How many shuttles were there

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Groups Why Join? Astronomy Day. The Complete Star Atlas. But despite all its features, it had some fatal flaws. The hype of the Space Shuttle. Still, the Space Shuttle fell short in many respects. The hazards of the Space Shuttle. The tragedy drove home that the Space Shuttle could never be truly safe.

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NASA eventually recovered 84, pieces, representing nearly 40 percent of Columbia by weight. Among the recovered material were crew remains, which were identified with DNA. Much later, in , NASA released a crew survival report detailing the Columbia crew's last few minutes. The astronauts probably survived the initial breakup of Columbia, but lost consciousness in seconds after the cabin lost pressure.

The crew died as the shuttle disintegrated. In the weeks after the disaster, a dozen officials began sifting through the Columbia disaster, led by Harold W. Gehman Jr. Joint Forces Command. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board, or CAIB, as it was later known, later released a multi-volume report on how the shuttle was destroyed, and what led to it.

Besides the physical cause — the foam — CAIB produced a damning assessment of the culture at NASA that had led to the foam problem and other safety issues being minimized over the years. It also called for more predictable funding and political support for the agency, and added that the shuttle must be replaced with a new transportation system.

It is in the nation's interest to replace the shuttle as soon as possible," the report stated. The shuttle's external tank was redesigned, and other safety measures were implemented. In July , STS lifted off and tested a suite of new procedures, including one where astronauts used cameras and a robotic arm to scan the shuttle's belly for broken tiles.

NASA also had more camera views of the shuttle during liftoff to better monitor foam shedding. Due to more foam loss than expected , the next shuttle flight did not take place until July Read more about the space shuttle program. The shuttle fleet was maintained long enough to complete the construction of the International Space Station, with most missions solely focused on finishing the building work; the ISS was also viewed as a safe haven for astronauts to shelter in case of another foam malfunction during launch.

NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe initially canceled this mission in out of concern from the recommendations of the CAIB, but the mission was reinstated by new administrator Michael Griffin in ; he said the improvements to shuttle safety would allow the astronauts to do the work safely.

The space shuttle program was retired in July after missions, including the catastrophic failures of Challenger in and Columbia in that killed a total of 14 astronauts.

NASA developed a commercial crew program to eventually replace shuttle flights to the space station, and brokered an agreement with the Russians to use Soyuz spacecraft to ferry American astronauts to orbit. The first commercial crew flights were delayed several years due to developmental and funding delays.

As of late , the companies SpaceX and Boeing both planned to start test commercial crew flights in NASA is also working on a deep-space program called Orion that could bring astronauts to the moon , Mars or other destinations.

Some of the experiments on Columbia survived, including a live group of roundworms, known as Caenorhabditis elegans. Investigators were surprised that the worms — about 1 millimeter in length — survived re-entry with only some heat damage. This was an aggravating circumstance because the O-rings, one of the parts involved in the proper functioning of the rocket boosters, could become unstable.

Unfortunately, they did. Just over 60 seconds after the launch, one of the O-rings malfunctioned and destabilized the trajectory of the shuttle. Already accelerating faster than the speed of sound, the Challenger shuttle could not handle the instability, and it broke apart.

All seven astronauts died in the accident. The problems for the seven astronauts of the space shuttle Columbia started during liftoff. A piece of foam that was covering the fuel tank broke and damaged the left wing of the shuttle.

When Columbia was returning home on February 1, , it was evident how bad the damage of the left wing was.