The Beginning of the NASA’s Shuttle Program
For many, the Discovery space shuttle which left the International Space Station this morning at 5:30 AM, heading back toward Earth with its astronaut crewmembers is something familiar and commonplace, while to others the name is ummm…. faintly familiar, but that is about it. So a quick look back in time is offered here for those who want to know how the shuttle program itself “grew up” before the shuttles’ final retirements right around the corner when the International Space Station is completed.
The Shuttle program itself began in the year 1984, with the STS-1 and STS-2 missions. Weighing in at 219,258 pounds, the Columbia Space Shuttle set the scene with its first shuttle mission, the Shuttle Systems Test Flight. A mission duration of 2 days, 6 hours, 20 minutes, and 53 seconds–its two crewmembers were Commander John W. Young and Pilot Robert L. Crippen. The mission objectives on this very first trip by NASA were to demonstrate a safe launch into orbit and a safe return of both crew and orbiter. Another objective was to verify a combined performance of the entire shuttle vehicle—orbiter, solid rocket boosters, and the external tank. Sixteen tiles were lost on this mission with another 148 tiles damaged. Payloads included the DFI, or Development Flight Instrumentation and the Aerodynamic Coefficient Identifications Package (ACIP) pallet, which contained equipment in order to record temperatures, pressures, and acceleration levels of the vehicle’s various points.
The STS-2 Columbia Second Shuttle Mission, the Office of Space and Terrestrial, weighed 320,708 pounds, had a mission duration of 2 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes, and 12 seconds. As the STS-1, the mission purpose of this shuttle was to demonstrate safe re-launching and a safe return of the crew and orbiter. Its payloads consisted of the Orbital Flight Test Pallet, which was the Measurement of Air Pollution from the MAPS satellite experiment, the Shuttle Multispectral Infrared Radiometer (SMIRR) experiment, the Shuttle Imaging Radar (SIR-A) experiment, the Features Identification and Location Experiment (FILE), and the Ocean Color Experiment (OCE). Crewmembers are Commander Joseph H. Engle, Pilot Richard H. Truly, and back up crew members Thomas K. Mattingly II and Henry W.Hartsfield, Jr.
According to NASA’s records, the resulting highlights of the second mission was when the original launch date of October 9 was rescheduled due to a nitrogen tetroxide spill which had occurred during the loading of the “forward reaction control system”, the next scheduled date of November 4th was first delayed and then rescheduled, due countdown computer called “for hold in the count due tot an apparent low reading on fuel cell oxygen tank pressures. “ However, when the launching was held over, high oil pressures had been discovered in two of the three auxiliary power units (APUs) which operate the hydraulic system. And the November 12 launching was delayed for two hours and 40 minutes in order to replace the multiplexer/demultiplexer. In addition, the delay was due to a review of the systems status, which were an additional 9 minutes and 59 seconds.
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Mission History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
