
OTD in 1990, Columbia launched STS-32, a mission which ticked off almost everything the shuttle could do: satellite deployment, retrieval, rendezvous & long-duration flight. And a highly classified birthday, too. […]
|
||||
![]() 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 […] ![]() In the first, and so far only, three-person EVA, astronauts Rick Hieb, Tom Akers and Pierre Thuot manhandle Intelsat 603 into Endeavour’s payload bay for the attachment of a new rocket motor. Photo Credit: NASA Twenty-five years ago, today, on 7 May 1992, Space Shuttle Endeavour launched into orbit on her maiden voyage, […] ![]() With the possible exception of Columbia and the very first Space Shuttle mission, few orbiters had as dramatic and exciting a maiden voyage as Endeavour. On STS-49, she provided a reliable stage for the longest EVA in history and the first three-man EVA in history. Photo Credit: NASA “Ready. Ready. Grab!” The words […] ![]() Thirty-five years ago, in April and November 1981, NASA launched the first reusable piloted orbital spacecraft on its first two missions. In September 2016, the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF) will remember STS-1 and STS-2 with a panel discussion involving three of the four astronauts. Photo Credit: NASA Thirty-five years ago, this summer, NASA […] Pictured on Discovery’s aft flight deck, the STS-51G crew featured three discrete sovereign nations for the first time in shuttle history. Front row, from left, are John Creighton, Shannon Lucid, and Dan Brandenstein, with Sultan Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud, Steve Nagel, John Fabian, and Patrick Baudry in the background. Photo Credit: NASA Thirty years ago, […] By the end of his seven days in space, Sultan Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud had given up looking for his own country, or even his own continent, and came to realize that all humans belonged to just “One World.” It is a message which continues to resonate today. Photo Credit: NASA Three decades ago, on […] |