'Sitting On A Controlled Explosion': 25 Years Since the Space Shuttle's Half-Century Mission

By Ben Evans, on September 10th, 2017

 

Endeavour roars aloft, 25 years ago, this week, for the Space Shuttle’s 50th flight. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Twenty-five years ago, this week, Space Shuttle Endeavour—the youngest member of NASA’s fleet of orbiter vehicles, built to replace the ill-fated Challenger—rocketed away from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, on […]

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'Just Fix It': The Unlikely Mission of STS-60 (Part 2)

By Ben Evans, on February 10th, 2013

The STS-60 crew, commanded by Charlie Bolden, included the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard the shuttle, Sergei Krikalev. Clockwise from the top are Ken Reightler, Charlie Bolden, Ron Sega, Jan Davis, Franklin Chang-Diaz, and Sergei Krikalev. Photo Credit: NASA

By the summer of 1992, the Soviet Union had collapsed. A coup the […]

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'This Can’t Be Real': The Unlikely Mission of STS-60 (Part 1)

By Ben Evans, on February 9th, 2013

Rising atop a column of golden fire, Discovery sets the Florida sky ablaze with the dawn of a new era of co-operation in space. Photo Credit: NASA

On 8 February 1994, the ABC television programme Good Morning America broadcast a live link-up between three Russians aboard the Mir space station—cosmonauts Viktor Afanasyev, Yuri […]

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Of Marriage, Medaka Fish and Multiculturalism: The Legacy of STS-47

By Ben Evans, on October 28th, 2012

Pictured within the spacious interior of the Spacelab-J module, astronauts Mark Lee and Jan Davis became the first married couple to fly together on a space mission. Photo Credit: NASA

Traditions frequently arise from the most unlikely of places. One tradition which had become entrenched in the Astronaut Office since the early Shuttle […]

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