Some of the Star Trek cast at the Enterprise dedication ceremony
The final frontier
Discovery taking off on its final mission
Components of the space shuttle
The orange-coloured External Tank (ET) provides the liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel to the shuttle’s main engines during liftoff which burn through 0.5 million gallons of the stuff during acceleration. The tank is ditched mid-air, after about 8.5 minutes once all the propellant is used and the shuttle has reached a speed of about 17,500 mph (7.8km/s). It’s the only component not to be re-used as it largely burns up in the atmosphere after each launch.
En route to the launchpad on the Mobile Launcher Platform (MLP) The three main components of the shuttle are put together in the massive Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). At 160.3m high, this is the tallest single story building in the world and was originally built for the vertical assembly of the Saturn V rockets, as used for the Apollo missions. Once all three components of the shuttle are put together, it’s taken to the launch pad on the Mobile Launcher Platform (MLP) - an enourmous transporter which travels on caterpillar tracks, like a tank. Once in place, this two-storey structure is also used as the shuttle’s launch platform. Each MLP measures a whopping 49 x 41 x 7.6 m and tips the scales at a heavyweight 3,730 tonnes.
Endeavour hitching a ride home on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
On-board technology
The GRiD Compass laptop on board Discovery in 1985
Tweeting from space
Naturally, the space shuttle has seen plenty of other technical upgrades over the years including the move from analogue flight instruments to a ‘glass cockpit’, featuring colour flat-panel displays as found on modern airliners, and allowing for all the usual readings such as altitude and speed. The flightdeck of each shuttle has the usual pilot/co-pilot set up that you’d find in a plane, so that the orbiter can be piloted from either seat and can be flown by one person in an emergency. Each seat has manual flight controls (including a games console-style joystick controller), rudder pedals and speed-brake controllers. In total, there’s a baffling array of more than 2,020 separate displays and controls on the flightdeck.
Nikon’s space-friendly F camera
The International Space Station (ISS)
Safety concerns
The crew from the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster The first disaster happened on 28 January 1986 when Challenger, the second shuttle to join the fleet, broke apart 73 seconds after take-off, killing all seven crew members. The accident was caused by a defective O-ring seal in the right Solid Rocket Booster which kicked off a chain reaction of technical failures. While the shuttle was built to withstand a load pressure of 3g, it rapidly disintegrated after reaching ‘Max Q’ - the maximum amount of aerodynamic stress that a vehicle in atmostpheric flight can handle.
The crew from the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster Following the second tragedy, a report published by the independent Columbia Accident Investigation Board was critical of NASA’s risk assessment procedures and made recommendations that included more pre-flight inspection routines. Many of the recommendations served to highlight the fact that the aging shuttle should be replaced by a more modern spacecraft. While Discovery and Endeavour both completed their final flights earlier in 2011, Atlantis will be the star of the very last space shuttle mission. The fourth shuttle to join the fleet at Kennedy Space Center, Atlantis has made 32 flights (prior to its final mission), travelling a total distance of 120,650,907 miles and spending a total of 293 days, 18 hours, 29 minutes and 37 seconds in orbit. In its 26 years of flying, Atlantis has been home to 203 crew members, made 4,648 orbits, made 18 space station dockings (seven with the Russian Mir station and 11 with International Space Station) and deployed 14 satellites. As with all the previous flights, the final mission (STS-135) will take off from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, but what it’s actually for? The main cargo (or ‘primary payload’) will be the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module which will contain supplies and spare parts for the International Space Station. Other mission objectives include investigating the potential for robotically refueling existing spacecraft as well as returning a failed ammonia pump, so that NASA can figure out what went wrong and improve the design for the future.
Atlantis on the launch pad for the very last time
What happens next?
The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) - previously known as Orion With the Ares I ditched, the Orion has now been snappily renamed as the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) and is set to be paired up with the new Space Launch System (SLS) launch vehicle. Bearing more of a physical resemblance to the old Apollo modules, the MPCV will carry up to four crew members and will be the only part of the new system that is re-used after each flight. No exact dates have been set, but the maiden voyage for the new system is tentatively pencilled in for 2016. Until then, with no means of its own to launch astronauts into space, NASA has signed a $753 million deal with Russia in return for 12 flights to and from the ISS between 2014 and 2015 - which works out at around $63 million per seat.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo
