Where is shuttle discovery

Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. My Trip. Cart 0. Tickets 0. Payload Blog. First Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery.

Published on August 30, By Alaina On October 25, By Alaina On October 19, Lucy Takes Flight to the Trojan Asteroids. By Christine On October 16, This was the first abort of the shuttle program; all told, five shuttle missions were called off just moments before launch, then sent into space at a later date. Another mission, STSF , had an early cutoff in Challenger's center engine about five minutes, 45 seconds into the launch.

It went into orbit successfully. NASA had an aggressive flight schedule for the shuttle in the early days of its program. The young Discovery flew two times in and four times in , sending several satellites into space.

Additionally, Discovery flew the first of a series of shuttle missions for the Department of Defense. All of this began to change after the Challenger explosion of Satellite launches gradually shifted to one-use unmanned rockets for safety and cost considerations. The shuttle's mandate changed to being focused on science and station-building activities. However, there still was a backlog of satellites to carry up through the shuttle. The shuttle lofted a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite into space to provide enhanced communication between the ground and the shuttle.

During that mission, a malfunction in the cabin raised temperatures to the mids — a bit extreme for the shirtsleeve environment of the shuttle, but not unduly bad. Discovery also flew a few more Department of Defense missions. Science began to come more to the forefront in the early to mids. Discovery flew the International Microgravity Laboratory on STS to study the effects of low gravity on humans and a bunch of other, tiny passengers: shrimp eggs, fruit fly eggs and lentil seedings.

STS, another science mission, was halted 11 seconds before one launch attempt due to an instrumentation problem. Once it launched on April 8, , crew members focused on the interaction between the sun's energy and the Earth's atmosphere with an experiment called Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science ATLAS The crew also used the Canadarm to temporarily deploy a small instrument platform that studied the solar wind and sun's corona.

Discovery's primary mission in its latter years was building the International Space Station, but that was interrupted by the Columbia breakup of Foam falling from Columbia's external tank breached tiles on the wing. The shuttle broke up during re-entry, killing Columbia's seven crew members on Feb. Discovery carried the responsibility of being the first shuttle to fly again on July 26, , almost two and a half years after Columbia's fatal flight.

Crew members now would spend hours of time examining the shuttle's belly tiles using a modified Canadarm and imaging system.

Crew members did a spacewalk to test tile repair procedures in space. Also, NASA installed new ground-based and shuttle cameras to monitor launch debris. The next mission, STS, flying with external tank modifications , went into space on July 4, Crew members again focused on new safety procedures.

This heightened emphasis remained for the last six years of the shuttle program, even as construction of the station continued. The shuttle safely touched down March 9,