Space Shuttle

📷 Bill Ingalls / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

The Space Shuttle was NASA’s partially reusable space plane — officially the Space Transportation System — and the only winged crewed vehicle ever to fly a full operational career in orbit. Between April 1981 and July 2011 the fleet flew 135 missions and carried more than 350 individual astronauts, hauling satellites, laboratories, and station modules in a payload bay big enough for a school bus: 18.3 m long, 4.6 m wide, and rated for 27,500 kg to low Earth orbit.

Nothing else has matched its versatility. The Shuttle launched like a rocket, orbited like a spacecraft, and landed like a glider on a runway. It deployed the Hubble Space Telescope and later fixed it in orbit, docked with two space stations, and assembled most of the International Space Station.

That capability carried a heavy price. Two orbiters, Challenger and Columbia, were destroyed with their crews of seven, and the program cost about $196 billion over its lifetime — roughly $450 million per launch by NASA’s own average, far more by full accounting.

Development History

President Richard Nixon approved the Shuttle on January 5, 1972 as NASA’s follow-on to Apollo, with a goal of routine, airliner-style access to orbit. The final layout was a compromise shaped by tight budgets and Air Force requirements: a delta-winged orbiter riding a huge external fuel tank, flanked by two solid rocket boosters — the first solids ever used on a crewed vehicle.

The unpowered prototype Enterprise proved the landing technique in 1977, gliding off the back of a modified Boeing 747. Orbital flights began on April 12, 1981, when Columbia lifted off with John Young and Bob Crippen aboard — the first time NASA put astronauts on a vehicle’s very first launch.

Five spaceworthy orbiters were built: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour, the last one constructed to replace Challenger after the 1986 accident. Discovery became the fleet leader with 39 flights.

Design & Capabilities

At liftoff the full stack stood 56 m tall and weighed about 2,030 tonnes. The orbiter’s three RS-25 engines burned liquid hydrogen and oxygen drawn from the external tank while the twin boosters provided most of the muscle; together they delivered roughly 30,000 kN of thrust. Eight and a half minutes after launch the orbiter was in space, moving at about 28,000 km/h.

The orbiter itself measured 37.2 m long with a 23.8 m wingspan and an empty weight near 78 tonnes. Up to seven astronauts (eight, once) lived on two decks, and a 15-metre Canadarm robotic arm handled payloads in the open cargo bay. More than 24,000 silica tiles and reinforced carbon-carbon panels protected the airframe through a reentry that heated its belly to about 1,650 °C.

Reuse was only partial. Orbiters and booster casings flew again, but every mission expended its external tank, and refurbishment between flights took months of hands-on work rather than the two weeks once advertised — a big reason the promised cheap flights never materialized.

Notable Missions

STS-1 opened the era in 1981, and Sally Ride became America’s first woman in space on STS-7 in 1983. STS-31 deployed Hubble in April 1990, and STS-61 famously corrected the telescope’s flawed mirror in December 1993. Atlantis made the first docking with Russia’s Mir station in 1995, and from 1998 onward the fleet concentrated on building the International Space Station across roughly 37 assembly and supply flights.

The program’s darkest days came on January 28, 1986, when Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch, and February 1, 2003, when Columbia disintegrated during reentry — fourteen astronauts lost in all. Atlantis closed the story with STS-135, landing on July 21, 2011.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why was the Space Shuttle retired?

Cost and risk. Each flight averaged about $450 million, turnaround took months, and the Columbia accident exposed dangers built into the design, with the crew riding beside the tank instead of on top of a rocket. After 2003, U.S. policy shifted NASA toward exploration beyond Earth orbit and handed station transport to commercial capsules like Crew Dragon.

How fast did the Space Shuttle fly?

In orbit the Shuttle circled Earth at about 28,000 km/h — roughly Mach 25, one lap of the planet every 90 minutes. It reached that speed eight and a half minutes after liftoff, then shed nearly all of it as heat during reentry, finally touching down at about 350 km/h, faster than any airliner lands.

How many Space Shuttles were built?

Five orbiters reached space: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. A sixth airframe, Enterprise, flew only unpowered approach-and-landing tests and never received engines or a full heat shield. Challenger was lost in 1986 and Columbia in 2003; the three survivors are now museum exhibits in Virginia, Florida, and California.

Could the Space Shuttle fly to the Moon?

No. The Shuttle was strictly a low-Earth-orbit machine, usually flying 300 to 600 km up. It carried nowhere near the propellant needed for a lunar trip, and its heat shield was designed for reentry from orbital speed, not the roughly 40,000 km/h of a return from the Moon. Deep-space capsules like Orion are built for that job.