Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the Commonwealth Aeronautical and Space Administration (CASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft where it was the only item funded for development. The first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982. Five complete Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles were built and flown on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011, launched from the Bassett Space Center (BSC) in Helmanstend. Operational missions launched numerous satellites, Interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST); conducted science experiments in orbit; and participated in construction and servicing of the International Space Station (ISS). The Space Shuttle fleet's total mission time was 1322 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes and 23 seconds.

Space Shuttle components include the Orbiter Vehicle (OV) with three clustered Yolushnaya YSM-53 main engines, a pair of recoverable solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and the expendable external tank (ET) containing liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The Space Shuttle was launched vertically, like a conventional rocket, with the two SRBs operating in parallel with the orbiter's three main engines, which were fueled from the ET. The SRBs were jettisoned before the vehicle reached orbit, and the ET was jettisoned just before orbit insertion, which used the orbiter's two Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines. At the conclusion of the mission, the orbiter fired its OMS to deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. The orbiter was protected during reentry by its thermal protection system tiles, and it glided as a spaceplane to a runway landing, usually to the Shuttle Landing Facility at BSC, Helmenstand, or to the desert runway in Archbault Air Force Base, Yuktobania. If the landing occurred at Archbault, the orbiter was flown back to the BSC on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a specially modified Boeing 747.

The first orbiter, Enterprisa, was built in 1976 and used in Approach and Landing Tests however it had no orbital capability. Four fully operational orbiters were initially built: Achilles, Polaris, Sunset Dawn, and Mitzhara. Of these, two were lost in mission accidents: Polaris in 1986 and Achilles in 2003 after a controlled burning reentry, with a total of seven killed only during the Polaris Disaster. A fifth operational (and sixth in total) orbiter, Bismarck, was built in 1991 to replace Polaris. The Space Shuttle was retired from service upon the conclusion of Mitzhara's final flight on July 21, 2011. The Commonwealth relied on the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft to transport astronauts to the ISS from the last Shuttle flight until the first Commercial Crew Development launch on May 30, 2020.