Shuttle

Divers with a recent film crew over wreckage identified as part of Challenger.Photo: The HISTORY® ChannelA film crew working on a series about the Bermuda Triangle has made an unexpected discovery off the coast of Florida: a 20-foot segment of the Space Shuttle Challenger, which exploded in flight in one of NASA’s major tragedies. The Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, about 73 seconds after the spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. 46,000 feet above the ground, the Shuttle exploded due to an…

NASA has confirmed the discovery of a section of the Challenger space shuttle that exploded shortly after launch in 1986 with the tragic loss of all seven crew members. The fragment was found during a dive off the Florida coast by a History Channel documentary crew searching for the wreckage of a World War II-era aircraft. Video taken at the scene shows what appears to be some of Challenger’s 8-inch-square thermal protection tiles lying on the seabed, partially covered by sand. The part is reportedly about 15 square…

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A car passes by Facebook's corporate headquarters location in Menlo Park, California, on March 21, 2018. Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty ImagesFacebook's plans to cut costs combined with the company's relaxed remote work policies set the stage for a bunch of shuttle bus staffers to lose their jobs.WeDriveU, a key vendor that Meta uses for its commuter shuttles, said it will be reducing staff in and around the social media company's Silicon Valley headquarters by nearly 100 people beginning in November, according to an…

Crew Dragon Endurance atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on October 1, 2022. Photo: SpaceXEngineers quip that FOD is a four-letter word, but there’s nothing funny about foreign object debris and its potential to trigger disaster.The incident happened on October 5 at around 10:25 a.m. ET, as a SpaceX pad crew was preparing Crew Dragon Endurance for launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket. With the four Crew-5 astronauts already inside the capsule and the hatch closed, an attentive eye spotted a single human hair in the latch seal. The…

Enterprise mounted to the top of a modified Boeing 747 during OV-101 Flight 7 on October 12, 1977. The Shuttle’s Tail Cone was removed for this mission, exposing its mock engines. Photo: NASAPrior to the inaugural launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1981, NASA conducted a series of performance tests with a prototype known as Enterprise. Named for the fictional Star Trek vessel, Enterprise provided our first glimpse of what a future spaceship might actually look like. When I was a kid, I loved to play with my toy…

SLS on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo: NASANASA’s Space Launch System is powered by a mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Together, these elements provide for a compact and extremely powerful rocket propellant, but these same attributes are also what make this fuel a liability. The second launch attempt of SLS had to be called off on Saturday, September 3, after engineers failed to resolve a hydrogen leak in a quick disconnect—an 8-inch inlet that connects the liquid hydrogen fuel line…

SLS on the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo: NASAA serious and unmanageable hydrogen leak prevented NASA from launching its SLS rocket on Saturday. Teams continue to evaluate the reason for the second failed launch attempt, but NASA says the rocket will have to return to the Vehicle Assembly Building to undergo safety checks.For rocket scientists, hydrogen is an important propellant, but it’s also a serious pain in the ass. It’s the tiniest molecule in the universe, and as such, it has a propensity to…

Artist’s depiction of SLS during launch, with four RS-25 engines, along with a pair of solid rocket boosters, providing 8.8 million pounds of thrust. Image: NASA/MSFCEach of the four RS-25 engines currently positioned at the base of NASA’s Space Launch System has gone to space many times before, and each has an interesting story to tell. One first flew in 1998, boosting astronaut John Glenn to orbit. Soon, if all goes well, these veteran boosters will propel NASA into the Artemis era.NASA’s Space Launch System is the most…

Artist’s conception of an SLS launch. Image: NASANASA’s most powerful rocket is nearly ready to send an uncrewed Orion capsule on a 42-day journey to the Moon and back, but this deceptively straightforward plan involves a ton of moving parts—including a harrowing 5,000-degree reentry through Earth’s atmosphere. Here’s what you can expect from this historic mission, called Artemis 1, as NASA officially ushers in the Artemis era.When will NASA’s SLS launch?NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) departed the Vehicle Assembly…