And NASA insists its Orion capsule, originally meant to fly Constellation astronauts, will still fly – though for what missions nobody in the space business is quite sure. There is also SpaceX, headed by PayPal millionaire Elon Musk, with its Falcon rockets. NASA did announce a new contract Thursday with Sierra Nevada Space Systems, a company that hopes to fly a spaceplane called the Dream Chaser. "We tried to get companies interested," said an old NASA hand who asked not to be identified, "but they want to launch from New Mexico." The weather there is dry and more predictable, with no sea breezes to corrode metal and fewer thunderstorms to delay launches. Slowly, in case a private company decides it is worth converting for a new space project. All of Challenger’s pre-launch preparations were routine, with the exception of tremendous ice buildup on the launch pad that formed as temperatures dipped into the low 20’s overnight. This was 15 degrees colder than any previous Space Shuttle launch. SpaceX was still a young company when the last space shuttle blasted off, but it. At launch time, the temperature at the Kennedy Space Center was 36 degrees Fahrenheit. The dummy 'Starman' riding a Tesla on his way to Mars orbit in 2018. ![]() Meanwhile, workers have already been disassembling pad 39B. SpaceX flew a Tesla in space and towards Mars. It has suggested that private companies take up the slack, launching astronauts to the International Space Station so NASA won't have to buy seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. But the Obama White House redid the budget numbers, said Constellation was unworkable, and canceled it. In 2009, pad 39B, a mile away, was reconfigured for Constellation, the project ordered up by the Bush administration to take astronauts back to the moon and, eventually, on to Mars. The space agency says that after Atlantis returns from its final mission, the workforce at Kennedy will drop to 8,200.Ĭlick Here for Pictures: 30 Years of the Space ShuttleĪtlantis used launch pad 39A - the very same one from which Apollo 11 left for the moon in 1969. That first mission verified the combined performance of the orbiter vehicle (OV. Atlantis docked with the International Space Station on 10 July 2011, at 15:07 UTC. ![]() Atlantis flew the final space mission, STS-135, in July 2011. Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched for the last time on 8 July 2011, at 15:29 UTC. What's more, there were 15,000 people who worked for NASA or its contractors – to say nothing of all the grocery clerks and gas station attendants, real estate agents and car dealers who lived here because astronauts left from here. The space shuttle, officially called the Space Transportation System (STS), began its flight career with Columbia roaring off Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 12, 1981.
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