37 years after STS-8, AmericaSpace looks back at some of the highs & lows of landing the Space Shuttle at night. […]
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OTD in 1983, #Challenger landed at night after STS-8. It was the first of 26 shuttle night landings. […] 
Thirty years ago this summer, NASA began flight-testing the shuttle’s drag chute system. It would go on to make each shuttle landing immeasurably safer. […] 
OTD in 1995, shuttle Discovery on STS-70 tested new main engines, was run from a new Mission Control Room & a New Yorker became an honorary Ohioan. […] 
OTD in 1985, the crew of Challenger suffered a close-call on the launch pad: a shutdown of the shuttle’s main engines, seconds before liftoff. […] 
Twenty-five years ago, an enduring period of co-operation between the United States and Russia began with the first shuttle-Mir docking mission. Photo Credit: NASA Twenty-five years ago, this summer, six U.S. astronauts and four Russian cosmonauts circled the Earth together in a remarkable exercise of co-operation between two former superpowers and ideological foes. In […] 
Thirty-five years ago, today, Discovery launched on an international, multi-faceted mission. Photo Credit: NASA Thirty-five years ago today, on 17 June 1985, a spacecraft roared aloft with a crew representing the largest number of nations ever flown into space and carrying the largest load of satellites ever put into space at that time by […] 
Startling the birds, Discovery spears from Pad 39B on 13 July 1995. Six weeks earlier, the antics of a pesky Northern Flicker woodpecker had caused an extensive launch delay for STS-70 and extensive embarrassment for NASA. Photo Credit: NASA Over its 30-year career, many things attacked the Space Shuttle, from lawmakers keen to cut […] 
U.S. astronaut Norm Thagard sleeps aboard Mir, during his lengthy voyage. Photo Credit: NASA Twenty-five years ago, this month, the first U.S. astronaut in history was launched aboard a non-U.S. spacecraft, atop a non-U.S. rocket, from a non-U.S. nation, with a crew entirely composed of non-U.S. comrades. Four-time Space Shuttle flyer Dr. Norm Thagard had spent […] 
Atlantis spears for the heavens at 2:50 a.m. EST on 28 February 1990. Photo Credit: NASA In many minds, STS-36—a top-secret Department of Defense mission, flown 30 years ago this month—was one of the greatest flights ever undertaken in the three decades of Space Shuttle operations. In his memoir Man On A Mission, astronaut Dave Hilmers recalled […] |
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