By any yardstick, NASA can be proud of these accomplishments. Many of the predictions for the Space Shuttle came true: the fleet helped build the ISS, docked with the Mir space station, made extensive use of Spacelab, and carried many important payloads to orbit - including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and interplanetary probes Magellan, Ulysses, and Galileo, among others. Some NASA personnel even anticipated that a shuttle would be able to carry out back-to-back flights within just a week or two.

Using the Spacelab module (built by the European Space Agency), which was located in the rear of the shuttle’s cargo bay, the Space Shuttle could pull double duty, performing many scientific experiments originally intended to be carried out aboard full-fledged space stations.Īll these potential benefits of the shuttle were piled on top of one key promise: rapid turnaround of the spacecraft between flights. The shuttle was planned to not only visit Skylab, but also help with the construction of Skylab’s successor space stations. And in just a few short days (on November 14), NASA plans to launch the first official mission, Crew-1, of their Commercial Crew Program.īut given the hiatus between the end of the Space Shuttle Program and the start of the Commercial Crew Program, many have wondered: Why did NASA stop flying the Space Shuttle in the first place? The hype of the Space Shuttleįirst conceived during the heady and well-funded time around the initial Moon landings, the Space Shuttle was intended to provide NASA with a low-cost means to bring humans and payloads to low-Earth orbit. On May 30, 2020, NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken launched to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, marking the first crewed spaceflight launched from American soil since NASA retired the Space Shuttle. More than 30 years later, when Space Shuttle Atlantis rolled to a stop on the runway July 21, 2011, the shuttle program officially came to a close.Īfter the end of shuttle era, American astronauts were forced to pay for rides aboard Russian rockets - a situation many found galling. The first orbital test flight, STS-1, carried out by Space Shuttle Columbia, blasted off Apfrom historic launchpad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The Space Shuttle Program eventually flew 135 missions, making it the core of American crewed spaceflight efforts for nearly four decades. Nearly a decade later, the Space Shuttle was born. But during that same year, NASA was already beginning the design and develop their next generation of crew-carrying craft. In 1972, Apollo 17 carried the last batch of astronauts to the lunar surface.

Nasa space shuttle taking off