine research: the Royal Navy stripped out most of the warship's guns and fitted laboratories so scientists could study the deep ocean.

In 1995, which animals damaged a Space Shuttle on its launch pad, forcing a weeks-long launch delay?

Woodpeckers pecked holes in the Shuttle as it stood on the pad, so it rolled back to the assembly building and launched about five weeks late.

In 1984, Shuttle astronaut Bruce McCandless made the first untethered spacewalk using what?

A jet-powered backpack: astronauts later used it to catch failed satellites, yet after three 1984 missions it was never flown again.

Unlike the Apollo capsules before it, how did the Shuttle orbiter come back down to Earth?

As an unpowered glider: with no engines for a second try at the runway, commanders trained in a Gulfstream jet rigged to fly like the orbiter.

Which company developed the RS-25 main engines mounted at the orbiter's tail?

Rocketdyne built them to fly again and again, and 16 leftover Shuttle engines went on to power NASA's new Moon rocket, the Space Launch System.

Why did the Shuttle's main engines light before its boosters?

To check them first: if any engine fell short of 90% thrust within three seconds, the computers shut them all down and the boosters never lit.

What became of the solid rocket boosters after burnout, about two minutes after launch?

Parachuted to sea for reuse: recovery crews plugged each nozzle, pumped out the seawater and towed the boosters back to the launch site.

Which company in Brigham City, Utah, manufactured the solid rocket booster motor segments?

Thiokol: its motor segments crossed the country on rail cars, and after each flight the recovered segments went back to it for refurbishing.

The orbiter's underside was protected on re-entry by tiles made mainly of what?

Silica ceramic: the tiles insulated so well that the orbiter's airframe could be built mostly of aluminum rather than harder-to-work titanium.

During re-entry, which maneuver helped the orbiter slow down?

Steep S-shaped banking turns: tilting the wings added drag, and flipping the bank from side to side kept the orbiter headed for its runway.

After landing at Edwards Air Force Base, how did an orbiter get back to Florida?

Piggyback on a modified Boeing 747: carrying an orbiter on its back made the jet less stable, so NASA added two extra fins to its tail.

In orbit, what job did the panels lining the Shuttle's payload bay doors do?

Got rid of excess heat: if the doors failed to open soon after launch, the orbiter's limited backup cooling would force the crew home after a few orbits.

Which country built the robotic arm that Space Shuttle crews used to grab satellites?

Canada: when the arm retired to an Ottawa museum in 2013, astronaut Chris Hadfield unveiled it by sending it a 'last command' from the space station.

Who paid to build Spacelab, the lab module flown in the Shuttle's payload bay?

Europe (ESA) paid to design and build the lab, and in return NASA flew European astronauts on Shuttle missions.

How could the first Shuttle crews escape?

Ejection seats: modeled on those of the SR-71 spy plane, they were switched off after the fourth flight, when crews grew too big for everyone to have one.

Why did NASA never schedule a Shuttle flight to span December into January?

Its software could not handle the date rollover: the 1970s-era clock would count January 1 as day 366, and only in 2007 did NASA engineers devise a fix.

Who became the first American woman in space, aboard Challenger on STS-7 in June 1983?

Sally Ride later sat on the panels that investigated both Shuttle disasters, the only person to serve on both.

Who became the first African American in space, on Challenger's STS-8 mission in 1983?

Guion Bluford flew in 1983, but the first Black astronaut ever selected, Robert Lawrence, died in a 1967 jet crash before he could fly.

Which speech did Reagan postpone after the Challenger disaster?

The State of the Union: Reagan had planned to give it that night, but instead mourned the crew in a short address from the Oval Office.

What was the technical cause of the Challenger disaster?

O-ring seals failing in a booster joint: the night before, engineers at the booster maker urged no launch in the cold, but their managers reversed that advice.

Christa McAuliffe was chosen from about 11,000 applicants for which NASA project?

