Phillips, Ph. To help you make the most of your visit, Dr. Phillips shares his thoughts on ten must sees and hidden gems of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. In , the Mercury-Redstone 2 capsule took a chimpanzee named Ham into space in preparation for a human launch. The California Story includes images of Endeavour under construction locally in Palmdale and Downey, as well as artifacts that flew into space aboard Endeavour.
At one display, visitors are encouraged to touch the actual tires from Endeavour flight STS , which show the wear from its final landing on the runway at the Kennedy Space Center on June 1, Like most aircraft tires, Space Shuttle tires were filled with nitrogen. According to the Science Center, "How do the astronauts go to the bathroom?
Formally known as the Waste Collection System or WCS , the "Space Potty" functioned somewhat like a high-tech vacuum cleaner in the microgravity environment on orbit. At the Space Potty display, look for the "Sally Ride Curtain," a privacy curtain nicknamed for the astronaut who became the first American woman in space as a crew member of the Space Shuttle Challenger in Phillips noted, "Apparently not a priority until female astronauts came aboard the Shuttle, the privacy screen ushered in a new era of luxury in low Earth orbit!
If something went wrong, Rocketdyne staff could provide recommendations to launch control in Florida or Mission Control in Houston. Astronauts on the Endeavour used a special kitchen, called a galley , to prepare meals in space. The galley is a modular unit that contains a water dispenser and an oven. The water dispenser is used for rehydrating foods, and the galley oven is for warming foods to the proper serving temperature.
But after obtaining NASA's final flight-worthy external tank, ET , in , and conducting a review of the display plans, it was decided that a set of flight-worthy boosters were also needed to meet seismic and structural standards. Dennis Jenkins, a veteran shuttle engineer and director of the science center's project to display Endeavour, made the request to Northrop Grumman at the time, Orbital ATK, which Northrop Grumman acquired in , which led to the donation.
Although it now has all of the components for the space shuttle, the science center is still waiting to break ground on the new building.
It will still be a pretty cool thing to watch them come through the streets," said Rudolph. The foot 45 meter solid rocket boosters produced most of the thrust needed for the space shuttle's first two minutes of flight. After expending their propellant, the twin boosters separated from the vehicle and descended under parachute to a splashdown for their recovery and reuse.
Northrop Grumman is using most of its leftover shuttle-era solid rocket motor hardware to support NASA's SLS, which is being built to launch astronauts to the moon. On Sept. Endeavour's well-used boosters include components that were part of 32 static ground tests and 81 space shuttle missions.
About 6, schools participated in the contest, which set out several requirements for the name. Among other stipulations, the shuttle had to be named after an "exploratory or research sea vessel" and the name also needed to be easily understood in space.
Almost one-third of the participating schools chose the same name: Endeavour. It was a British ship that was best known for its first voyage with James Cook as captain. On that voyage, Cook brought Endeavour to Tahiti to watch the transit of Venus across the sun.
Bush that selected the winning name on advice from the NASA administrator. Construction on Endeavour commenced in , using spare parts from Discovery and Atlantis. Final assembly finished in July , and the shuttle was shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in May from its assembly location in Palmdale, Calif.
Endeavour's first flight was a challenging one. The crew members of STS , when they rocketed to space on May 7, , were supposed to capture a satellite that was stuck in the wrong orbit, rescue it and loft it again into space. Crew members reached the Intelsat VI satellite successfully, but ran into a snag when they needed to attach a "capture bar" onto the satellite to bring it into the shuttle.
Dangling on the end of the Canadarm, Pierre Thuot tried to attach the bar to the satellite. But as he touched it, Intelsat drifted away. More attempts the next day were also unsuccessful.
NASA then came up with a new, riskier procedure to bring the satellite into the payload bay. For the first time, three astronauts did a spacewalk at the same time. Thuot rode the Canadarm again as Richard Hieb and Thomas Akers attached themselves to the payload bay. Then, the crew members inside the shuttle maneuvered Atlantis to just below where Intelsat spun.
Carefully, with Thuot giving hand gestures as instructions to the astronauts inside the shuttle, the Canadarm was maneuvered to a spot where Thuot, Hieb and Akers could all grasp the satellite and successfully install the capture bar.
It was a remarkable maneuver considering how little room there was for error in moving the Canadarm and Thuot near the shuttle's payload bay. The astronauts equipped Intelsat VI with a new "kick motor" and sent it on its way.
The communications satellite successfully entered geosynchronous orbit and started service in time for the Summer Olympics. Endeavour was also the shuttle that ferried the first Hubble Space Telescope repair crew. Astronauts on STS fitted Hubble with adaptive optics to correct a faulty mirror, installed new solar arrays and swapped out other telescope components.
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