Teacher in Space: after Challenger was lost, her backup Barbara Morgan went back to teaching, rejoined NASA in 1998 and finally flew in 2007.

Which body did President Reagan create to investigate the Challenger accident?

The Rogers Commission: member Richard Feynman warned that flying safely with a known flaw proved little, likening it to a lucky first shot at Russian roulette.

Debris from the orbiter lost on February 1, 2003, fell mainly across which states?

Texas and Louisiana: searchers recovered more than 80,000 pieces, nearly 40% of the orbiter by weight, from a debris field covering 2,000 square miles in Texas alone.

In the 2003 re-entry disaster, what had caused the fatal damage to the orbiter's left wing?

Foam shed by the external tank: NASA redesigned the tank, yet foam broke off again on the 2005 return flight and grounded the fleet until July 2006.

Who became Israel's first astronaut, flying on the Shuttle mission that was lost in 2003?

Ilan Ramon: more than 30 pages of his diary survived the breakup and two months of sun, wind and rain, and were later shown at the Israel Museum.

Why did NASA keep a second orbiter ready during Hubble's final Shuttle repair flight in 2009?

To rescue a stranded crew: Hubble's orbit was out of reach of the space station, where a crew with a damaged heat shield could otherwise shelter.

What optical flaw was discovered in Hubble's main mirror after launch?

Spherical aberration: a lens in the device used to test the mirror sat 1.3 mm out of place, so the mirror was polished very precisely to the wrong shape.

In 1997, what crashed into Mir while NASA's Michael Foale was aboard?

A Progress cargo ship: the uncrewed craft punctured a module during a manual docking test, and the crew cut cables and sealed the hatch to save the station.

Who was the first woman to pilot, and later command, a Space Shuttle mission?

Eileen Collins: on the 2005 return-to-flight mission she flipped the orbiter end over end below the space station so its crew could photograph the heat shield.

Which Mercury veteran flew on STS-95 in 1998, aged 77, then the oldest person in space?

John Glenn: researchers used his flight to study how spaceflight's effects on the body resemble the effects of aging.

What moved each fully stacked Space Shuttle from its assembly building to the launch pad?

A giant tracked crawler: the pair was built in the 1960s to haul Apollo's Moon rockets, and the same two machines carried every Shuttle to the pad.

In 2012, how did a retired Space Shuttle travel its final 12 miles to a Los Angeles museum?

By road, through city streets: to cross a freeway bridge too weak for its transporter, it was shifted onto a light dolly and towed by a Toyota Tundra pickup.

Which member of Congress flew on the Space Shuttle in January 1986 and later became NASA's administrator?

Bill Nelson: his flight was scrubbed several times, once when a liquid-oxygen problem halted the countdown 31 seconds before liftoff.

Where has the prototype orbiter Enterprise been displayed since 2012?

The Intrepid Museum in New York: months after Enterprise arrived, Hurricane Sandy knocked out the museum's power, and the orbiter's inflatable shelter deflated.

Averaged over the whole program, roughly how much did each Shuttle flight cost?

$1.5 billion: planners had pictured cheap flights as often as weekly, but the fleet never flew more than nine missions in a year.

What destroyed the Soviet shuttle Buran in 2002?

A collapsing hangar roof: a repair team of about eight men was working on the leaky roof at Baikonur when huge sections plunged to the floor.

In 2004, President Bush said the Shuttle should retire once it had done what?

Finished building the space station: the plan aimed to retire the fleet by 2010, but the final flight slipped until July 2011.

The heaviest spacecraft a Shuttle ever released, NASA's Chandra, was built to observe what kind of light?

X-rays: after its release in 1999, Chandra boosted itself into an orbit reaching more than a third of the way to the Moon.

Which NASA facility was the hub for all Shuttle flight operations, from crews to mission control?

Johnson: Kennedy's launch team ran each countdown, but once the Shuttle cleared the launch tower, Mission Control in Houston took charge until landing.